Scandals Of The Powerful: Uncovering the Correttis / A Legacy of Secrets

‘Thank you,’ he said, surprised how much it helped.

‘Well, I could hardly...’

He smiled, not a big one, but there was a lift to the edge of his lips as she referred to earlier, and he never thought he would stand in this place and want another beside him, let alone be able to smile.

The music was starting. All in the church were standing and Emily craned her neck to get a glimpse of the bride as she entered. The dress was all lace, with long sleeves and a high neck, and, though beautiful, Alessia looked terribly wary.

Someone’s phone went off, and remembering that she hadn’t turned hers off, Emily went to do just that but noticed there were a couple of people filming the blushing bride on their phones.

‘Can I?’ she said, remembering the no-press-allowed rule.

‘You’re a guest,’ Anton said. ‘Go for it.’

It was a new phone, though, and instead of filming, she took a shot, just not the one she had intended. She had captured the bride turning, running the wrong way down the aisle. There was commotion all around—the church doors opening, the shocked congregation starting to ask questions, the press going into a frenzy outside.

‘Oh my!’ Emily said. ‘Did she just run off?’ Emily simply could not believe it. ‘This is huge.’

‘You have no idea,’ Anton said. ‘And neither does the rest of the world.’

There was a man running after her, yet it wasn’t the groom. Alessandro stood, shoulders back, taking it on the chin as he was jilted at the altar.

‘I have to ring my boss.’

‘Why?’ Anton asked. ‘So Dianne can first report it?’ He took the phone from her hand and opened it to her social media account, quickly typing.

Developing story—Alessia Battaglia jilts Alessandro Corretti at altar, Matteo Corretti seen chasing bride—back soon with more.

More than that, he attached the photo she had accidentally taken. Unlike Emily, he knew all their names without checking notes. ‘While the rest of the world is wondering if there is a security breach or if, indeed, the bride has fled, you, Emily, have just confirmed it.’ Anton handed her back her phone.

They just stood there grinning as she broke the story, her phone practically melting in her hand as responses poured in. But she really did have to call Adam. ‘I’m in the church.’ Briefly she explained what had happened.

‘Keep on it,’ Adam told her. ‘How the hell did you get inside?’

Emily didn’t even try to explain. Instead she stood behind a pillar, her hand shaking slightly but working her phone like a pro, just caught up in the rush of being in the centre of the storm in a breaking story. ‘Is it wrong how turned on I am right now?’ she asked as she frantically texted.

‘If it is, then we are both in trouble.’

He took her hand and helped her through the crowd outside, but he steered her in the opposite direction when she went to follow the masses who were heading over to the reception venue.

‘We go back to the hotel.’

‘Anton! We can’t.’ There was her career to think of, except she couldn’t think clearly right now. She had, after all, just broken the news; surely she was allowed a teeny celebration. Her feeble protest was a short-lived one. ‘Oh, okay, then.’

He gave her a smile, one she couldn’t work out, and they ran down the street and raced to get to her room. In the elevator she was so busy being kissed she paid no attention to the button he was pushing.

‘Wrong floor,’ Emily groaned as they stepped out of the elevator, but again, Anton, in everything, was a step ahead.

‘We go to my room.’

‘Your room? But—’

He kissed her through the doorway. Emily started stripping off the second they were inside, but then she halted, frowning, when she saw him standing beside a small, high-up open window.

‘Given they didn’t want me at the reception, I booked a room with a view.’ She teetered over, her cheeks scalding as she peered out. No, he hadn’t been racing back to make frantic love to her. Instead he’d been bringing her back for a bird’s-eye view of the reception. Emily could see everything—the manicured gardens, the streets filled with press and police and excited onlookers.

‘What did you think we were coming back for?’ Anton asked.

She cringed and went to retrieve her dress, embarrassed at her own presumption, but if it was a cruel tease, it was a brief one.

‘Come here,’ he said, his voice thick with lust as she joined him at the window.

Her arms leant on the window and he stood behind, wrapping his around her and making her smile as he whispered into her ear. ‘Now that’s pole position.’

CHAPTER NINE

IT WAS heaven to watch the chaos, though there were more than a few distractions.

