The Italian's Innocent Bride

by Clare Connelly

  “I don’t want to talk about ‘us’ anymore.” She bit down on her lip and wished it were true. “That man… that man in the square… he said…”

  Carlo nodded. “I’m getting to that. I need to go in order, okay?”

  Jane frowned, curiosity making her silent. Finally she nodded.

  “You make me feel things I never knew possible. The jealousy I experienced, at the thought of you with another man, was… crippling.”

  Jane stared at her tea, but an angry button in her was being pressed. “You want to talk about jealousy? Our marriage gave me a crash course in it. I now consider myself a world expert.”

  He grimaced. “I have already told you that I ignored you. I am aware that I handled our… situation badly.”

  She rolled her eyes, in a childish gesture of annoyance. “Our situation? Don’t you mean our marriage? You were my husband and I loved you with all my stupid, inexperienced heart.”

  Carlo’s own heart turned over. “I know.”

  She took another sip of her tea, and continued to stare at the floor.

  “Until I met you, Jane, I didn’t know such goodness existed in the world.”

  Jane bit down on her lower lip, refusing to be swayed by his lavish compliments. She knew that he had found her virtuous and unsullied in an increasingly cynical world. That did nothing to justify his behaviour towards her.

  “I needed to marry you. To capture your beautiful sweetness; and to protect it.” He reached into the pocket of his shirt and pulled out some folded paper. “It never occurred to me that in marrying you, I was exposing you to the greatest risk of all.”

  She placed her teacup carefully down on the table before them.

  “You told me you were an orphan.”

  He nodded gravely. “I lied.”

  “Why?”

  Carlo wanted to touch her hand. In fact, he needed her to reassure him, but he didn’t know how to ask for it. So he sat back on the sofa, and eyed her watchfully. “I ran away from home when I was twelve years old. The day after I discovered my father’s place in the world of criminal enterprise. The extent of his involvement is gruesome and shameful.” He hesitated for a minute, then continued. “I didn’t want to risk you knowing the truth about him.”

  “Why? Did you think it would have changed how I felt about you?”

  Carlo’s laugh was uncomfortable. She had perfectly intuited his greatest fear. “I am the son of a murderer. My father runs a profitable organised crime network. That blood runs through my veins. Those impulses are here, in me.”

  “What?” Now, Jane couldn’t help but turn in her seat and stare at him. “That’s ridiculous.”

  “All our traits come from somewhere. I am very like him, Jane.”

  She dipped her head forward. “You are as black and white as they come. Your moralism is perfection. You are nothing like your father.”

  “You don’t know…”

  “I know you.” She interrupted with an angry hiss. “I know you would never hurt someone. Certainly not for profit. You ran away as a twelve year old because the idea of what he did for a living was so repulsive to you that you couldn’t live with him anymore. Life is not about who you are, it’s about the choices you make.”

  He was only half-listening. “I couldn’t escape it, in the end. I changed my name, and never attempted to return to that life. But it wasn’t enough. My father is a very powerful man, and there are many people prepared to go to great lengths to get at him.”

  Jane shook her head in confusion. “He said that. The man in the Piazza. But I don’t understand why your dad would care about me? How he would even know that I was linked to you?”

  Carlo reached out and ran his fingers over her hair. He couldn’t resist touching her now. He wondered if it might be the last time. Certainly, once he told her everything she needed to know. He braced himself for her anger, and said what he’d been thinking for years.

  “Our meeting was no accident, cara.”

  Frigid water filled her body. “What do you mean?”

  “The night before I ran away from home, I saw my father kill a man. I didn’t know what was going.” His eyes were almost black, sheened with the intensity of what he was saying. “Your birth father was the man my father killed, Jane. I swore I would discover that man’s family – though I didn’t know then who he was, nor that he even had a family. But I knew I had to do something to amend for my father’s cruelty. I had to at least make sure your life had not suffered because of my father’s actions.”

