“It was only when I married Alessandra’s father, Carlos, that I realized…how many mistakes I had made. How I had let my son and his actions change me into this…bitter woman who had not even a kind word for her grandsons.”
Vincenzo refused to indulge the thin thread of sympathy that reverberated within him at the woman’s words.
Nothing, nothing could forgive what she’d done to his mother and him. This was all Alessandra’s doing. The blasted woman was changing how he saw things, was undoing him at a cellular level.
“Per piacere, Vincenzo, do not…hurt Alessandra.”
“I’m to believe you care for her that much?”
“Si, I do. She gave me a chance to be someone else. To redeem myself. To…find love in my heart again. Please…”
“Promise me you won’t use me in this battle of yours?” Alessandra had asked him just before they’d danced at Antonio’s party.
And he’d given her his word. And yet, if he could end this war he’d waged all the sooner, all the more cleanly, by using her, if he could avoid the total destruction he’d originally planned, wouldn’t she ultimately be grateful to him? Wouldn’t she understand why he’d done it?
His thoughts ran away from him like a runaway freight train before he could hold on to one and process it.
If, once he’d pulled apart BFI, he left this house intact instead of bringing it down—this house that she loved so much, this house that had been her safe harbor… If Alessandra and he could build that family of theirs here, if they could have a fresh start in this place where once his dreams had been crushed… Wasn’t his revenge still complete?
Wasn’t justice served then?
“If she’s that important to you, then prove it to me,” he said, pushing away the quiet voice of conscience that threatened to take over if he let it.
Her skin whitened to such deathly paleness that Vincenzo felt a twinge of remorse. He had hated this woman so much for so long, and yet she looked like nothing but a husk of the person from his memory, who had with one merciless decision, ruined his childhood, his mother’s sanity.
The years in between should have etched that hardness she had showed them that day onto her face and yet, her eyes shone with conviction. With love, he realized, a cold chill taking over his skin.
Love that Alessandra had created in this old woman’s bitter heart.
Love and something like the longing that he had glimpsed in Alessandra’s eyes when she looked at him.
It was the most terrifying thing he’d ever seen. Because he was beginning to realize he didn’t deserve it. It amplified into an urgent drumbeat in his blood—this need to finish what he’d started soon. Before it was too late.
“How?” the old woman asked, pulling him out of his own murky thoughts.
“Ask your grandson to step down as CEO of BFI.”
“Leonardo has worked far too hard for far too many years to just give up now.”
“Then make him.”
“It’s not—”
“Throw your support behind me at the next board meeting.”
The old woman swayed on her feet and reached for the support of the table. “If I back you, Leonardo will lose the controlling majority.”
“It is a far better fate than what I had initially decided for them both.”
Her eyes held his in a defiant challenge, an almost mirror image of the resolve he spied in his own eyes. A resemblance that he wanted to deny at any cost, and yet it was there. “For two centuries, only a Brunetti sat on that chair.” A hint of that Brunetti arrogance crept back into the woman’s words, her spine straightening. “It’s against tradition—”
“The choices you have are very simple,” Vincenzo said with a shrug. Any doubts he might have indulged in washed away at the flash of that Brunetti arrogance in her eyes. “Either keep BFI intact by throwing your support behind me or see all of it torn into pieces like I initially planned.
“With the first choice, you might even save Alessandra some heartache in the process. That’s what you came to ask me for, remember? That I don’t hurt Alessandra in all this.”
“And you would use my affection for her this way?”
“Your words, your actions created the man I am today. You only have yourself to blame.”
“This will break her heart. You’re truly—”
“My father’s son, si? So I have been told. You’d better not tell her then.” He refused to think of what would happen if Alessandra found out. He refused to let it sway him when he was so close to being done. Cristo, he so badly wanted to be done. He wanted that future life with Alessandra to begin right now. “Alessandra has already chosen me. Chosen a future with me,” he said, letting the old woman see his victory. “If I take over BFI, this can all be over for her too. She won’t feel so caught up between her past and her future.”
He left the room without looking back, a sort of desperation filling him to see Alessandra in that bed. To hold her. To reassure himself that she…
He felt dirty. As if he completely deserved the loathing he’d seen in the old woman’s eyes.
He reached the bedroom, and only then did air fill his lungs. He stripped fast and got back into the bed. Like clockwork, Alessandra reached for him and burrowed into him. Only then did his heart slow its savage race.
“Did we make a mistake, V?”
Had she asked him that only a few nights ago?
And he realized with a sinking dread that the answer was yes. He had made a mistake. He had involved a woman who deserved far better than him in his life. He had tangled with a woman who deserved to be loved, to be worshipped. Who didn’t deserve to be used as currency
