Page 49 of 2 Books in One Bundle
Matteo pulled back, began to pace. How couldn’t she see? This was his chance. The final hammer blow, and she thought he wouldn’t take it? That some nebulous idea like ‘home’ could stop him? He’d never stop. Not until he got what he had planned for.
‘I’ve told you. I don’tneedany of that.’
Louisa held out her hands, as if imploring him.
‘You’re lying to yourself. You own retreats. Boutique hotels. Escapes, sure. But they’re still places where people live, for a while at least. Ask yourself why that’s the business you chose. Why you’re so successful. Your company is called Arcadia. I looked up what that means. A place of rustic idyll. Of innocence and pleasure. What does that tell you?’
He shook his head. She was looking for signs that didn’t exist.
‘It tells me nothing other than it’s a lucrative business and I excel at it. My company’s motto isn’t “Beyond home, your ultimate haven” for nothing.’
She looked to the heavens, almost like asking for divine guidance. ‘For a reason. Matty, can’t you see? That just proves my point. You’re searching and searching for yourplace, because you’re lost. And now you’re trying to take away the only home I want. Where I’ve always been safe. The home I believed I’d live in for the rest of my life.’
She didn’t feel safe with him? Her words were like a knife to the gut. Louisa couldn’t see. She was still trapped by her past.
‘You’re a young woman. You need—’
‘I need to be where I’m happy. We both do, and I realise where that is. You don’t have to search any more. I love you Matty. Make your home withme.’
Her words brought him to a halt. His heart pounding a sickening rhythm. No.
‘You don’t love me.’ That was impossible. Matteo knew he should care but couldn’t. Not with this sensation of heaviness in his chest. His heart pounding as if it would burst from his ribcage. She’d offered him something he didn’t want. That he’d never asked for.
‘You don’t get to tell me how I feel,’ she said. Something about Louisa seemed to crumple, fold in on itself. As if part of her had broken. She turned her back to him, voice cracking. ‘And you don’t get to tell me what I want out of my life...’
Matteo raked his hands through his hair as that heaviness increased. Squeezing the life out of him. There wasn’t enough air to take a breath. ‘I thought you’d be the one person who could understand. That family wanted to silence you. Send you back to the woman who hurt you to preserve their pristine name. The family who cast me aside because I wasn’t a true Bainbridge, no matter what my adoption made me at law. They’re craven and soulless, and theywillpay.’
Victory was so close he could almost taste it.
She shook her head. ‘How do you expect to make them?’
‘They want a fight, they’ll get it. There are reasons why Mae left the home to me. A right to reside to you. I believe those reasons have everything to do with the way that family treated us. It’ll all come out in court, if not before...’
All the colour bled from her face, as if she’d seen a ghost. Her eyes widened.
‘How could...how can...? You know what will happen. It’ll be splashed all over the press.’
He laughed. That negative press would destroy the family and the image they’d built. The damage would be irreparable.
‘It’s perfect. They sow the seeds of their own demise. They won’t even see it coming till I have them.’
‘No!’ She slashed her hand through the air, stalking towards him, fists clenched. ‘I don’t want that story to become whoIam because that’s all anyone will ever remember about me when they hear it. You want to use my pain, what I went through, as fodder to get back at the family I’ve left in the past. You care about revenge more than you care about me.’
He gritted his teeth. She thought to take it all away from him? What he’d worked at for so many years? For what, some meaningless declaration likelove? His parents had told him they loved him, and they’d abandoned him when someone better came along. And where had love got her?
‘If you cared aboutmeat all, loved me as you claim, then you’d understand. But youdon’tlove me. That’s an illusion.’
Louisa’s shoulders slumped. Her chin trembled as she took a shuddering breath. ‘I—I thought...but I was wrong. I’ve told you before I’m not leaving Easton Hall. I thought you’d understood. I won’t be a party to this, I can’t stay and watch this happen... Because it will destroy everything.’
Louisa turned and began to walk into the house.
‘Where do you think you’re going?’
She didn’t break her stride, kept moving as he followed. ‘Away. Anywhere but near you.’
It was as if a weight pressed on him. Relentless. Crushing. Right now, he felt like Atlas, trying to hold up the sky. She wouldn’t leave. Shecouldn’t.
‘You’llneversurvive on your own.’