  Jane made a strangled sound of confusion. “I don’t understand. We met by chance. You were just a customer at the restaurant…”

  He shook his head slowly. “I was at the restaurant especially to see you. My meeting was a convenient cover. I had traced you to the bar.”

  Jane felt like she was going to be sick. Or pass out. Or both.

  “So you wanted to make amends. But why marry me?” She asked quietly, as his confession began to sink through her aching, weary mind.

  “I came to the restaurant to make amends, yes. Then I saw you, and everything changed. I fell in love with you, cara. You. What our fathers were, and did, ceased to matter. I fell in love with you.”

  Jane might have believed him, the day before. Now? Nothing made sense.

  He passed the folded pages to her, and she opened them out instinctively.

  She held them in fingers that shook, and read them quickly. Her skin was paper white as the full import of the misshaped words sunk in.

  “Someone sent you death threats.”

  “Not me. These were for you,” Carlo corrected grimly. He took the paper back and replaced it in his pockets. “The first came a month after we were married.”

  Jane’s stomach rolled. “So you decided you had to make me fall out of love with you?” She demanded, standing up and pacing across the room. “That if you treated me meanly enough, I would realise our marriage had been an awful mistake and I would leave you?”

  “Don’t you get it?” He responded, his voice rising to match hers. “I beefed up my security system here, and I did everything I could to keep you out of my public life. I would have taken you everywhere with me, Jane, if I hadn’t been living with the fear that every outing put you in increased danger.” He put his hands on her hips, trying to get through to her. “I kept you here because I loved you, not because I wanted you to go. I wanted nothing more, in that year we were married, than to be with you. I told myself that I was enough. That what we shared in bed would be enough. That it would keep you happy. I thought… I thought you were.”

  Jane wriggled out of his grip, and turned to stare out of the window. “I wasn’t,” she said honestly.

  “I understand that now.” He shoved his hands deep in his pockets and stared at the same sight she was. Beyond them, the view of Rome was a majestic carpet in the early afternoon sun.

  “You should have told me all this then.”

  Carlo was very still. Should he have? He’d wondered that himself. But she’d been so young. So unused to the ways of the sophisticated world he moved in. And the shame he’d carried because of the blood in his veins… how could he explain that to her?

  “That night,” Jane said quietly, her body unmoving. “The night before I left, I mean. You came to our room and said that you shouldn’t have married me. You meant… what did you mean?”

  His eyes flecked with remembered pain, but he didn’t speak.

  “What is it, Carlo? Tell me. I need to know.”

  “It’s… dealt with now,” he said stiffly.

  “No.” She shook her head, her insistence growing stronger. “Those words have haunted me. For three years, I have seen you in my mind. I’ve heard you saying them to me again and again. I need to know. Why?”

  His throat moved as he swallowed, and his eyes assumed a faraway look. “That night…” He cleared his throat, and tried to focus on that horrible period of time. “It was the opening of a hospital. I had committed to
go two years earlier, and I knew it was important.” He shifted in his seat.

  “Go on,” Jane was very still. She could sense that he was about to reveal something she’d been missing. Something she needed to know.

  “You were in our bedroom, and I was in my study. I was about to leave, when my phone rang.” His eyes were clouded with visible anguish. “It was Tony Parelli. My father.” He spat the words out; it disgusted him to refer to his murderous father by name.

  Emotions speared through Jane; curiosity at the forefront. “Your father?” She couldn’t disguise her condemnation as she added, “The father you told me was dead?”

  He nodded, and ran slightly unsteady fingers through his hair. “He had seen something about me in the paper. He wanted to ask me a favour. A business favour. Can you believe that? I hadn’t seen the man in over a decade, and he wanted to lure me into his fucked up world.” He shook his head. “I said no, and he said that he would at least like to meet you. To congratulate me on my marriage.” He lifted his eyes to her, and shook his head slowly. “My father is a murderer. He murdered your father. And there he was, trying to insinuate himself into my life, and yours.” He exhaled a long, slow breath. “I knew you were safe. I doubled the security at the Villa and I ditched the event I had been supposed to attend. Instead, I went to see him.”

