“And to you, what’s most important is a business.” He said this with some disdain, which was rich, coming from him.
“A legacy, Luciano,” she corrected. “Mine. And yours. The whole reason we spent more than five minutes in a room together, in fact.”
“I see. So you want to analyze it. Perhaps make some data points in one of your little notebooks. How did it come to be that you were swept away by a cad like Luciano Ascione?”
She considered the snap in his tone. The way he called himself a cad, when she hadn’t been thinking that at all. He gave himself away when he let his temper rule, so she could not deny that she continued to poke at that temper in a way she knew would annoy him the most.
Remain calm and controlled and focused on the facts alone. “I would not call you a cad in this instance.”
He snorted with disgust. “In this instance,” he said, in a mocking tone. “I would think you a robot if not for last night,” he muttered.
“I truly don’t understand why you’re angry, Luciano. We had a pleasurable evening. It is a complication, but one I think we can reasonably maneuver if we discuss it like adults.”
Shethought she was being themostreasonable and adult, but clearly he did not agree.Helooked like he was about to throw a temper tantrum.
So she settled into the pillows even deeper and tried not to smile.
* * *
She was infuriating. He’d woken up, tied in knots he didn’t understand. He could not untangle them, even in the time he’d taken away from her sleeping soundly inhisbed,hisroom,hislife.
And she was sitting there eating a pastry in his bed trying tounderstand. Wanting to have a calm discussion.Smilingat him, like she was the queen of the world in control of everything, and he was a foolish serf, stomping his foot in defiance.
What was calm about what had occurred? What wasreasonableabout anything? He could not make sense of the way she’d tangled inside of him like a poisonous vine.
She wanted to discusssexlike adults. She wanted reasons. She wanted truths.
Well, fine. He’d give them to her. All the hard truths she wouldn’t want to hear. All the truths that, if she were as smart as she allegedly was, would send her running.
“Do you know, last night as I watched your mother play her little games, I had the most startling realization that I’d seen it all before?”
She studied him silently, clearly not following but not willing to say that. Her smile had dimmed though. She definitely hadn’t expected him to bring up her mother.
“You see, I recognized something in the way your mother treated you,” he continued. “Because she was wrong, and I could not fathom what would be the reason for a mother to lie about their child.”
She blinked, gathered that sheet a little closer to her chest, all traces of that smile gone.
“It reminded me of my own childhood dinners. At the time, I was not old enough to realize that every night, my father was playing his favorite game. He would insist my mother dine with us, then treat her terribly until she ran off in tears, then insist we do the same thing the next night. He enjoyed that—something I understood even as a small child, even if I did not understand why.”
He had begged his mother to refuse to show. He had tried to chase after her, only to be rejected by her. He had tried, as he’d gotten older, to convince her to leave. He had tried so many things, but his father had been the center of everything in that house.
And Gianluca Ascione had known it.
“Once he’d finally gotten her to break, he would turn to me. Just as your mother turned to you last night. Different insults, naturally, but the same tactic. He thought me stupid, or claimed he did. He characterized me as the character I would then become. I knew he was wrong. For a while, I thought it was a mistake. I would simply prove it to him. Then I realized I could not. But I never understood why, when IknewI was not what he claimed I was, most days. Until I saw your mother. Doing the same thing. And it was wrong, but I have no doubts about you, so Iknewit was wrong on a deeper level.”
Serena’s expression was growing icy. He told himself that’s what he wanted, even as it settled in him like pain.
“She was not fully wrong,” she said in that careful, horrible way.
“That’s rubbish,” he spat. “She wants you to be those things—dull and foolish—because admitting you are all the things youactuallyare—beautiful and certainly quirky, but not foolish—would be intimidating to her. She wants all the attention, all the good for herself. You are a…threat, I suppose.”
She wasn’t so icy now. She was breathing a little heavily, color in her cheeks, the sheet clutched so tight in one hand her knuckles were white. “My mother is far more beautiful and worldly than I am. Which is fine, because I do not need to be those things.”
“Even if I agreed, it doesn’t matter. At the heart of her, what I witnessed last night was blatant insecurity. And instead of looking at you as your own person, or someone to be proud of, she sees you as a symbol of what she isn’t. Young and brilliant and successful.”
She looked completely and fully arrested by this very true description of herself, and he wanted to crawl into that bed and cover her body with his and think of nothing but the pleasure they could give each other.
That would be easy and, by God, that was what he wanted. What he’d always wanted. So why he stood here and kept talking, he’d never fully understand.
