“Is it? They’re buying forgiveness, cara, don’t you see?” But there was no heat in his tone. Resignation. Even acceptance maybe, she thought with more hope burgeoning inside her chest. “Which is why Antonio refused to even touch anything they offered.”
“They don’t need forgiveness. They didn’t even need to redress Silvio’s sins. But they’ve done it because they have a strong sense of right and wrong.” She held his gaze in the darkness, saw the flicker of anger tamp down. He looked away, but Alex caught his expression before that. And suddenly she got it. “You’re shocked that they’re not the monsters you believed them to be for so long. That they’re truly honorable men. Good men. It’s not too late, V. If you just stretch your—”
“Not this again, Alessandra,” he cut in harshly.
“Didn’t this whole thing start as helping those who couldn’t help themselves? To right the wrongs that Silvio Brunetti perpetrated? Or does it matter more that you have to be their savior than that they be saved at all?”
Vincenzo stilled, Alessandra’s words piercing him like a thousand little cuts, stripping away the anger and bitterness he’d nursed for so many years. He wanted to yell at her to stop, to leave him be. To cease digging into him. Because if she stripped him bare of his need for revenge, his thirst for justice, if she took away this fight that had consumed his adult life, what would she find?
If he gave up his quest to take over BFI, what was left in him? Of him?
He’d meticulously planned and executed each and every move, and there was no way back from that. No way out from the hole he’d buried his heart in.
If he stopped now, how could he face the kind of man he’d become? How could he come back from that? How could he open himself up, make himself completely vulnerable at this late stage?
Because that anger, and bitterness, his ambition and his quest for revenge, he was fast realizing were his armor. Armor against hope and vulnerability.
Armor against the crippling knowledge that he had become a man who didn’t deserve the woman lying next to him.
Armor against turning into a man who desperately needed love but didn’t know how to give or receive it.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
ALEX STOOD IN front of the marble vanity a few days after they’d arrived back from New York and stared at her naked body in the steam fogged mirror. Something was different. Strange. She ran her fingers over her belly, and then up toward her breasts and cupped them. They felt achy and heavy, just as her entire body did.
Was all the stress of the past few months finally catching up with her? Or was it something else entirely?
No. It couldn’t be. She had been on the pill the entire time—even before she’d met Vincenzo in Bali. After those first few nights together, after they’d been married, they’d stopped using condoms.
She wished she could talk to someone. But Greta was gone. As were the rest of them. All of them. This villa was their home now. Hers and Vincenzo’s.
And it would be Charlie’s, once they’d won custody of him.
And, she was suddenly quite sure, it would be this baby’s too.
She kept her palm on her belly, waiting for panic to set in. For the mother of all freak-outs.
It didn’t come.
Instead, total calm filled her. Even as she was aware that, right at this moment, Vincenzo and Leo and Massimo and Greta were all at the BFI towers in Milan for an emergency board meeting that Vincenzo had called.
He was almost there at the finish line, she knew.
There would be a vote of no confidence against Leo, and she also knew that Vincenzo had control of the majority. That he would be voted CEO of Brunetti Finances Inc. any minute now.
For all that she hated to see Greta and Leo and Massimo leave this villa, this war Vincenzo had waged for so long would finally be done with now. And they didn’t hate her, or him.
Vincenzo would have achieved his goal. He would be finished. And their life could begin. Once they were a family, once he had everything he wanted—Charlie and her and this baby, maybe he would even finally open himself up to understanding what the Brunettis meant to her.
If Leo and Massimo could let his actions go, couldn’t Vincenzo be convinced to let the past go? If he could do that, he would be free. His heart would be free.
Alex smiled at her reflection. Anything was possible. And that hope was a powerful thing inside her.
* * *
Vincenzo went in search of his wife upstairs in the villa, a sense of inexplicable dread descending on him.
All of Milan’s financial society was downstairs and out in the gardens, celebrating his victory. Lauding him. Courting his favor. Already catering to him.
He had soundly defeated Leonardo at the vote of no confidence. But of course, he would have enjoyed it so much more if Alex hadn’t disappeared after barely showing her face. Both when he’d returned from the board meeting earlier and tonight at the party.
Any irritation he felt died down as he walked into the terrace and found her looking out at the garden and the lake. The magnificent view did nothing to dim her beauty.
She turned and he drank her in. The soft pink evening gown draped over her curves, highlighting the lithe body. Her beautiful hair flew in the breeze, the diamond choker he’d bought her yesterday glittering at her neck.
And yet, one look at her pinched face told him that for all her standing by him as the perfect wife, she was less than happy.
No, she was miserable.
But it wasn’t just physical exhaustion. The vitality that had struck him like lightning on their first meeting, the joy he’d seen on the day of their
