Secret Heirs And A Forever Family

Rafael just shook his head again, pacing the small waiting room like a panther in a cage.

‘How long has she been like this?’ Allegra asked quietly.

Rafael didn’t still his stride. ‘Since she was fifteen. A year after my father died.’

‘How…how did he die?’

He lifted his tormented gaze to hers, his mouth twisting. ‘You heard her.’

‘I don’t believe her.’

‘Don’t you?’

‘No,’ Allegra said, but her voice wavered. She didn’t believe Angelica, not really, but she knew something had happened, something that tormented Rafael, that made him the way he was, dark and distant, and she was afraid to find out what it was.

‘Well, you should,’ Rafael said, and turned away.

‘Why don’t you tell me your version?’ Allegra asked quietly. ‘What really happened?’

‘What really happened?’ He stopped, raking his hands through his hair and then dropping them in one abrupt movement. ‘My father killed himself. I was the last to see him.’

Uncertainty mingled with sorrowful relief rushed through her. ‘Then you didn’t kill him…’

‘I drove him to his suicide. And then I wasn’t able to stop him from pulling the trigger.’

‘Oh, Rafael…’

‘And my mother and my sister blamed me. They blamed me, and they should have blamed me, because…because I couldn’t…’

‘But it wasn’t—’

‘You know what I was saying to him before he killed himself?’ Rafael didn’t wait for her to reply, not that she had any idea what to say. ‘I was complaining about having to leave my private school, because there was no more money. My father had lost everything, everything, and I was whinging about school.’ He shook his head slowly.

‘Rafael, you were a boy…’

‘A stupid, selfish boy. And it broke my father. He left the room and locked himself in his study…’ He stopped, shaking his head again. ‘But there’s no need to talk of it. Angelica won’t see me again. You might as well return to the villa. I never should have brought you in your condition.’

‘I’m not an invalid.’ Her heart was aching, aching for this man she loved. And yet Rafael’s expression was stony, and when she reached out a hand he jerked away from her.

‘I’ll arrange your flight.’

‘What…what about you?’

Rafael shook his head. ‘I won’t come with you. I have business to see to.’

Allegra stared at him helplessly, knowing that Rafael was taking another step away from her, and this one far worse than any before. Yet what could she do?

‘Please don’t do this, Rafael,’ she whispered, but he was already getting out his phone.

It was better this way. Rafael continued to tell himself that as he arranged Allegra’s flight and saw her onto it. She looked at him with a face full of hurt and desperation, but he steeled himself against it.

She might want to make explanations, excuses, but he couldn’t. And he wasn’t about to open either of them to more pain. What it meant for their future, he didn’t know. But now he knew he needed distance. Space.

He stayed in Naples for another two days, trying to reason with Angelica, but she wouldn’t even talk to him. He called Allegra, and was reassured she had returned safely to the villa.

‘When are you coming back?’ she asked, her voice soft and sad.

‘I don’t know,’ Rafael answered tersely. ‘I have business in Milan and Rome.’

‘I miss you,’ Allegra said quietly, and he didn’t answer. But after the call he spent several long minutes staring out the window at the dark night.

‘I miss you too,’ he said into the empty silence of his hotel room.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

THE NEXT WEEK WAS ENDLESS. Allegra drifted around the villa, wishing she could make things better and feeling utterly powerless. She went over her conversation with Rafael again and again, considering all that he had and hadn’t said.

Did he really blame himself for his father’s suicide? If anyone, she thought with a bitter pang, he should blame her father, for ruining his. No wonder Rafael had been so driven to see justice served. His family had been utterly destroyed.

But they didn’t have to be destroyed. She couldn’t let this ruin them, and yet Rafael seemed hell bent on letting the past destroy any chance of their future.

She thought she understood now why he’d been so distant these last few weeks. Not because he didn’t care but because he cared too much…at least, that’s what she hoped. She hoped that it was fear of getting hurt that was keeping him away rather than brutal indifference.

Because that’s how she’d felt for so long. Loving someone was risky. Loving hurt, because people left you. People hurt you. And Rafael didn’t want to be hurt.