Namely Anton.

He was working her neck but Emily’s mind was on work.

‘Is that who I think it is?’ Emily asked, watching a fight break out, but only briefly. Her eyes widened as the Correttis lived up, in every sense, to their depraved reputations. ‘Oh my God, look at those two making out.’

‘Are you glad you came up here?’

‘Very.’ It was dark now and she didn’t want the night that was suddenly here.

Her last in Sicily.

As the figures became impossible to make out, Emily worked for an hour on his computer to get her report in.

He lay on the bed and for once his heart was not black. For a brief moment he glimpsed the peace of normal, of a couple together and sharing an evening. An honest, normal evening. The television on in the background, the tap of the keyboard as Emily worked. Then she looked up. ‘I’m going to have a bath.’ She smiled at him, and as naturally as breathing he returned it.

Yet his soul had been dead for years.

Unnerved by the normalcy, Anton ordered supper and it was waiting for Emily when she came out.

It was nice to sit huddled in a hotel bathrobe sipping a cocktail as Anton flicked through the news channels. Most were filled with the unfolding drama. She even saw her tweet and photo on one of the U.K. channels. But then something caught her eye.

‘Stop,’ Emily said. ‘Go back.’ She took a sip of her icy cocktail and smiled. ‘That’s Dianne.’

Dianne was scowling into the camera, her hair dripping. With really nothing to report, they were heading over to the correct lake now.

‘This is the woman you hate?’ Anton asked.

‘Hate?’ Emily laughed. ‘I don’t hate her, I just don’t like her. Fattispecie.’ Emily smiled.

‘You’re a bad girl.’

‘I know.’ She slipped onto his lap, wrapped her arms around his neck and said sorry with her eyes. ‘And I know what happens to bad girls.’ She shocked herself, but what happened then shocked Anton even more.

He heard the sound of laughter and it came from him. A sound he had not heard since the morning his life was blown apart. He was younger, lighter, and it was with Emily in his arms. He had not felt like this since... He stopped laughing then, buried his face in her hair and remembered that morning, lying there hearing the wonderful news his wife had shared, and he thought the pain might actually choke him.

‘Anton?’

‘Come.’ He tried for normal. He went to the window and looked out on the dark streets but the crowds were dispersing. Only the press were still there, waiting for a morning that would be here soon.

‘We should get some sleep.’

* * *

Both tried.

He lay, for once not consumed with the pain of the past, just knowing there was fresh grief to come, for in a few hours she would be gone.

Emily lay there watching the moon gliding across the night sky as if someone had their finger on the fast-forward button and was speeding them towards dawn.

‘If we close the shutters, can we stop the morning?’ Emily asked in the fading darkness.

He fought for a glib comment to shut out not the morning but the woman in bed beside him, to disengage before dawn, as Anton always did, except his hands were stroking her down her waist, his arms pulling her right into him, his lips deep-kissing her shoulder.

She could feel his erection stirring between her thighs, and his hand brushed her stomach and moved down and stroked her clitoris before her mind even had a chance to wish it there. It was as if he knew her body; it was as if he were made for her. He was nudging her entrance when he should have been stretching over for a condom. Another assumption, another principle dissolved in his presence. She could not fight her want, her need, for the man stealing inside her. She was trying not to cry as he filled her, except she couldn’t hold on to a single emotion with Anton around.

‘Emily...’ He knew he should withdraw, only this wasn’t just sex, even if he tried to deny it. He rocked deeper within her. He could feel her sobbing, feel her orgasm building to meet his, and he wanted to feel. For so long he hadn’t, and it actually hurt to feel good.

Intimately she gripped him, pressed herself back into him as his mouth found her cheek. Emily’s neck craned for his mouth, for his tongue, for the close of his eyes as she throbbed to her first intimate spill on the inside, and she knew, she just knew, they belonged together.

They lay in silence, still locked together, as unspoken, reckless possibilities were entertained. It was Emily who voiced them. ‘Anton.’ She did not turn to him. Instead she felt him tense at her tentative suggestion. ‘I’ve got some annual leave....’

‘You need to get back.’

