He would never forget his mother’s cold words when she’d cleaned the blood from his scalp.Stop giving him cause to correct you, Niccolo. It’s getting tiresome.
And people wondered why he’d chosen England to study his degree and had never returned to the family home.
That his mother was too frightened of his father to stop the beatings was the last lie Niccolo had told himself until Georgia, and as he looked again at the puddle of coffee spilt over the kitchen table from their lovemaking, everything inside of him tightened and then pulsed painfully.
He’d never been in control. Not with Georgia. Not of his emotions.
As much as he’d lied to himself in recent months that he’d have eventually bored of her as he’d done with all his other lovers, walking away from her had felt like amputating a limbwithout anaesthetic. He’d just been too proud to admit it... No, he’d been toofrightenedto admit it. Frightened to admit the depth of his feelings for her.
Lorenzo’s blackmail had given him a way out of a relationship that was more than he’d been equipped to handle, he recognised with pained self-recrimination. He’d made Georgia an offer that deep down he’d known she would refuse.
She came silently back into the kitchen.
He gazed at her for a long moment, absorbing all the emotions slamming into him.Dio, she looked so wan and vulnerable…
He pulled her into his arms.
There was only the slightest resistance before she wrapped her arms around him and sank her body into his.
“Have you taken the painkillers?” she whispered.
“No.” The pain from his wound was nothing compared to everything else he was feeling.
He was in love with Georgia.
That was the truth.
He’d always been in love with her. His brother had known it, he realised with another flash of insight. His best friend had known it too.
And Lorenzo Esposito had known it. Why else had he felt it necessary to put Georgia under surveillance?
We know everything about her,Rico Esposito, the youngest male offspring, had said in his voice message as Niccolo sped away from the wedding he’d abandoned.We know where she works, where her sister is, the addresses of all her friends, where she buys her food. Everything. We know things about her that even you don’t know…
The pregnancy. That’s what Rico had been alluding to.
Georgia had said she thought the pregnancy was the reason the Espositos were targeting her. What she didn’t know was whythey’d felt it necessary to watch her so closely in the first place that they’d discovered she was pregnant.
The only person who’d been blind to Niccolo’s feelings was Niccolo. And, he suspected with a painful twist of his heart, Georgia herself.
“You must be hungry,” he murmured. They’d been together since the middle of the night, and she hadn’t eaten a scrap of food. Neither of them had.
“Not really.”
“You need to eat,carina.”
She sighed into his chest. “I know. And you need to take some painkillers.”
“I’ll take the painkillers if you’ll eat. I’m sure there’s food if we look hard enough.”
“The cupboards are full. I looked through them earlier.”
“Then let me make you something to eat.”
There was a beat of silence. “Nic?”
“Yes,carina?”
“You can’t cook.”
