“You might have married her because of my ultimatum but you fell in love with her. Anyone who spent any time with you two could see that. And she loved you.” Valentino clicked his fingers in the air with impatience. “You had what we had, son. You had a woman who truly loved you, who wanted to share her life with yours. You had something so much more precious than I can explain. I thought you got that.”
Luca clenched his jaw. “It was always a means to an end.”
Valentino shook his head. “I’m starting to think I was wrong about you. I thought you were smarter than this.”
“Then it’s a good thing you’ve already irreversibly transferred the holdings to me.”
Valentino’s hand shook a little as he brushed it through his hair. “There is only one thing on earth that ever mattered to me more than our companies, Luca, and that was your grandmother. I would have given all of this up if she’d asked it of me. I would have turned my back in a heartbeat. Because she was my everything.” He sighed heavily. “And for a while, I truly believed you’d found the same. Perhaps you did, and you let it go. In which case, you will regret it for the rest of your life.”
* * *
Ally shifted uncomfortably,barely able to dredge up a smile as she compared the way she’d flown to Luca’s villa in such first-class comfort with this god-awful bus trip into Manhattan. Rather than sprawling luxury and staff who would do anything she asked, she was crammed in the middle of a family of eight, who were apparently intending to play road trip games the entire way.
It didn’t matter.
She no longer felt anything, anyway. Discomfort was by the by. Irritation at their noise, the same.
She stared out at the passing scenery, a month after leaving Italy, and saw only the pristine waters of the Tyrrhenian sea. She closed her eyes and saw Luca, and her heart splintered further and further apart.
In Manhattan,she found a small bedsit, and started applying for jobs. It was easy to find something as a waitress. The money was average but the tips were good, and the work was so busy that the days went quickly. She was usually so tired at night that she got home and flopped onto the sofa bed, pulled the quilt up and fell asleep almost immediately.
But sleep was no escape.
Not from the dreams that tormented her, and the confusion that dawn always brought. In the liminal morning light, he was there. Luca. A part of her, just across the mattress. She always reached for him, always had that moment of remembering.
He was far away, and she was alone. Just as always. He had no easy way of contacting her. She had needed a clean break, so she’d changed her number. She had, however, needed to engagea lawyer, for the purpose of divorcing Luca, and she’d done so on the strictest instructions that her whereabouts were not to be disclosed.
She didn’t know why, but she had a feeling she couldn’t shake that he might try to see her. To check that she was okay. Maybe even to proposition her again, and she didn’t know if she’d be strong enough to say ‘no’ a second time, and so she intended to stay hidden.
Strangely,the first month after leaving Italy passed in a blur of logistics. Packing up her old life, selling the few possessions she and her father had, and then moving to New York and finding work. It was the second month that hit her like a freight train. Work had become second nature, a blissful escape.
But when she came home, grief swallowed her.
There was no longer the challenge of beginning a new life.
She had done that; she was living it. It was facing the reality of Luca not being a part of it, that he never would be again, that made her ache and weep, the emptiness inside of her utterly pervasive.
And she knew it would be this way forever.
* * *
Luca staredat the email with a fury unlike any he had ever known. Even when Marco had died, it had not been like this. For then, there’d been someone to blame, an incident to study. Now? His anger was directionless. A broad-spectrum emotion that seemed to pour out of him.
A petition for divorce.
He stared at the words and wanted to reach into his computer and rearrange them.
Divorce.
The word was like a dagger in his side. It was so final. So goddamn final.
Even when he hadn’t seen Allegra for eight long, cold weeks, he had still thought of her as his wife, and that had brought him comfort.
She was putting an end to that, seeking to push him out of her life once and for all.
He couldn’t bear it—but he still didn’t stop to ask himself why.
* * *
