An Inheritance of Shame

She swallowed it all down, those words and worse ones, broken, wounded words about a grief so very deep and raw that he knew nothing about. She couldn’t tell him tonight.

Maybe she wouldn’t ever tell him. Did he really need to know? Wouldn’t it be better to simply move on, or at least to let him think she had moved on?

‘Lucia?’ Angelo said, and it was a question although what he was asking she didn’t know. What do you want? Why are you still here?

‘I’m going,’ she said, and then she forced herself to walk out of the suite without looking back.

CHAPTER TWO

ANGELO FINGERED THE typewritten list of the hotel’s employees that lay on his desk. Matteo’s desk, because there had been no time to change anything since signing the papers on the hotel this morning. He’d gone directly from the meeting of unhappy shareholders to here, sweeping into his rival’s office and claiming it as his own.

His mouth twisted as he glanced at the tabloid headline he’d left up on his laptop. Not that he actually read those rags, but this one blazed bad news about the Correttis. Alessandro Corretti was meant to have wed Alessia Battaglia, but she’d run off with his cousin Matteo at the very last second. Angelo smiled grimly. The chaos that had ensued was devastating for his half-brothers and cousins, but good news for him.

With Matteo out of the way and the other Correttis scrambling to make sense of the chaos, he could saunter in and take another slice of the Corretti pie, starting with the docklands regeneration. Antonio Battaglia, the Minister of Trade and Housing as well as Alessia’s father, would be all too willing to consider his bid, since he was already funding a housing project in the area. Angelo had made initial overtures, and planned to cement the deal this week.

He glanced back at the list of employees. Anturri, Lucia was the first name under the housekeeping section. As soon as he’d arrived back at the hotel he’d pulled up the employee files and seen that Lucia had been working here for seven years, the entire length of time since he’d last seen her.

Why did that hurt?

No, it didn’t hurt. Annoyed him, perhaps. From his bed to making the Correttis’. Had she had a moment’s pause, a second’s worth of regret, before she took a job working for the family he hated, the family who had rejected him even as his association with them had defined and nearly destroyed his life?

Or had she just not cared?

Yet Lucia had always cared. She’d always been there when they were children, waiting for him to come home, ready to bathe his cuts or just make him smile with a stupid story or joke. More often than not he’d pushed her away, too angry to accept her offers of friendship. Mi cucciola, he’d called her. My puppy. An endearment but also a barb because she had been like a puppy, dogging his heels, pleading for a pat on the head. Sometimes he’d given it, sometimes he’d ignored her and sometimes he’d sent her away.

Yet still she’d come back, her heart in her eyes just like it had been the night he’d shown up at her door, too numb to feel anything except the sudden, desperate passion she’d awoken in him when she’d taken him in her arms.

Guilt needled him again as he thought of that night, how he’d slipped from her bed before dawn without a single word of farewell. He should have said goodbye, at least. Considering their history, their shared childhood, she’d deserved that much. Even if it didn’t seem like it mattered to her any more. It mattered, annoyingly, to him.

He stood up, pacing the spacious confines of the office with his usual restlessness. He should be feeling victorious now, savagely satisfied, but he only felt uneasy, restless, the remnants of his migraine mocking him.

He’d spent another sleepless night battling memories as well as his migraine. For seven years he’d schooled himself not to think of that night, to act as if it hadn’t happened. Yet last night in the throes of pain he’d been weak, and he’d remembered.

Remembered the sweet slide of her lips against his, the way she’d drawn him to herself, curling around him, accepting him in a way he’d never been before or since. How he’d felt tears spring to his eyes when he’d joined his body with hers, how absolutely right and whole that moment had felt.

Idiotic. He was not a romantic, and a single encounter—poignant as it may have been—didn’t mean anything. It obviously hadn’t meant anything to Lucia, who had seemed completely unmoved by his appearance last night. And if Lucia, who had hero-worshipped him as a child, could be indifferent and even cold towards him now, than surely he could act the same. Feel the same.

In any case he had too many other things to accomplish to waste even a second on Lucia Anturri or what had happened between them. Nothing would happen between them now. He’d come back to Sicily for one purpose only: to ruin the Correttis. To finally have his revenge.

