‘Vito Silvestri. My father. Who had an affair withyourmother while he was still living with mine.’
Now it was Rocco’s turn to grab Leo by the shirt, twisting the neck tight. ‘Liar.’
Leo laughed, but it was a mirthless, mocking sound. ‘They were in business together. He stole my mother’s furniture designs and then left us destitute. Ask him. Take my DNA, I don’t care. It’ll prove I’m telling the truth,brother.’
He wrenched from Rocco’s grasp, a few buttons on his shirt tearing off, scattering on the floor. Then Leo threw some money on the bar—too much for the alcohol that had rotted his gut. But he didn’t care. Leo needed to go. He turned and stalked into the night. After all these years of believing Rocco Silvestri knew everything, it might be that he was as much a victim of their father’s sins as Leo was.
And knowing that didn’t make Leo feel any better at all.
Simone sat in the back of the taxi, caught in Milan’s notorious traffic. She tapped her fingers restlessly on her handbag, her stomach knotting painfully. Wanting to get to her destination faster, whilst at the same time wanting to ask the driver to turn round and take her back to her hotel. She reached inside her bag and took out a bottle of water, uncapped it and sipped. It didn’t help, just churning in her stomach together with the meagre breakfast she’d picked at, leaving her feeling ill. Because today was important. Today waseverything.
Like an interview for the most important job of her life.
She took a slow breath, looking out the window at the city that had felt more like home in what had only been a few short months, than New York had in years. Because home wasn’t about the place, it was about the people you were with. Or in her case, a person.
Leo. Who’d hurt her more than she’d believed any living human could have.
The man she still loved, with all of her heart.
Others might say she was the fool Leo had accused her of being, given the things he’d said to her. After leaving the Milan office, it’s what she’d believed, at first. That she’d been chasing a fantasy cooked up in her own head, and not reality. That he was yet another person who wanted her only for what she could do for him in some material way, rather than wanting her for the woman she was.
Yet she’d come to the belief, slow at first then with a shocking rush, that what Leo had done wasn’t because he felt too little.
It’s that he felt far too much.
The taxi moved forwards a few feet, stopped. Horns in the distance blared, the energy here still frenetic even though it appeared everything was at a standstill. A lot like her life.
Since leaving the Milan office what seemed like years ago but in what could be measured only in weeks, she’d been busy. First, nursing her crippling heartbreak. She’d flown straight to California to see Holly, to make sure her now heavily pregnant sister was really okay. There, she’d cried on Holly’s shoulder as her sister had held her. It was the first time in years Simone had accepted the support of another person without a fight. It was there those old insecurities had roared back—echoes from her parents, from her ex, from every voice that had ever whispered she wasn’t worth it.
Leo’s own words too—that he didn’t want her. She’d believed him. At first.
Until she’d turned to her phone, ready to delete every photograph of their time together and that’s when she’d stopped. Took a giant pause, as if the universe had come to a loud and screeching halt and screamed.
Use your eyes and your heart.
She didn’t much trust her heart at that moment, but her eyes? She’d scrolled back through her photographs and in her pain and through her tears shesaw. Lake Garda and then Milan. Their selfie, where he’d smiled. Not the professional smile that could make him millions but one that was deep and warm and true.
And then she began to reallythink. Not about his words, but his actions. How he’d considered what she might enjoy. How he liked surprising her. How he hadn’t left her bedside whilst she’d been in hospital. They were all the actions of a person who genuinely cared.
That’s when she’d stopped crying and got busy.
The taxi started moving again. Whatever had been holding them up had cleared. She’d be at Leo’s Milan home,theirMilan home, soon. There she’d fight for him, fight forthem. Simone had come to realise that while she’d spent her whole life believing she wasn’t enough, she strongly suspected Leo felt the same. And wasn’t that the trap? Two hurt and broken people believing the one they wanted could never want them in return? In the last few weeks she’d discovered so much more about the man Leonardo Zanetti truly was. Especially since she’d called the company accountant and learned what she could about Rome.
Because, whilst the press liked to write about Milan, Rome was where Leo’s real story began.
The taxi finally pulled up outside his house, and she paid, her heart beating a frantic rhythm in her chest. Taking out the keys he’d given her and hoping that he hadn’t changed the locks. Trying them.
They still fit.
Just like her and Leo, if only he’d recognise it.
Simone made her way quietly through the house finding him on the back terrace. He sat at the table, laptop open. Working on something because he consumed himself, both personally and privately. She relished the view of him against the backdrop of their home’s beautiful garden. His broad shoulders—the ones that had carried so many of her burdens and the burdens of others. Those burdens that he’d kept secret because he’d thought what he was doing showed the worst of him, when really, it showed thebest.
As she eased closer, it was like heknew. Leo stiffened and turned.
The moment those vibrant ocean-blue eyes fixed on Simone, twin aches of love and pain crashed over her like a wave onto the shore. Then she caught his expression-surprise and need, before it hardened and he hid behind the veneer he so often presented to the world.
Leo seemed to unfold from the chair, lifting himself up.