‘I know that but maybe in a couple of weeks...’ He was pulling away. ‘You spoke about the Corretti Cup. Maybe I could come back—’

She was interrupted by his phone, but she felt the relief from Anton at the reprieve, and he spoke for a few moments in Italian, his back to her, not wanting to turn around because he knew that he had gotten too close.

‘Maybe you could visit again,’ was his response to her offer, ‘but don’t come back for me.’ Only then did he turn to her. ‘That was a colleague. Alessandro has been arrested. I know the station. You could go there and get the scoop.’

‘Poor guy.’ Emily shook her head. ‘Just leave him alone.’

‘You’re not tough enough.’ Anton’s words were terse.

She rolled onto her back and looked at the ceiling. ‘So people tell me whenever they’re about to break up with me.’

‘Break up?’ he said. ‘It was a weekend.’

Absolutely she wasn’t tough enough, because Emily started to cry.

‘For God’s sake,’ he shouted. ‘It’s been two nights.’

It had been the most amazing two nights of her life. She should be more sophisticated, Emily knew that.

She tried. She got out of the bed and dressed, and he lay there, hand behind his head, not watching, but as she went to leave the room, he halted her.

‘What happened before...’ Anton said. ‘We need to discuss...’

‘Am I to stop off at the farmacia?’ Emily asked. ‘How very thoughtful of you. Don’t worry, Anton, I’m on the pill. The condoms were only necessary in case I had an urge to shag a stranger the whole weekend.’ She just looked at him and couldn’t hide the hurt from her eyes. ‘It would seem that I did.’ She stared at his guarded, closed-off face and she saw the stranger he chose to be.

‘You’re right, it is time for me to leave.’

‘Then go.’

She took off the ring, but she would have her say.

‘It’s not your love for your wife that’s holding you back, Anton. It’s your hate for them.’ He just lay there and she knew she was right. ‘I don’t want to be a part of it. I don’t want to be around a man who spends his time booking restaurants in advance and looking for vantage points, who’s no doubt got pole position booked for the Corretti Cup.’ Tears did not make her weak, Emily realised, though she fought them. ‘That kiss on the stairs...’ She could see it all now. ‘You were turned on by revenge, when you should have been turned on by me.’

‘I lost my family.’

‘So you think you have nothing more to lose.’ Emily could be tough when it was called for. ‘That’s a dangerous place to be, Anton.’

She closed the door on him.

He waited for relief.

She was gone.

He could get back to...

To what?

He did not want to think. He flicked on the television. He met Dianne’s cold eyes as she reported on the most recent findings, as she barely blinked as she read the latest news.

Tough, jaded, bitter.

No, Anton corrected, Dianne was focused, determined.

And then his own words haunted him.

A little naive, a little sweet.

What would you choose?

CHAPTER TEN

EMILY STEPPED into her hotel room. One that she had been in for all of an hour. She changed quickly and threw her clothes into the suitcase and was out of the hotel in moments.

She jumped into a taxi ahead of a couple of tourists, and if she was rude, if she wrong, it was better than relenting, way better than charging back to his room.

As if to taunt her, her phone bleeped and it was Gina.

Thought you might like a little memento (and congratulations on the scoop).

How could her career seem not to matter?

How could what had been so vital on Friday seem almost obsolete now?

Why did this have to be love?

Attached were the pictures Gina had taken of her and Anton. Emily saw her smiling face beside his closed one and she knew she could not let his pain darken her soul, which it would if she stayed.

He did not want her to stay, Emily reminded herself, but that did not soothe. She wanted on the plane and in the air and away from him.

Away from a dangerous love.

‘Fai presto!’ Emily urged the driver to go faster. She could see the airport, yet she felt as if the devil itself were chasing her. And it was.

She could hear the sirens, knew without turning that he had changed his mind, knew before he had overtaken them that the car the flashing lights belonged to was his.

Emily thrust the money at the driver, dragged her case from the car and just refused to look where he stood waiting.

‘I’m going.’

‘Emily.’

He took her wrist and she shook him off.

‘Emily.’ He went for the top of her arm and she turned in fury to him. ‘Unless you’ve got your cuffs with you, I’m...’