Determinedly Angelo pulled the phone towards him. It was time to call Antonio Battaglia, and start carving up that Corretti pie.

Lucia felt the throb in her temples and wondered if headaches could be contagious. She’d had one since she’d left Angelo in the penthouse suite last night, and spent a sleepless night trying not to remember their one night together.

Yet far worse than the pain in her head was the ache seeing Angelo had opened up in her heart. No tablet or pill would help that. Swallowing hard, she pushed the trolley of fresh linens and cleaning supplies down the corridor. She had to finish all the third-floor rooms by lunchtime. She had to forget about Angelo.

How can you forget him when you haven’t told him?

Last night, she knew, hadn’t been the right time. She’d even half convinced herself that he need never know the consequence of their one night together. What point was there, really, in raking up the past? It wouldn’t change things. It wouldn’t change him.

And yet Lucia knew if the positions had been somehow reversed she would want to know. Yet could she really assume that Angelo would feel the same? And if she did tell him, and he shrugged it off as irrelevant, wouldn’t that break her heart all over again? Just one brief conversation with him last night and already she felt it starting to splinter.

She was almost finished the third floor, her head and heart both aching, when she heard the muffled sobs coming from the supply room at the end of the hall. Frowning, Lucia pushed open the door and her heart twisted at the sight inside the little room stacked with towels and industrial-size bottles of cleaner.

‘Maria.’

Maria Dibona, another chambermaid, looked up at her with tear-streaked eyes. ‘Scusi, scusi,’ she said, wiping at her eyes. Lucia reached for a box of tissues used to supply the hotel bathrooms and handed her one. ‘Is it Stefano?’

Maria nodded. Lucia knew her son had left Sicily for a life in Naples, and his sudden defection had broken his mother’s heart.

‘I’m sorry, Maria.’ She put her arm around the older woman. ‘Have you been in touch?’

‘He hasn’t even called.’ Maria pressed the tissue to her eyes. ‘How is a mother to live, not knowing if her son is healthy or not? Alive or not?’

‘He will call,’ Lucia murmured. ‘He loves you, you know. Even if he doesn’t always show it.’ She meant the words for Maria, yet she felt their mocking echo in herself. Hadn’t she told herself the same thing after Angelo had left? Hadn’t she tried to convince herself that he would call or write, reach her, even as the heaviness in her heart told her otherwise?

When she’d rolled over and seen the smooth expanse of empty sheet next to her she’d known Angelo wasn’t coming back. Wasn’t writing, calling or keeping in touch in any way…no matter how desperately she tried to believe otherwise.

Maria blew her nose. ‘He was such a good boy. Why did he have to leave?’

Lucia just shook her head and squeezed the woman’s shoulders. She had no answers, no real comfort to give besides her own understanding and sympathy. She’d lived too long and experienced too much heartache to offer anyone pat answers. There were none.

She heard the sound of someone striding down the hall, someone walking with purpose and determination. Instinctively she stiffened, and then shock iced through as an all too familiar face appeared around the door of the little supply cupboard.

‘Lucia.’

She straightened and Maria lurched upright, dabbing her face frantically. ‘Scusi, scusi, Signor Corretti…’

Angelo waved a hand in quick dismissal of the other woman. His grey-green eyes blazed into Lucia’s. ‘I need to speak with you.’

‘Very well.’ Lucia hid her trembling hands in her apron. She hadn’t expected to see him again so soon, or even at all. She had no idea what he intended to say, but she knew she wasn’t ready for the conversation.

‘In my office.’ Angelo turned away, and Lucia glanced back at Maria, whose eyes had rounded in surprise. Maria was no gossip, but Lucia knew the news would still spread. Angelo Corretti had summoned her to his office for a private conversation. All the old memories and rumours would be raked up.

Closing her eyes briefly, she followed Angelo out into the corridor. They didn’t speak as they stepped into a lift that took them to the second-to-top floor that housed the hotel’s corporate offices, yet Lucia was all too achingly aware of the man next to her, the suppressed tension in every taut line of his lean body, the anger apparent in the tightness of his square jaw. She tried not to look at him, because if she looked at him she’d drink him in and she knew her need and want would be visible in her eyes, all too obvious to him.

