Leo’s vibrant, knowing eyes flared with something like satisfaction.
The heels brought her to the same level as his mouth. His lips were sculpted, with a perfectly defined cupid’s bow. His lower lip slightly fuller, giving him a sensual, almost brooding expression that the world loved. Right now, they tilted at the corners, carrying the hint of a smug smile. That he’d won? That she’d capitulated? Probably. She hated how she’d given in, but even more, how much she loved how the shoes looked and felt. How Leo knew.
And even with that complex conglomerate of emotions swirling inside, she longed to grab him by the tie, kiss him and wipe that devastatingly handsome smirk from his face. She took the tiniest of steps back as her fingers itched to simply reach out and take.
‘Great,’ she said. ‘Are you happy now?’
‘Very. Do you need—?’
‘I don’t need help. It’s not like I’ve never worn heels before. Let’s go.’
She grabbed her bag then turned in a rush at the top of the stairs, wanting to escape the craving that had overtaken her, which was turning her into someone she didn’t recognise any more. How Leo made her feel. How she felt like she’d sold out when Leo was right. They were only shoes, so why did it even matter?
Then her heel caught. She pitched forward. There was a shout, she flew, then…
Morbidity. Mortality. They were both words Leo had heard when Simone had been rushed by ambulance, unconscious, to Milan’s top hospital two weeks earlier.
That moment where she’d pitched forwards, tumbled and all he’d been left with at the end was a body at the base of the stairs. The blood. Even now the vision, running through his head as if it were a horror movie, jolted him like a current of electricity. Making his heart race. Twisting his gut. HesawSimone but imagined at the same time, his mother on a dark set of stairs, alone.
In both cases, the fall had been his fault. With his mother, for not making sure she had enough money so she wouldn’t have had to work nights, cleaning. She could have taken something easier, been safe at home instead of slipping on some stairs in the cold darkness.With Simone, giving her a wretched pair of shoes she hadn’t wanted. In the end, the gift more for his sake than hers, because he’d wanted to show her off, crush the moniker ofPlain Janefor ever. In the end, he hadn’t done what he’d promised her he would. He hadn’t protected her from stumbling.
Instead of a dinner he’d been looking forward to with a beautiful woman, wearing what he’d bought for her, he’d been plunged into a nightmare of his own making.
The memories were stark. Her lying in bed. Her eyes closed. The side of her face florid with dark bruising. And as he looked at her, willing her to keep breathing and begging her,Open your eyes, Simone. Please… The image was overlaid with one of his mother. Similarly unconscious, though with all the pleading in the world, she’d never opened her eyes again.
Fortunately, that hadn’t been the case for Simone. When she’d finally woken in critical care, confused and disorientated, he’d thanked the heavens for what he saw as a second chance even as the terror had gripped him. At first, she’d not been able to remember much, till the pieces of her life seemed to fall back into place like a jigsaw. The only thing she couldn’t recall was what had happened in the final moment at the top of the stairs, which he took as a blessing. He wished he was similarly afflicted and could forget the vision of her stumbling, flailing, falling.
‘Only a few more tests, Mrs Zanetti.’
‘Thank you Doctor,’ she murmured.
Leo leaned forwards in an armchair in Simone’s hospital room, where he’d spent most hours every day since she’d been moved here from critical care after her fall. He checked his phone. His driver reported the paparazzi were still parked outside the hospital as they had been ever since news had broken of Simone’s accident. The speculation about what had happened that night, salacious, until his lawyers had threated legal action and Simone had finally been able to issue a media statement. Or at least, his PR had issued the statement with her approval.
Thanking the hospital. Thanking Leo.
That last thanks was entirely undeserved.
He rubbed at the rough stubble on his chin, from going days without shaving, as the doctor asked her some more questions and performed yet more tests. Asked Simone to smell things, to look at charts. Neurological and other examinations all designed to test her mental status. The final steps before she was discharged.
‘How is your dizziness? Photophobia?’
The blinds of her private room were closed, the lights dimmed, so Leo didn’t need to hear her answer confirming she was still a little sensitive to light. He hadn’t considered himself a religious man, yet the fact Simone was sitting upright in a chair and able to see at all was like every prayer he’d cast to the universe had been answered. She’d been given back to him, when his mother had been committed to a grave, in darkness for ever.
‘Thank you for your care of my wife. Of us both.’ His words choked in his throat. He breathed through the burn at the back of his nose. Staff had been immeasurably professional and kind, especially when for a while they’d feared her condition was critical, till scans had proved her head injury wasn’t as serious as it might have been.
‘You’re doing well,’ the specialist said. ‘My star patient. We can discharge you today. I’ll arrange for staff to bring the necessary paperwork and book a follow up appointment.’
As the doctor made to leave, Leo stood, held out his hand. She’d been recommended as one of Italy’s finest neurosurgeons and nothing he could say to her would be enough to encompass how he felt in this moment.
‘I’d like to make a donation,’ he said. Money was all he had to atone for his sins. Just as it was for the people he’d harmed as a reckless teenager in Rome, it wasn’t enough, but it would have to do. ‘To the hospital foundation. Or is there a charity you’d prefer?’
‘That’s generous, Signor Zanetti. We have a foundation that evaluates novel brain injury treatment. However, there’s never enough funding.’
‘There will be now,’ he vowed. ‘I’ll have my office contact you for details.’
‘Grazie,’ she said and left the room.
He walked towards Simone, sitting in a chair wearing a soft, casual black dress from her wardrobe, with gold sneakers. Items she’d asked him to bring for her. It had seemed strangely intrusive, searching through her clothes, yet as he did so, he’d gleaned a bit more about her style. How some of the things she owned that he’d never seen before, seemed a little whimsical. He wondered when she wore them. A soft and silky scarf in cornflower blue, black and orange. Earrings with little dangling enamel lemons. Things he’d never imagined she might wear yet once he’d seen them, he somehow couldn’t imagine her not.