It was not her poor choice of words that halted her speech; it was the smile that met her gaze. It was an Anton she had never seen. A smile was the first thing her mind had begged from him, and if she had thought she had seen it in the restaurant that night, then she had been mistaken. For what she had witnessed then did not even come close. All the stress had vanished. The eyes hers met were no longer navy; they were the colour of a waking Mediterranean. There were shimmers and specks she should choose not to see.

‘There is someone I do not want to lose,’ Anton said.

‘Anton...’ Emily looked at him, saw the tenderness unhidden. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Fattispecie,’ Anton said as he confessed to her his lie by omission. ‘Louanna was pregnant. She had told me just that morning.’

Ah, fattispecie, Emily thought. Such a sad word.

‘I swore revenge that day and I vowed it again at their graves, but I am letting it go.’

‘For now.’

‘For good,’ Anton said, and then he said it again but with different meaning. ‘For good. A good that I do not want to lose.’ He did not want to crowd her. He did not want her to leave. He did not want another decade of bitterness. ‘Come back, not for the Corretti Cup. Come back, or I come and visit you. We can take it slow if you need to.’

‘I need to take this.’ It was her phone ringing hot now and she had to answer because it wasn’t Adam. Instead it was the chief of the newspaper, calling on a Sunday morning, no less. ‘I need a moment,’ Emily said to Anton.

‘Of course.’

Her career was not quite so obsolete, Emily realised as she struggled to keep the nerves from her voice as she took the call.

‘Congratulations.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Have you got more?’

‘Alessandro Corretti was arrested last night.’

‘That’s already broken.’

‘Taylor Carmichael—’

‘I saw that she was back.’

‘And deliciously misbehaving,’ Emily said.

‘Anything else?’

‘Plenty,’ Emily said, ‘and it’s not going away anytime soon.’ She told him about the docklands and about Carlo’s illegitimate son, Angelo, who looked set to make a move against the family that had disowned him. They spoke for a few moments, then she turned off her phone and looked over to Anton. Then, taking a deep breath, she wheeled her case over to him.

‘That was my boss,’ Emily said. ‘Not Adam—the big one. He said my two favourite words.’

‘Which are?’

‘Clothing allowance.’ Emily smiled. ‘They want me to stay on and find out more. I’m going to be busy....’

‘You won’t need to lift a finger. I can tell you anything you need to know.’

‘Which means I’m going to be busy.’ Emily grinned. ‘Hello, research.’ He pulled her into his arms and buried his face in her hair, not in grief, just to inhale her scent.

It was a kiss at the airport but neither a hello nor a goodbye; it was a kiss of life and taking chances and staying around long enough to feel your heart again. And as he loaded her case into his car, as she climbed in to set off on another adventure, there was no need for sirens or flashing lights.

They had time.

Time before they heard their three favourite words.

But both already knew what they were.

* * * * *

A Legacy of Secrets

Carol Marinelli

Business & Pleasure: What the Corretti playboy wants…

Personal assistant Ella is never without her “Santo Bag”—not the latest designer “must have,” but emergency supplies to handle whatever the devilish Santo Corretti throws at her. But no pair of sunglasses will cover the darkness in her boss’s eyes this morning.

Scandal is circling. Santo’s family is in tatters. His brother is languishing in a jail cell and his latest film’s on the rocks. All Santo wants is a little TLC. Except, Ella’s heart is not part of the playboy fix-it kit.

But what Santo Corretti wants he gets!

PROLOGUE

‘PLEASE.’

Ella wasn’t sure how many times that word had been said to her in the past, but she knew that she would forever recall this time.

‘Please, Ella, don’t go.’

She stood at the departure terminal of the busy Sydney International Airport, passport and boarding pass in hand, and looked into her mother’s pleading eyes—the same amber eyes as her own—and she almost relented. How could she possibly leave her to deal with her father alone?

But, given all that had happened, how could she stay?

‘You have a beautiful home....’

‘No!’ Ella would not be swayed. ‘I have a flat that I bought in the hope that you would move in with me. I thought that you’d finally decide to leave him, and yet you won’t.’

‘I can’t.’

‘You can.’ Ella stood firm. ‘I have done everything to help you leave and yet you still refuse.’