Still. Still she felt that welling up of longing for him, a hopeless yearning that had her almost swaying towards him. It infuriated her, that her body and even her heart could want a man who had so little regard for her. At least her mind was strong. She straightened, lifted her chin. Angelo would never know how much he’d hurt her.

The lift doors pinged open and Lucia felt her cheeks warm as Angelo strode past a receptionist whose jaw dropped when she saw Lucia in her standard grey maid’s uniform, complete with frilly apron and ridiculous cap, follow him into his office like a scolded schoolgirl…or a summoned mistress.

No, she wouldn’t think like that. Couldn’t, even if everyone else would. Again.

Angelo strode towards the floor-to-ceiling windows with a view of Palermo’s harbour, one hand braced against the glass, his back to her. Lucia waited, her heart pounding even as her hungry gaze swept over him, the long, muscular stretch of back, the narrow hips, the powerful legs. The elegant, expensive suit that reminded her just how out of her league he was now.

Angelo swung around suddenly to face her, his eyes narrowed. ‘Why did you start working at this hotel?’

Lucia blinked. ‘Because I needed a job.’

‘Surely you could have found a suitable position somewhere else.’

She drew herself up even though she felt like curling into a protective ball, hiding her hurts. How could he be angry about her job? ‘Are you still angry that I broke my promise, Angelo?’ she asked, an edge to her voice. ‘That seems rather hypocritical.’

‘I didn’t make any promises,’ he said flatly, and she drew in one short, sharp breath. Felt the truth of his words cut her as if he were wielding a sword.

‘I know that.’

‘So why did you?’

She gritted her teeth, forced herself to sound calm. Strong. ‘I told you, I needed a job. Did you really call me up here to ask me that—’

‘Did you even think of that promise you made, Lucia?’ he cut her off harshly. His hands clenched into fists at his sides. ‘Did you think of me?’

Every day. She drew a painful breath into her lungs. ‘Did you think of me, Angelo?’ she asked quietly, knowingly, and he swung away again, his silence answer enough.

Lucia waited, her hands clenched in the folds of her apron. A minute ticked by in taut silence, and then another, and Angelo still didn’t speak.

‘Who was that woman you were with?’ he asked suddenly, and she blinked in surprise.

‘Her name is Maria Dibona. She works here, with me.’

‘I gathered that.’ Angelo turned towards her, but she couldn’t tell anything from his face besides the fact that he still seemed angry. But then Angelo had always seemed angry, except perhaps for when he’d been sad. And the few times he’d made her laugh, when they were children…precious memories she kept locked away, deep inside. Memories she couldn’t let herself think about now. ‘Why was she crying?’ he asked, and she shrugged.

‘Her son has left suddenly for Naples. She misses him.’

Angelo said nothing for a moment, but his eyes blazed into hers and his mouth twisted downwards. ‘And you were comforting her?’

Where was this going? ‘Trying to. Sometimes there’s very little comfort to be had.’

He didn’t answer, but she saw a flash of recognition in his eyes and she knew he thought she’d been talking about them. What little them there was. And had she? Perhaps. Perhaps she wasn’t above such a sly implication.

‘You still live in Caltarione,’ he said suddenly, a statement, and she raised her eyebrows.

‘Obviously you must know that, since you’ve looked at my employee file. What is this about, Angelo? Why have you brought me up here?’

She saw, to her surprise, a faint flush touch his cheekbones. He glanced down at some papers on his desk. ‘We were friends once, weren’t we?’

Once, not now. His meaning was clear. ‘As children, yes,’ she said flatly.

‘I want to know what has happened to you in these past years.’

‘Oh, really? Funny, then, that you never called or wrote. Not a postcard or email or anything. If you wanted to catch up on old times, Angelo, I’m sure you could have found a way other than summoning me to your office like some scolded schoolgirl.’ His blush deepened, and his eyes glittered. ‘I didn’t—’

‘Didn’t think of me once in the past seven years while you were away becoming a billionaire? How surprising. And yet you’re angry because I took a job working for the Correttis.’ She shook her head. ‘You may not have made any promises, but you’re still a hypocrite.’

‘You’re angry with me,’ he said, and she forced herself to laugh, the sound hard and humourless.