She hadn’t either. She’d lived her life for safety’s sake, never letting anyone get close, missing out because it was easier. Safer. But she didn’t want to do that now. Now she wanted to risk. Now she was willing to risk everything, because she knew she loved Rafael. And love risked. Love fought. Love, she hoped and prayed, won. But first Rafael had to come back.

Rafael unlocked the front door, every muscle aching with weariness. He’d spent the last week working as hard as he could, in a desperate and fruitless effort to forget. To erase the memory of Allegra, the sweetness of her, so he’d be strong enough to come back here and maintain his distance. Stay separate.

It was late and the villa was swathed in darkness, everyone hopefully in bed. Rafael intended to creep quietly to his bedroom and avoid Allegra altogether. He’d barely taken a step before he heard a creak on the stair and then he turned to see Allegra standing there.

Her hair was tumbled about her shoulders and she wore a silky white slip of a nightgown that left frustratingly little to the imagination. Already desire was surging through him, and he wondered if he could make this simple. If he could make it about sex.

Then she took a step forward, one pale, slender hand held out in appeal. ‘Rafael,’ she said softly, and he tensed because there was no supplication in her voice. No accusation. There was just warmth. Acceptance. He turned away.

‘I thought you’d be asleep.’

‘I’ve been waiting for you.’

‘You didn’t even know I was coming back tonight.’

‘I know.’ She let out a soft, sad laugh. ‘I’ve been waiting since you left, Rafael. A whole week.’

His chest felt tight and he tried to shake the feeling off. ‘You shouldn’t have.’

‘Why not? Why are you pushing me away?’

‘Why aren’t you pushing me away?’ The words burst out of him, revealing, and yet he couldn’t keep himself from it. He turned to her, his voice ragged, his gaze burning. ‘Why are you still here?’

She looked hurt, shocked. ‘Do you want me to leave?’

‘No.’ He scrubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. Something felt broken deep inside him and he couldn’t articulate what it was, even to himself. ‘I’m getting a drink.’

He stalked into the lounge, and after a taut moment Allegra followed him. Rafael poured himself a large measure of whisky from the crystal decanter and drank it down in one healthy swallow. He could feel Allegra’s presence behind him. He could feel her confusion and hurt. ‘You should go back to bed.’

He heard a sound, something he couldn’t quite identify. She was moving or opening something, and he didn’t know what it was. He stayed with his back to her, willing her to leave him alone even as a deeper part of him ached for her to stay.

Then he heard the first sorrowful note hover in the room, steal into his soul, and shocked blazed through him. She was playing the cello.

He turned slowly, his glass dangling from his slack fingertips as he took in the sight of Allegra, her hair tumbling about her shoulders in a fiery halo, her expression serious and intent as she drew the bow across the strings of the cello and another sonorous note flowed through the room.

‘But…’ His voice was hoarse, breaking the stillness. ‘You said you didn’t play. Hadn’t played for ten years.’

Her gaze lifted and something deep in him trembled at the expression in her eyes, silvery and huge, clear and full of sadness. Full of love.

‘I haven’t. But I want to play for you, Rafael. Music…’ She paused, her voice choking. ‘Music has been the greatest comfort to me. And I don’t know of any other way to comfort you.’

She bent her head again and began to play once more, the notes sure and true and piercingly beautiful.

Rafael’s throat thickened with emotion and he sank into the sofa as the music washed over him, note after perfect note, the music haunting and powerful, breaking him. He was broken inside, nothing but jagged pieces, his heart a handful of splinters. He let out a sound, a choking cry that would have shamed him if he hadn’t felt so overwhelmed.

Allegra kept playing, each note touching his soul, undoing him. He let out another choked sound, and then Allegra was kneeling there in front of him, her arms around him, her face pressed against his chest as she whispered words that felt like sweet, sweet arrows, piercing the armour he’d surrounded himself with for so long.

‘I love you, Rafael. I love you. Nothing matters to me but that. But you. Please believe me. Please.’

He let out a groan, defenceless against the onslaught of her heartfelt words. ‘How can you love me…?’ The words spilled from him, heedless.