‘He’s my husband.’

‘And I’m your daughter.’ Ella’s eyes flashed with suppressed anger. ‘He beat me, Mum!’

‘Because you upset him. Because you try to get me to leave...’ Her mother had been in Australia for more than thirty years, was married to an Australian, and yet her English was still poor. Ella knew that she could stand here and argue her point some more, but there wasn’t time for that. Instead she said the words she had planned to say and gave her mother one final chance to leave. ‘Come with me.’

Then Ella handed her mother the ticket she had secretly purchased.

‘How?’

‘I’ve brought your passport with me.’ Ella pulled it out of her bag and handed it to her mother to show that she was serious and that she really had thought this through. ‘You can walk away now, Mum. You can go back to Sicily and be with your sisters. You can have a life....’ She saw her mother wrestle with the decision. She missed her country so much, spoke about her sisters all the time, and if she would just have the courage to walk away then Ella would help her in any way that she could.

‘I can’t.’

There was simply no point, but Ella did her best to persuade her mum. Right up to check-in, right up to the departure gate, Ella tried to convince her mother to leave, but she had decided now that the subject was closed.

‘Have a nice trip, Ella.’

‘I’m not going for a holiday, Mum,’ Ella said. She wanted her mother to realise how serious this was, that she wasn’t just going to be away for a few weeks. ‘I’m going there to look for work.’

‘But you said you will visit Sicily.’

‘I might.’ Ella honestly didn’t know. ‘I don’t know if I can, Mum. I’d hoped to go there with you. I think I’ll stay in Rome.’

‘Well, if you do get to Sicily, give my love to your aunts. Tell them...’ Gabriella faltered for a moment.

‘Don’t tell them, you mean.’ Ella looked at her mum, who would be in trouble for even coming to the airport, and couldn’t believe she was expecting Ella to tell her aunts how fantastic her life was in Australia, to keep up the pretence. ‘Are you asking me to lie?’

‘Why you do this to me?’ Gabriella demanded, as she did whenever Ella didn’t conform or questioned things. Possibly Ella was more Sicilian than she gave herself credit for, because as her mother used the very familiar line, Ella was tempted to use it herself. Why you do this to me? Why did you stand and scream as you watched your daughter being beaten? Why didn’t you have the guts to get up and leave? Of course she didn’t say that. Ella hadn’t shared her feelings with anyone, not even her mum, since that day.

‘I have to go, Mum.’ Ella looked up at the board—she really did have to, customs would take forever—but at the last moment her voice cracked. ‘Mum, please...’

‘Ella, go.’

Gabriella wept as she said goodbye but Ella didn’t—she hadn’t since that terrible day two months ago. Instead she hugged her mum and headed through customs and then sat dry-eyed on the plane with an empty seat beside her, nursing her guilt for leaving her mother behind, but knowing deep down there was nothing more she could do.

She was twenty-seven years old, and had spent enough of her life trying to get her mother away from her father. Even her job had been chosen with money, rather than passion, in mind.

Ella had worked as a junior assistant for a couple of CEOs, then moved through the ranks, eventually becoming a PA to a politician. She’d spent the past two years in Canberra, dreading what she might come home to in Sydney.

Unable to live like that, she had swapped a very good job for a not-so-good one, and bought a home nearer her parents. Now, after all those years of trying to help her mum, Ella knew she just had to get away.

She had references in her bag and could speak Italian.

It was time to get a life.

Her life.

It never entered her head that she might need some time off to heal from all she had endured—instead Ella’s focus was on finding work.

Except it was just rather more intimidating than she’d first thought.

It was January, and she had left the hot Australian summer for a cold Italian winter. Rome was busier than anywhere Ella had ever been. The Gypsies seemed to make a beeline for her every time she ventured from the hotel, but she took in the sites, stood in awe in the Vatican and threw a coin in the Trevi Fountain, as her mother had told her to do. But what was the point, Ella thought, for her mother would never be back.

She took a train to Ostia Antica, visited the ruins and froze as she walked along the beach, wondering when the healing would start, when the revelation that she had done the right thing by leaving would strike.

It didn’t.

So instead of sitting around waiting, Ella set about looking for work.