Page 12 of Innocent's Wedding Day with the Italian

That was all she’d ever seen of his naked form before. Odd snatches. That was all he’d ever allowed.

‘I’m the last person to ask how you felt.’

‘I never...’ He cut himself off and took a deep breath before saying, ‘It had become this huge weight inside me. My guilt. It was too late to tell you the truth. I couldn’t risk losing you.’

‘Couldn’t risk losing the shares, you mean,’ she muttered, bringing her knees to her chest and closing her arms around them, and wishing with all her might that she wasn’t aching for Enzo’s arms to be around her.

His gaze didn’t falter. ‘No. I stopped caring about the shares when I fell in l—’

‘Don’t you dare,’ she interrupted shakily, blinking back another surge of hot tears. ‘Just don’t. I’ve already told you. Any more talk about love or feelings and I will destroy the business by any means I can find.’

He contemplated her with an expression she couldn’t dissect. ‘I’ve hurt you very badly.’

She brushed away the one tear that had broken free. ‘You’ve ripped my heart out.’

He winced, jaw clenching.

Afraid he’d use this as an excuse for more worthless apologies, she swallowed before adding, ‘I don’t want to talk about my feelings any more than I want to hear more lies about yours. You’ve played me like a cat with a mouse for the sake of the shares and I will not let you play me again. If you have even an ounce of feelings for me then give me your word—no more talk of them or I swear I will do my best to destroyeverything.’

His stare penetrated her through the encroaching darkness. Eventually, he sighed. ‘You have my word.’

Throat suddenly choked, Rebecca nodded her acknowledgement.

‘But not because of your threats,’ he added, his gaze still fixed intently on her. ‘Even if I believed you would go ahead with it—and I do not underestimate that your pain and anger could lead you to do it—I give you my word because there is nothing I would not do to put right what I’ve done to you.’

The silence that followed this was profound, filled with an agonising tension that added weight to the pain in Rebecca’s chest. Knowing the emotions she sensed emanating from Enzo were nothing but a figment of her imagination only made it harder to endure. They had as much value as his words.

Such fine words. Such cheap words. Words that cost nothing to say but everything to hear.

‘So you confided the truth in your mother,’ she prompted quietly, bringing the conversation back on track.

Enzo stretched his neck back before lifting his head again to look at her. He grimaced. ‘A mistake.’

‘Not from my perspective.’

He pulled a face. ‘I should have remembered her contradictory morality. Alcohol loosens lips and that night I’d drunk more than I should.’

Unsure what he meant, Rebecca’s eyebrows pinched together.

His eyes continued to penetrate. ‘I have not been completely open with you about my mother or my relationship with her.’

‘You do surprise me.’

A tiny flash of amusement twitched at the corners of his lips at her sarcasm. ‘When I first pursued you, I wanted nothing to make you think I was less than perfect. Getting those shares was too important to me. I could not risk you having any doubts about me or the family you were marrying into.’

So his seeming perfectionhadbeen an act. Of course, she already knew this, but to hear it from his own mouth managed to make her feel both wretched and relieved. In many ways, Enzo’s perfection had awed her more than his wealth and lifestyle but to think everything he’d done for her, all the little things from filling a hot water bottle to help soothe her period cramps to giving her a head massage to soothe away the stress after a particularly difficult meeting with a parent whose child had been caught repeatedly hitting another child who refused to play with him, had all been so calculated... Oh, but that made her heart shrivel.

Clearing her throat that had closed up again, she flippantly said, ‘Is your mother some kind of criminal or something?’

‘Was. But not in the convicted sense. Let me put it this way—the jewellery she traded did not always have the cleanest of provenances.’

His answer was so unexpected that Rebecca felt the strangest compulsion to laugh.

As his mother had retired into being a lady of leisure before Enzo had tricked his way into her life, Rebecca knew little about Silvana’s business other than that she’d been a hugely successful international trader of jewels and that growing up in that world had inspired Silvana’s only child to make his own forays into the jewellery business. He’d freely admitted to her that his mother’s advice on the trade and the nuggets he’d picked up over the years had been invaluable to him when opening his first store. Any mistakes made had been his own.

What he’d failed to mention was that buying into her grandfather’s diamond business had been the biggest component in his success, a thought that quickly killed the bubbling laughter.

‘Are we talking stolen jewels?’ She watched his reaction carefully.

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