‘How can I not?’ She pressed her lips against her jaw. ‘I fell in love with you the night of my father’s funeral.’

‘I was only trying to seduce you…’

‘And I wanted to be seduced. I saw glimpses then of the man you really are, the man you want to be. Don’t turn away from me now, simply because you’re afraid.’ She laid her hand against his jaw, her skin silky and cool. ‘Because that is why you’ve been keeping your distance, isn’t it, these last few weeks, and even more so since we went to Naples? Because you’re afraid of being hurt.’

He closed his eyes, not wanting to admit it, knowing it was true. He’d tried to separate his body from his heart but it hadn’t worked. Allegra affected him in every way, right down to his core. And yet still he found himself saying, ‘I didn’t think anyone would love me. That anyone could love me…after my father…’ He shook his head, his eyes closed, and Allegra kissed him again, her lips soft against his jaw. ‘How could he do that? How could he walk away from me and kill himself? I begged him, Allegra. Pleaded with him with everything I had, pounded on the door, and still he did it, knowing the cost of it on me, on my mother and sister. How could he do that?’

The question rang out, the cry of a hurt child. It had festered inside him for twenty years, until his heart was nothing but scar tissue, barely healed over the old, old wound. And Allegra, and her love, had broken it all—him—open.

‘I asked you something similar,’ she whispered, her lips moving against his cheek. ‘Do you remember? And you told me it wasn’t my fault. Now I say the same thing to you, only even more so. Your father was a desperate man, Rafael, driven to terrible things because—because of my father. It wasn’t your fault, just as my father leaving wasn’t mine. Let’s leave the past behind us and make our own future, for the sake of our child and for the sake of us.’

‘But it was my fault,’ Rafael groaned, his voice breaking on the word. ‘Not his death, perhaps, but my mother…my sister…the choices they made, the fact that they felt compelled to make them. That they didn’t trust me to provide for them, to see us through the darkness and the mess. That was my fault. I was the man of the family, I was in charge, and I failed utterly. I can’t forgive myself for that. How can anyone else?’

Allegra squeezed Rafael’s hands, holding on tight, wanting to imbue him with her strength, her love, because she felt as if everything teetered on this moment. Whether he would pull away for good or if the walls would finally come down for ever.

She recognised the core of honour and compassion that he’d kept hidden for so long, realised now that his withdrawal from her had not been from indifference but because he’d cared too much.

She knew that he now suffered from both guilt and hurt—just as she did, with her father’s abandonment. Because when you were hurting, you assumed it was something in you that drove a person away. Something bad or wrong. And she would give anything now to show Rafael that there wasn’t.

Slowly she leaned forward, still holding his hands, her bump pressing against him as she brushed her lips across his in a kiss of acceptance and healing. A kiss where she offered her whole self, there for the taking.

His body was still, his lips slack under hers, and her heart trembled at the terrible thought of his rejection, but then he opened his mouth and made the kiss his own, one hand coming to rest on the back of her head, and he took what she offered and gave even more back.

Moments later they broke apart and with a shuddering breath Rafael leaned his forehead against hers. ‘When my father died,’ he murmured, his breath fanning her face, ‘I felt like my world had shattered…not just because we lost everything but because I’d lost him. Because he’d been driven to such despair, and I couldn’t stop it. Couldn’t stop him.’

‘I’m so sorry, Rafael…’

‘I felt powerless and out of control. And I never wanted to feel like that again. But then I cruelly inflicted that pain on another family. I killed your father too, Allegra.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘If what Caterina said was true…then your father died of a heart attack when he heard the news about me taking over the company. I killed him—’

‘No, you didn’t,’ Allegra said quietly. ‘You can’t know exactly what happened, and in any case you can’t blame yourself for my father’s death along with everyone in your family.’

His eyebrows rose in disbelief. ‘You absolve me?’

‘I’m not the one to do that, Rafael. You don’t need my forgiveness.’

‘Whose then?’ The question was genuine, yearning.