  “You did?” She squeaked, shock making her voice unnaturally high. “What happened?”

  He opened his mouth and then closed it again. “Some details you are better not knowing. I made certain he would never disturb us again. I made it clear that you and I were not a part of his world. I made sure he knew that I would wish almost anyone else in the world to be my father, rather than him.”

  “Stop keeping secrets from me, Carlo,” she shouted, her eyes fixed on his demandingly.

  He thought about evading the question, but in the end, he didn’t. “We fought.”

  “Fought?”

  “We fought,” he repeated. “My father is not the virile, healthy man he was when I left home. He was weaker. Weakened by his lifestyle. But I attacked him.” He closed his eyes. “I punched him until his face was bloodied, because I was so terrified of what might happen to you.” His expression was haunted. “I had lived in fear for the entirety of our marriage. I had seen the death threats and I had wondered every day at the fact that someone out there could want to hurt you. You. Sweet, kind, beautiful you.”

  Jane swallowed, her eyes enormous in her face. She would not be derailed by sympathy. His situation had been hard for him, but of his own creation. “And then?”

  His laugh was filled with pain. “Then I got really drunk, flew back to Rome and took my fear of you being hurt out on you. The one person in this world I loved, and the one person in the world I wanted to protect.”

  Jane couldn’t hide her hurt. “I can’t believe this. It’s too much. Too many secrets. You should have been honest with me about all of this.”

  Carlo groaned. “I was trying to insulate you from it all. My father, who had killed your father. His enemies, who wanted to hurt you to hurt him. Don’t you see? My birth right was your threat. The genetic promise I could offer you was danger. My greatest fear was that this world I come from… that it would tear you apart.”

  Jane swallowed, and reached out for support. Her fingers connected with the white wall and she pressed against it firmly. He had wanted to protect her. He had been worried about the threats to her. She got it. But he’d gone about everything in the worst way possible. And instead of feeling adored and cherished, she’d felt sidelined and ignored. “You tore me apart,” she clarified simply. “Not your world. You. And you alone.”

  He nodded, a harsh expression on his face. “I didn’t see it that way then.”

  She moved her head stiltedly, a jerk of assent. A breeze brushed in from the window behind them, sending her hair wisping around her face. She reached up and tucked it neatly behind her ears. “I know. But neither of us can reach back and change the past.” She turned to face him, and her expression was set into a mask of determination. “I loved you so much, but I can’t let myself love you again.”

  At the look of deep surprise on his face, she almost stopped talking. But her own sanity was at stake.

  “I loved you, Carlo, but we’re bad for each other. I make you possessive and crazy, and you make me insecure and lonely.” She stood up on tiptoes, and forced herself to press a chaste, brief kiss against his stubble roughened cheek. “I have to go.”

  He wrapped his arms around her waist, disbelief making his voice hoarse. “No, Jane. You can’t.”

  She stayed close to him, because it felt so, so good. “I can. And I am.”

  He ran a hand along her back, from her neck to the small of her spine. “But you belong here.”

  She smiled sadly and shook her head. “Maybe once upon a time. Now not.” She stepped out of his arms, and walked purposefully towards the door. As her hand cupped the brass knob, she turned to face him.

  “And Liz?”

  He ground his teeth together. He had lied to her for too long, about too much. “You have to understand how worried I was about you. When you left me, I lost any ability to keep you safe.”

  “So Liz is… your proxy?”

  He nodded slowly. “One of my security agents. A trusted employee, and a friend.”

  Jane hadn’t thought she could feel any greater degree of sadness. But it tore through her now. Since leaving Carlo, her friendship with Liz had been the most meaningful of her life. And even that had been a lie.

  “Do you not see that everything I’ve done since you left me has been to keep you safe?”

