Tears welled in her eyes, threatening to fall. Too much hurt and too much pain shimmered between them. He hadn’t trusted her to love her, and she hadn’t fought to prove that she did, because she’d been scared too. Hurt by his rejection of her, she’d built a steel wall around her so that nothing and no one could hurt her like that again. But if she’d tried…if she had reached out to him…
‘I—’
‘The car will take you to the airport,’ he said interrupting her, ending the conversation.
‘And what about you?’
‘I need some time to think. I’ll see you at the meeting.’
And with that, he stalked out of the room, but to Maria it felt as if he was stalking out of her life. Again.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Karl, her driverwhenever she was in Rome, eyed her warily in the car’s rear-view mirror.
‘Shouldn’t you be going in there, Ms G—I mean, Mrs—’
‘Not yet,’ Maria said, staring at the entrance to the Gallo Group Headquarters in Rome, through the blacked-out window of the town car.
She was watching them all arrive. Several generations of Gallo men, all dressed in impeccably tailored dark suits, with crisp white shirts and pinned ties. The family resemblance imprinted on similarly dark features.
Her phone vibrated with a message from Antonio.
I’m two minutes out.
She’d called him from the plane late last night, pouring her heart out to him in a way that she’d not been able to with Micha. Oh, she’d wanted to, but she hadn’t trusted herself that night. She’d been too hurt. Too confused. Too…ashamed.
Antonio had threatened to get in the car and drive to her right then and there, but Maria wasn’t even going to get into Italy for another four hours, so there’d have been no point. She’d wanted to know, needed to know, whether what Micha had said was right.
Antonio’s voice had been regretful.
‘I’d always known that it would have been hard for Micha to say no to Gio. And if Gio knew about you and Micha, of course he would have sent him away. And I…’
‘What?’
‘Well, I was so angry at how he’d hurt you, I refused to reach out to him.’ The shame in her cousin’s voice matched the one she felt in her heart.
‘You think he’s right then?’ she asked, not because she needed him to tell her. She knew that Micha was right. ‘That I…didn’t fight for him?’
‘I think we were all young. And,’ he said hesitantly, ‘I think you were hurt and trying to protect yourself. But I also don’t think that he’s entirely wrong, Maria. I’m not sure that, even with all the information available, you’d have beenableto choose Micha. Yes, you were a fighter, even back then, but Maria…you were seventeen. Your father would have disowned you, Gio would have had to fire Micha, he would have lost every bit of financial security he had. It would have been…’
‘Impossible,’ Maria finished when Antonio trailed off.
Maria had looked out of the plane window, just as she was doing now from the car. It hurt to even think that she would have chosen the company back then. It seemed inconceivable, but realistically, could she have?
‘Do you think Gio knew that? Do you think that’s why Gio sent him away?’ she had asked Antonio.
‘If you’re asking me whether Gio was somehow doing all this out of the kindness of his own heart? I can’t tell you that. He was a very manipulative, business-focused, difficult man. But speak to Enzo about it one day, he might have a different story to tell.’
She watched the last members of the board enter the building and held her breath. She realised that she was waiting for Micha. But she hadn’t seen him since she arrived, and didn’t know if he had got here before her.
Her door opened and her cousin smiled down at her with a familiar grin.
‘So. Are you ready to fight the family, Maria?’ Antonio asked.
‘I am ready to fightformy family,’ she replied, taking his hand and stepping out of the car.
She should have felt a little bad about turning up at her favourite designer’s studio last night at 11:00 p.m. Instead of going home from the airport, she’d called from the plane and explained what she wanted. Her friend had not disappointed.