‘Your own,’ Allegra said softly. ‘Rid yourself of these ghosts and demons. Your father chose to kill himself—there was nothing you could have done. Despair leads people to feel there’s no way out, no hope. That was not your fault.’ He opened his mouth to protest but she continued, her voice rising in strength and conviction. ‘And your mother—that was her choice too. Perhaps she didn’t want to live without her husband. It’s not a reflection on you—’

‘It is—’

‘No. Maybe she should have wanted to live for her children, but some people are not strong enough. Don’t blame her, Rafael, but don’t blame yourself either. For your mother’s death or your sister’s addiction.’

‘And your father?’ Rafael asked after an endless moment of silence. ‘Don’t you…aren’t you angry for what I did?’

Was she? ‘I understand why you wanted to take over his business,’ she said slowly. ‘And I wish I understood more fully what happened back then. Did my father blame yours on purpose, knowing he was innocent? Who else could have embezzled the money?’

Rafael stiffened. ‘It wasn’t my father.’

‘I know,’ Allegra soothed. ‘And maybe we’ll never know who was truly responsible. But let’s put it behind us, Rafael. For ever.’

He stared at her, and Allegra held her breath, waiting, everything in her aching. She’d given him everything. Her love, her heart, her body, her soul, her music. Everything. And she still didn’t know what he was going to do with it.

‘I want to try,’ Rafael said at last, and Allegra nodded as she blinked back tears.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Let’s try.’

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

THE REALISATION WAS like a thunderclap, startling her awake. Allegra stiffened in bed, her heartbeat coming in thuds. Next to her Rafael slept on. They’d gone to bed together, holding hands, silent and accepting. It felt like a new start, fresh and fragile. Allegra hoped it would endure. That they would.

And then, in the midst of sleep, she’d had that sudden thought slam into her, leaving her breathless and reeling. Her mother. Her mother had embezzled that money. It made such horrible sense. Someone close to her father had taken the money; that same person had pointed the finger at Rafael’s father. And it made her parents’ sudden divorce understandable too, along with the lack of alimony, her father’s concern for his own reputation. But where had the money gone?

Although Jennifer had always claimed poverty, after the divorce they hadn’t been exactly destitute. It wasn’t as if they’d been out on the streets. Looking at the situation now, a grown woman, Allegra doubted that a few pieces of jewellery could have really kept them afloat. Even the embezzled money wouldn’t have lasted long in Jennifer’s hands—the woman was a spending machine—but it would have tided them over for a while…until she’d found another man to fund her lifestyle. It seemed, all of a sudden, entirely, horribly possible.

If it was true…what would it mean for her mother—but far more importantly, for her and Rafael?

Allegra slipped from the bed, throwing on a dressing gown before reaching for her laptop. She typed in the Internet search box and within seconds she had the dates of both Marco Vitali’s suicide and her parents’ divorce. Weeks apart. Weeks.

Allegra pushed the laptop away as she stared unseeingly into the distance, her mind racing. If her mother had taken the money…if her father had discovered it…if he’d divorced her so abruptly because of that, wanting to separate himself from his wife but unwilling for his reputation to suffer…

There was only one way to find out. One way to truly know. She needed to talk to her mother. Allegra toyed with the idea of a phone call but she knew she wouldn’t be able to get the truth over a telephone line. She needed to see her mother face to face, and see the truth, or lack of it, in her eyes. She needed to know. Because perhaps then she and Rafael could finally put the past to rest and move on as a family. Perhaps then he could find the closure he so desperately needed.

She glanced back at him, his face relaxed in sleep, his dark lashes feathering his olive-toned cheeks. He looked beautiful, like something out of a Renaissance painting, and he made her heart ache with love. But would he countenance a trip to America? What would his reaction to the possibility of her mother’s crime be?

As if he could sense her thoughts Rafael opened her eyes. He blinked away the dazed confusion of sleep, his amber gaze arrowing in on her. ‘Allegra? Is something wrong?’

She licked dry lips, her heart starting to pound. What if he was angry? What if he blamed her somehow? Despite everything they’d said and shared, she still didn’t know if Rafael actually loved her. He hadn’t said the words. He’d fought against the feeling, even last night, everything in him resisting, but she’d pressed and pushed and tried so hard…

‘Allegra?’ Rafael said again, his tone sharpening.