‘Angry? That takes too much effort. I was angry, yes, and I’m annoyed you think you can order me around now. But if you think I’m hurt because you stole from my bed—’ She stopped suddenly, her breath catching in her chest, and swallowed hard. She knew she couldn’t continue, couldn’t maintain the charade that what had happened seven years ago hadn’t utterly broken her.

So she simply stared, her chin tilted at a determinedly haughty angle, everything in her willing Angelo to believe that she didn’t care about him. That he hadn’t hurt her. Let him believe she was only angry; at least it hid the agony of grief she couldn’t bear to have exposed.

‘I’m sorry, Lucia,’ Angelo said abruptly, and Lucia could only stare. He didn’t sound sorry.

‘For what?’ she asked after a taut moment when neither of them spoke.

‘For…’ He paused, a muscle flickering in his jaw, his eyes shadowed with some dark emotion. ‘For leaving you like that.’ Lucia let out a shuddering breath. She’d never expected an apology, even one so grudgingly given. She didn’t speak. Angelo stared.

‘Aren’t you going to say anything?’ he finally demanded.

‘What do you want me to say?’

‘You could accept my apology, to start.’

‘Why should I?’

Angelo’s jaw dropped, which would have made her laugh save for the leaden weight of her heart. ‘What?’

‘Just because you’ve finally deigned to say sorry doesn’t make me ready to accept it.’ Or act like all that was needed was a carelessly given, barely meant apology. She wanted more than that. She deserved more than that.

Except, of course, Angelo had nothing more to give. And whether or not he said sorry for the past made no real difference to either of their futures. Why had he brought her up here? Looking at him now, his face taut with annoyance or maybe even anger, Lucia thought she could hazard a guess.

She was no more than an item to be ticked off on his to-do list. Come back to Sicily, buy a hotel, deal with Lucia. Get any messy emotional business out of the way so he could move on to more important things. She supposed she should be grateful she’d warranted any consideration at all.

She took a deep breath. ‘So you’ve said it, Angelo, you’ve ticked me off your list, and you can go on happily now with your big business deals and fancy living. And I can get back to work.’

And stop acting out this charade that she didn’t care, that she’d only been angry or even annoyed. She couldn’t understand how Angelo could believe it, yet he obviously did, for he was annoyed too, by her stubbornness. He still had no idea how much he’d hurt her.

‘It’s been seven years, Lucia,’ he said, an edge to his voice, and she met his gaze as evenly as she could.

‘Exactly.’

‘I haven’t even been in Sicily since that night.’

‘Like I said before, there’s the phone. Email. We live in the twenty-first century, Angelo. If you’d wanted to be in touch, I think you just might have found a way.’ He bunched his jaw and she shook her head. ‘Don’t make excuses. I don’t need them. I know that one night was exactly that to you—one night. I’m not delusional.’ Not any more.

‘So you didn’t even expect me to call? Or write?’

‘No, I didn’t.’ Even though part of her had stubbornly, stupidly hoped. ‘But expecting and wanting are two different things.’

He stared at her for a long, hard moment. ‘What did you want?’ he asked quietly, and Lucia didn’t answer. She would not articulate all the things she had wanted, had hoped for despite the odds, the obviousness of Angelo’s abandonment. She would not give Angelo the satisfaction of knowing, and so she lifted one shoulder in something like a shrug. ‘A goodbye would have been something.’

‘That’s all? A farewell?’

‘I said it would have been something.’ She tore her gaze from his, forced all that emotion down so it caught in her chest, a pressure so intense it felt like all her breath was being sucked from her body. ‘It’s irrelevant anyway,’ she continued, each word so very painful to say. ‘If you brought me up here to say sorry, then you’ve said it. Thank you for that much, at least.’

‘But you don’t accept my apology,’ Angelo observed. His gaze swept her from head to foot like a laser, searching her, revealing her.

She closed her eyes briefly, tried to summon strength. ‘Does it really matter?’

His gaze narrowed, his lips compressed. ‘Why do you ask that?’

‘Because you’ve managed to go seven years without saying sorry or speaking to me at all, Angelo. How can I help but think my opinions—my feelings—matter very little to you?’ He frowned and she shook her head. ‘I’m not accusing you. I’m not angry about it any more.’

