‘Wait...’ he called, and then looked in the direction she ran.
Dante, even from this distance, looked seedy and was striding towards her, no doubt surprised by her unannounced arrival.
If Gian had thought for a moment that Ariana Romano had finally grown up, he was about to be proven wrong, for she was back to the spoiled, selfish brat of old. Only, instead of being placed over her father’s knee, it was Ariana delivering the slaps.
He watched her land a vicious hit on her brother’s cheek and then raise her other hand to do the same, but Dante caught it.
The scene carried echoes of another world, one Gian had loathed—champagne bottles on the floor, fights, chaos, all he had sought to erase, and the scars on his psyche felt inflamed.
Ariana heightened his senses. Gian was more than aware he had let down his steely guard in bed last night and it had shaken him. For a moment he had glimpsed how it felt to need another person, to rely on someone else, and that could never be.
Right now, though, her actions plunged him straight back into a world that had spun out of control—the chaos and fights between his parents, finding his older brother unconscious on the floor and shouting frantically for help, and their smiles and the making up that came after, the promises made that were never, ever kept.
Always they had taken things too far, and it was everything that he now lived to avoid.
‘Hey.’ He was speaking to the pilot, about to tell him to take off, for he wanted no part in this. Yet some odd sense of duty told him not to leave Ariana stranded, and so he sat, grim-faced, as a tearful Ariana ran her leggy way back to the helicopter and climbed in.
‘We can go now,’ Ariana said once her headphones and microphone were on. ‘I’m done.’
And so too was he.
And he told her so the minute they stood alone back on the roof of La Fiordelise.
‘You never cease to disappoint me, Ariana.’
He watched her tear-streaked, defiant face lift and her angry eyes met his as he gave her a well-deserved telling-off. ‘I thought you were going there to speak with your brother, to find out how he was...’
‘He shamed my mother!’ Ariana shouted. ‘She went on a cruise to get away from the ball and had to return to this!’
‘Ah, so it was your mother talking.’ He shook his head as he looked down at her, realising now what had happened between her leaving his suite and boarding the helicopter. ‘And there was me thinking you had a mind of your own. How dare you put me in the middle of this? I would never have offered to take you if I’d known your plan was to behave this way.’
She had the gall to shrug. ‘You have no idea what she did to us.’
‘I have every idea!’ Gian retorted.
‘Meaning?’
But Gian was not about to explain himself. ‘You know what, Ariana? I don’t need your drama.’
It felt like a kind of relief that he could finally walk away without the painful struggle with his demons he had faced earlier when considering how to draw a line under all that had happened between them.
Except Ariana Romano ran after him.
He didn’t want to hear her sobbing or begging for forgiveness, except Gian received neither. Instead he was tapped smartly on the shoulder and was somewhat surprised by the calm stare that met him when he turned around.
‘You should be thanking me, Gian.’
‘Thanking you?’
‘Absolutely,’ she responded. ‘You were about to give me my marching orders this morning, and you were fumbling for an excuse. I handed you this on a plate.’
‘You don’t know that.’
‘But I do.’ Ariana was certain, for she could clearly recall the heavy atmosphere and the absolute certainty that Gian had been about to end things. Well, she’d given him the perfect reason to now. ‘It isn’t a relationship you’re avoiding, Gian; it’s emotion.’
Ariana struck like a cobra, right to the heart of his soul. He looked at her and all he could see was the chaos she left in her wake. He thought of the knife edge he had grown up on, the eternal threat of disaster that had hung over his family, and the eternal calm he now sought.
‘Don’t worry, Gian,’ she said to his silence. ‘I’m out of here. You keep your cold black heart and I’ll carry right on.’
CHAPTER TWELVE
IT WOULD BE NICE, Ariana thought early the next morning, to pull the covers over her head as she nursed her first ever broken heart.
Officially broken.
She knew that since they had first made love she had been holding onto a dream. The fantasy that Gian would bend his rules for her and decide it was time to give love a chance...
Because it felt like love to Ariana.
Now she had to let go of that dream. Her mother called and then called again, but Ariana ignored it.
But then Stefano called and Ariana could never ignore a call from her twin...
‘There’s an extraordinary board meeting at nine,’ he told her.
‘Pass on my apologies,’ Ariana mumbled, but Stefano was having none of it. ‘We are to meet at the offices at eight,’ Stefano told her. ‘A driver has been ordered for you; he should be with you soon.’
‘Eight?’ Ariana checked.
‘Mamma wants to speak to the three of us before the board meeting.’
‘She’s coming to the offices?’ Ariana frowned. ‘But she hasn’t been there since...’
Since the news of her father and Mia’s affair had broken.
This was big, Ariana knew as she quickly showered, squeezing in eye drops to erase all evidence of tears. She selected a navy linen suit and ran the straightening iron through her hair, trying to look somewhat put-together while she pondered what was about to take place. Ariana arrived at Romano Holdings and took the elevator up to where her family were waiting for her.
Her mamma was as pale as she had ever seen