‘I think I know who embezzled the money. Back then.’

‘What?’ Rafael sat up in bed, his eyes narrowed as he raked a hand through his hair. ‘How could you possibly know that?’ He almost sounded suspicious. Of her.

Allegra took a deep breath. She felt nervous, even afraid. Why was she risking this—them—so soon? Before she even knew the truth or strength of Rafael’s feelings? And yet, with this new truth lodged inside her like a stone, how could she not?

‘It came to me last night.’ She gulped, Rafael’s stare still hard and unrelenting. ‘I think… I think it was my mother.’

‘Your mother?’

‘It makes sense, in an awful way. She had some money, but she didn’t get it from my father. And the divorce was so sudden, so abrupt…’

Rafael swung his legs out of bed, sitting so his back was to her, his hands raked through his hair.

‘This doesn’t have to change anything between us,’ Allegra said quietly. ‘Does it?’

‘There’s no proof, is there?’ Rafael’s voice was flat, toneless. ‘We could never prove it.’

‘I… I don’t know. I thought, perhaps, we could go to New York. Confront her. Maybe…maybe then you’d feel…’ She trailed off, uncertain and miserable. Why had she begun this wretched conversation? Yet she couldn’t have kept such an awful suspicion, a huge secret, to herself. She didn’t want there to be secrets or lies between them, ever.

‘You can’t go to New York in your state.’

‘Rafael, I’m barely into the third trimester. And I want to be there. Let’s do this together. Even if there’s no proof, it would be good to know, wouldn’t it? Maybe then…maybe then you could finally let the past go.’

‘While your mother walks free?’

Allegra blinked at the savage note in his voice. ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered, because she was, even if none of it was her fault. Still everything felt complicated and messy, painful.

‘I’ll book the tickets,’ Rafael said, and then he rose from the bed and walked out of the room.

It felt like too much, on top of everything that had happened last night. Allegra’s mother. She’d as good as signed the death warrant on his family. He didn’t blame Allegra, knew she had nothing to do with it, and yet…

It felt bitter, almost too much to bear.

Rafael got ready in taut silence, booking the tickets, packing clothes, telling himself he’d feel better when he knew.

Salvatore drove them to Palermo; Allegra looked tired and miserable, huddled on one side of the limo, one hand resting on her bump. Guilt flashed through him, an acidic rush. She’d given him so much last night. She’d told him she loved him. And he’d fought her every step of the way, couldn’t bear the thought of being that vulnerable. That exposed.

And yet he’d shown her the worst of him and she still hadn’t walked away. Even now, when he was practically ignoring him, Allegra was there, for the duration, determined to stay by his side, to see this through.

And maybe she needed this as much as he did. If her mother was guilty, it had affected Allegra’s life as much as his. They’d both been ensnared by the past—and perhaps the truth could now set them both free.

The thought was radical, shifting truths inside him, tilting the world so his perspective was sharper, clearer.

Rafael reached over and took Allegra’s hand; surprise flickered across her face as he laced his fingers through hers. He didn’t speak; he didn’t think he had the words. But he hoped she knew what he was trying to say.

The city was resplendent with autumn colour as they took a cab from the airport to Allegra’s mother’s apartment in the less fashionable end of Park Avenue, skirting Harlem. Allegra had slept for much of the flight, taking comfort from Rafael’s silent support. He hadn’t said much, but the mood had shifted between them, the tension focused outward rather than inside. Allegra rested her hand on his shoulder as she dozed and prayed that this would be what she wanted it too—closure. Peace.

Jennifer’s expression was almost comical in its shock as she took in the sight of both of them standing in the doorway of her apartment. Her hand fluttered towards her throat and her face paled. ‘Allegra…and you must be Vitali.’

‘Rafael Vitali,’ Rafael answered in a low, gravelly voice. ‘Marco’s son.’

‘I never met him.’ Jennifer’s expression had cleared, hardened. She was, Allegra realised with a sinking feeling, going to put up a front.