‘You still seem angry.’

Seem, Lucia thought, being the operative word. If only it was as simple as that; if only she felt angry that he’d been so thoughtless as to leave her bed without a word. If only she felt clean, strong anger instead of this endless ache of grief. ‘I suppose seeing you again has brought it back, a bit, that’s all,’ she finally said. She couldn’t meet his gaze. ‘Why do you care anyway?’

‘I suppose…the same.’ Angelo sounded guarded. ‘Seeing you again has made me…want to make amends.’

Make amends? As if a two-word reluctant redress made up for years of emptiness, heartache, agony? Did he really think that was an equal exchange?

But he didn’t know. He couldn’t know how much she’d endured, the gossip and shame, the loss and heartbreak. He had no idea of the hell she’d been through, and she wouldn’t weaken and shame herself by telling him now.

‘Well, then,’ she said, and her voice sounded flat, lifeless. ‘I suppose that’s all there is to say.’

Angelo nodded, the movement no more than a terse jerk of his head. ‘I suppose so.’

She made herself look at him then, for surely this was goodbye. The goodbye they’d never had. They lived in different worlds now; she was a maid, he was a billionaire. And while she cherished the memory of who he’d once been, she knew she didn’t even recognise this haughty man with his hostile gaze and designer suit. He was so different from the tousle-haired boy with the sad eyes and the sudden smile, the boy who had hated her to see him vulnerable and yet had sought her out in the sweetest, most unexpected moments. What had happened to that boy?

Staring at Angelo’s hard countenance, Lucia knew he was long gone. And the unyielding man in front of her was no more than a wealthy stranger. She felt a sudden sweep of sorrow at the thought, too overwhelming to ignore, and she closed her eyes. She missed that boy. She missed the girl she’d been with him, full of irrepressible hope and happiness. The girl and boy they’d been were gone now, changed forever by circumstance and suffering.

She opened her eyes to see Angelo staring at her, a crease between his brows, a frown compressing his mouth. He had a beautiful mouth, full, sculpted lips that had felt so amazingly soft against hers. Ridiculous that she would recall the feel of them now.

‘So may I go?’ she asked when the silence between them had stretched on for several minutes. ‘Or is there anything else you’d like to say? You might as well say it now, because if you summon me to your office twice the gossip will really start flying.’

Angelo’s frown deepened into a near scowl. ‘Gossip?’

Lucia just shook her head. She shouldn’t have said that. Angelo didn’t know how difficult those months after he’d left had been for her, how in their stifling village community she’d been labelled another Corretti whore…just like his mother had. She didn’t want him to know. ‘It looks a little suspicious, that’s all. Most maids never see the CEO’s office.’

‘I see.’ He paused, glanced down at some papers that lay scattered across his desk. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make things difficult for you.’

‘Never mind. May I go now?’

Angelo stared at her for a long moment, and she saw that glimpse of bleakness in his eyes again, and that ache inside her opened right up, consumed her with sudden, desperate need. She wanted to take him in her arms and smooth away the crease that furrowed his forehead. She wanted to kiss him and tell him none of it mattered, because she loved him. She’d always loved him.

Pathetic. Stupid. What kind of woman loved a man who had treated her the way Angelo had treated her?

Her mother, for one. And look how she had ended up.

‘Yes,’ Angelo finally said, and he sounded distant, distracted. He was probably already thinking of his next business deal. He turned away, to face the window. ‘Yes, of course you can go.’

And so she did, slipping silently through the heavy oak doors even as that ache inside her opened up so she felt as if she had nothing left, was nothing but need and emptiness. She walked quickly past the receptionist and felt tears sting her eyes.

Alone in the lift she pressed her fists against her eyes and willed it all back, all down. She would not cry. She would not cry for Angelo Corretti, who had broken her heart too many times already so she’d had to keep fitting it back together, jagged pieces that no longer made a healthy whole. Still she’d done it; she’d thought she’d succeeded.

Alone in the lift with the tears starting in her eyes and threatening to slip down her cheeks, she knew she hadn’t.

Angelo stared blindly out the window, his mind spinning with what Lucia had said. And what she hadn’t said.