Page 19 of The Sicilian’s Deal For 'I Do'

‘I don’t want to fight with you,’ he said, simply, frowning because it was absolutely true. ‘That’s not why I brought you here. The past is, as far as I am concerned, in the past.’

She shook her head. ‘But we share a past, with very different opinions on it. That’s important.’

‘Not to me,’ he said, pulling her to him. ‘You made a mistake. I don’t care any longer. I didn’t marry you. I didn’t buy the company. No harm was done. We have both moved on. Let’s not discuss it again.’

She opened her mouth but he didn’t want to hear it. It suddenly became very important to Luca that Mia not use those stunning lips to issue any more lies, and definitely no more defences of her parents. That was what bothered him most of all. That she’d been embroiled in the deception, and that she was attempting to excuse it now. Or worse, to still treat him like a fool, by refusing to admit the truth.

‘But I haven’t moved on,’ she said, quietly. ‘Not really, and you can’t say that no harm was done, because it was. That day, when you didn’t show up...’

He refused to react, but how could he not feel? Just a hint of compunction at that decision now, when faced with the obvious impact it had had on Mia?

Her eyes narrowed, tears still falling. ‘When did you decide you wouldn’t buy the company?’

His eyes roamed her face. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘When?’ She lifted a hand to his chest, imploring him to answer.

‘I had just discovered the truth the last time I saw you. Earlier that day.’

‘Truth,’ she spat, then her eyes swept shut, shielding her thoughts and stories from him. ‘You knew even then that you wouldn’t marry me, didn’t you?’

He didn’t answer.

She blinked up at him, anguish in her features. ‘You came to our house that night knowing you weren’t going to go through with it?’

‘I gave your father a chance to prove me wrong. He couldn’t.’

She shook her head, frowning, so it was obvious to Luca that she didn’t really accept the premise of that statement. ‘And in the six days between that night and our wedding day, it didn’t occur to you to tell me?’

He was very still. The world seemed strange.

At the time, he’d taken pleasure in simply walking away. They’d been a single team of people who’d conspired to trick him, to make a fool of Luca. Why give them the courtesy of civility? Luca had achieved what he’d achieved in life precisely by being ruthless in his approach to all things. Fair, ethical, but once wronged, he showed no mercy. That approach had served him well.

But now, standing opposite Mia, close to her, being forced to relive that day through her eyes, he had the very unpleasant experience of realising he’d taken it too far. It was one thing to defend your interests, another to wilfully harm another person.

And he had harmed Mia.

But didn’t she deserve it? a voice in the back of his mind argued. Didn’t her decision to get involved in the scam sale of the business negate any right to his compassion?

Evidently not, because he felt it now in abundance.

‘I didn’t think you would be hurt.’

More tears fell.

‘I presumed your father must have told you about the business, that you would likely know what was coming.’

She shook her head. ‘Did you see the photos of me?’

‘Yes.’ He’d been in the air at the time, flying from New York to San Francisco. His brother had emailed him.

‘I was in a wedding dress. Waiting for you. And you just...you didn’t arrive. You’d left the country the night before without so much as a goodbye text. I find it impossible to believe you just didn’t think how your departure would affect me.’ She sucked in a shaking breath. ‘Youwantedto hurt me. You wanted to inflict the most pain possible for whatever imagined wrong you felt had been done against you.’ She blinked up at him, and those eyes stared into his, so layered with feeling that he took a step back, as though she’d pushed him again.

‘I was very angry, Mia. You have to understand what my business means to me. I built this from scratch. I worked very hard to create my fortune and my success—it’s more than money, it’s more than that. Your parents wanted to take it all away from me—you did, too.’

‘Tell me why you say that,’ she pleaded. ‘As far as I know, my father simply wants to sell the business because he is looking to retire. And he wants me to be a part of that, because I’m a Marini. At least, I am on paper,’ she added with a shaking voice.

‘You work in the business,’ he said, needing to cling to what he had, for a year, considered to be the truth. Her working deep in the trenches of Marini Enterprises was further evidence of her involvement in the whole sordid scheme.

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