  Jane dropped her hands to her side. “I didn’t want you to keep me safe. I wanted you to love me. That’s it. You had no right to do any of this.”

  “No right to want to make sure you weren’t murdered to avenge some stupid mafia grievance? Something so unconnected with you and me?”

  “Yes,” she said firmly. Her blue eyes shone with inner-strength. “I married you because I loved you. I left you because that wasn’t enough.” Her voice cracked and she took in a deep breath to steady herself. “I made those decisions. You should have trusted me to take care of myself. If I had known about the threats, I would have been able to take suitable measures. You left me vulnerable by not trusting me enough.” She darted her tongue out and traced an outline of her lower lip. “And you broke our marriage because you didn’t trust me enough.”

  “Jane,” he groaned, running his fingers through his dark hair and staring at her with desperation. “Tell me how to fix this.”

  She laughed, but her heart was breaking all over again. “Let me go, and don’t contact me again.”

  Carlo narrowed his eyes. “I don’t think I can do that.”

  “You must. If you care about me at all, and want me to be happy, then please just leave me alone.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  It had been raining for days. Jane hardly felt it. She walked slowly along the High street, pausing occasionally to stare in shop windows. She wasn’t looking to buy anything. Only to appear normal. It seemed to be what people did. Walk, browse, talk, smile.

  She was trying to go through the motions, but she felt entirely wooden. Would her facsimile of normality fool anyone? Probably not. But Jane couldn’t sit in her townhouse a moment longer. Rain or not.

  Unfortunately, she’d forgotten a coat. And an umbrella. Dressed in a simple black dress, she was soaked through. Her blonde hair was plastered to her face. Her feet were drenched.

  She moved onto the next window, scanning the eclectic arrangement of lamps and cushions. A pink one at the front was pleasing enough, but she didn’t go inside.

  With a sigh, she turned away and began to amble further down the street. She was wandering pointlessly. In the week since returning from Italy, she’d been perfectly without aim. Without destination or motivation. She hadn’t been miserable. She’d been numb. Totally devoid of emotion and feeling, she’d woken eac
h morning, and kept herself going, but nothing had penetrated her soul.

  She waited at the stop lights, to cross in the direction of her home.

  “Aren’t you cold, lady?” A young boy asked. He was sweet. Pudgy, with spiky black hair and dark brown eyes. His uniform was one she recognised; must have been from one of the local schools.

  She tried to force her lips into a smile, but suspected she looked deranged instead. “No.”

  “But it’s pouring with rain.”

  Jane nodded, and willed the lights to change. “I know that.”

  “Don’t you have a brolly?”

  Jane did smile now, but only for a second. “Somewhere. It’s always hard to find what you need, when you need it. Don’t you think?”

  His nose wrinkled. “My mum always stuffs one in my school bag.”

  “I see. You must have a very clever mummy.”

  The boy shrugged. The lights changed and Jane gave him a fleeting smile then walked across the street. It was the fastest she’d moved all week, and she went quickly only because she wanted to get away from the sweet young man, and the necessity for any further conversation.

  Her house was dark and dreary looking, despite the cheery window boxes. She paused outside, and flickered a gaze at it dubiously.

  She would sell it.

  It no longer felt like home. She wasn’t sure it ever really had. It had been a bolt hole. A sweet place to think of as home while she mended her broken heart. She wasn’t sure she could ask that of it again. And she certainly wasn’t sure her heart was repairable second time around.

  She moved slowly up the stairs and paused, her key in the lock, when a voice summoned her.

  “Jane.”

  She turned, hesitantly, her pulse firing through her body.

  “I’ve been waiting for you. God, you’re soaked through.”

  Jane nodded. “Liz. You’re back.”

  Her friend, or the woman she’d considered to be a friend, didn’t waste time with pleasantries. “I want to come in and talk. It’s important.”

  Jane realised, as she pushed the door open, that she was shivering. From the cold, or surprise of seeing Liz again, she couldn’t say.