Page 34 of Innocent's Wedding Day with the Italian

The silence stretched even longer before he finally answered. ‘Not that I know of.’ Shifting his weight off her, not by much, just enough so she could breathe more easily, he threaded his fingers through hers and brought her hand to his mouth, rubbing his lips over her knuckles.

Another sob tried to break free and she fought as hard as she’d ever fought in her life to keep it contained.

‘Did she think you would move back in?’ She remembered Enzo telling her he’d moved into the apartment above his first jewellery store the moment the lease for it became available when he was nineteen.

His nose nuzzled into her cheek. ‘I have long given up trying to guess what goes through my mother’s head.’

‘Maybe she kept it like this in case you ever changed your mind.’

‘Unlikely.’

‘As a reminder then, of the son you’d been before you moved out and became a man.’

He lifted his head. Gaze tight on hers, his brow furrowed. ‘Why are you trying to humanise her?’

‘Because she’s your mother and her being a vindictive Robina Hood doesn’t change that.’ A short burst of laughter at what she was saying flew from her lips. What did it matter to her if Enzo cut his mother from his life completely? They were as bad as each other, something she needed to reinforce in her mind with concrete. And her heart.

A whole day had now passed since she’d received Silvana’s package and despite Rebecca’s best efforts, Enzo had managed to re-humanise himself fully in her eyes. Now, with the desperation of their lovemaking still alive in her veins, she was in the most dreadful danger; in danger of forgiving what he’d done to her and forgetting what he was capable of.

‘What pushed you over the edge and made you threaten her?’ she asked, trying her hardest to fight the panic now clawing back at her. ‘It’s not a very Italian thing to do is it, ratting out your own flesh and blood.’

He gave a grunt-like laugh and finally withdrew from her. ‘If she’d forced my hand, I would have had to hand my citizenship in.’

Terrified at how bereft she felt with that last connection between them gone, Rebecca scrambled to sit up. ‘Exactly.’ She grabbed a pillow and placed it to her chest before drawing her knees up and wrapping her arms around her legs. ‘And you waited until you were twenty-eight, so something must have spurred you on.’

The eyes that had narrowed while watching her cover her nudity held her stare for what felt like an age before he sat up too. ‘Because I couldn’t live with the fear any more.’

Wishing he’d said his reasons had been because of a threat to his business, Rebecca pressed her thighs to the pillow against her chest even more firmly and tightened her arms’ hold around them, knowing even as she did it that this was a variation of what she’d done in the aftermath of their first lovemaking, a futile attempt at using her body to protect her heart, which would only make sense if her heart could still be protected from him.

But it couldn’t, and she understood exactly what he meant about living with the fear because it was the same reason she still needed to walk away from him, otherwise she would be doomed to living with that fear too, for as long as it took for Enzo to walk away fromher.

‘How much longer could her luck have held?’ he asked tautly. ‘If she wouldn’t quit, not even for my sake, then I had no choice but to force her—her reputation is as important to her as mine is to me. A police investigation into her business, even a fruitless one, would have destroyed that reputation and she knew it. I wish I could say I did it for noble reasons and that I believed even the scummy people she targeted didn’t deserve to have their jewellery collections stolen from them but that would be a lie, and I have promised not to lie to you. I made my threat because it would have killed me to see my mother thrown into a prison cell.’

Rebecca pictured Silvana; tall, beautiful, whip-smart, brimming with energy. Locking her into a prison cell would be like locking a Bengali tiger into a tiny cage.

Despite herself, she pictured a young Enzo too, grieving the loss of his father and the loss of everything that was familiar, slowly growing up with the fear gripping his chest increasing as his mother’s criminality and the implications of what would happen if she were caught became clearer to him.

He wasn’t that child any more. She had to remember that. Had to.Hadto.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

‘ISITAcoincidence that you made your threat when you were the same age as your father when he died?’ The question formed before Rebecca’s brain had even thought of it.

Enzo’s eyes narrowed. A groove lined his forehead. The corners of his lips twitched before he finally answered. ‘And you believe you don’t know me?’ He shook his head and gave a disbelieving laugh. ‘It was no coincidence. Turning twenty-eight was a big deal for me. As a child, it seemedoldbut the closer I got to it...’ Grimacing, he dragged his fingers through his dark hair, mussing it up even more than it already was from their lovemaking. ‘I spent much of the year doing all the reckless, dangerous things a single man with too much money can do.’

Ice prickled her spine and chest, goose bumps rising on her arms. If she weren’t holding her legs so tightly she would rub them for warmth. ‘What kinds of things?’

‘I climbed Everest. Went white-water rafting down Nepal’s Karnali River. Completed six skydives. Jumped off the Kawarau Bridge. Pickled my liver too many times to be considered clever or advisable.’ His eyes closed before locking back on to hers. ‘I had this feeling inside me that if this was to be my last year on this earth then I needed to live it and experience every shot of adrenaline it had to offer, and while I was on this voyage of destructive discovery, I came to the conclusion that I could not meet my maker without knowing my mother was safe from her own destructive genes. If I was to survive to see twenty-nine I could no longer live in fear of her liberty being taken from her.’ Another twitch of his lips. ‘Even if she did deserve it.’

Even if she did deserve it...

A paraphrasing of the same words Rebecca had told herself earlier on the terrace when she’d realised she would never be able to use the Claflin Diamond shares as a weapon against him.

‘So you gave her the ultimatum,’ she said slowly. A pulse was beating loudly in her head, nausea roiling in her stomach.

‘I did. And she never forgave me. I expected that. I expected she would seek her vengeance. I crossed a line.’ His eyes flashed. ‘What I did not expect was that in her vengeance she would not only cross the line but firebomb it.’

‘Sure about that are you?’ She lifted her chin to look him square in the eye. ‘Because from what you’ve told me about her, you should have expected it.’

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