‘And that’s the problem, cara. I don’t want you to love me as I am.’ He tried to cut himself off from the pain growing inside him, tried to make himself ice. ‘I’m not worth it. I’m selfish and manipulative. I’m single-minded and I’m cruel. And I don’t want to change. I won’t.’
A tear slid down the side of her nose, leaving a trail of silver, and it felt as if that fist was squeezing his heart into nothing but a bloody pulp.
This shouldn’t hurt so much.
He didn’t understand it.
‘I don’t want you to change,’ she said softly. ‘And I never asked you to.’
‘I know you didn’t. But it’s too late anyway.’ He tried to make the words sharp and cold, but there was a rough edge of pain he couldn’t quite hide. ‘I’ve made up my mind. You can’t stay with me. I won’t let you.’
She blinked hard, as if she was holding back her tears. ‘Okay. I get it now.’ Her throat moved as swallowed. ‘I know why you never came after me all those years ago.’
The change of subject caught him off-guard. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean, you were too afraid then and you’re too afraid now.’
His gut lurched. ‘No,’ he said harshly, trying to ignore it. ‘I was never—’
‘No,’ she cut him off, anger suddenly blazing in her eyes. ‘I don’t want to hear your excuses. I can handle you letting me go, but what the hell do I tell our son? That his papa didn’t want him any more? That he was too afraid of love to keep him?’
The pain deepened, broadened, inside him. Because of course there was someone else in this utter mess he’d created whom he had to consider. Someone else who would suffer because of him.
‘I’ll tell Simon myself...that situations change and that he’s better off with his mother. I will visit him, though. You can count on that.’
‘And I’m sure that will make him feel better,’ Matilda said, her voice caustic. ‘When he’s ripped away from what he thought was his home for a second time.’
Anguish twisted inside Enzo and there was a part of him dimly amazed by how much it hurt even now, when his heart was nothing but bloody pulp.
Why did he only realise what he was destroying when it was too late?
‘Simon’s better off without me,’ he said, harsh and cold. ‘I’ll do nothing but turn him into a carbon copy of myself. Of my father.’ He turned away abruptly, heading for the door, needing to get away from her. ‘I’ll book you and Simon flights to London tomorrow. You can stay in my Knightsbridge house for as long as you like.’
He’d reached the door by the time her voice came from behind him, cracked and raw-sounding. ‘I never thought that in the end you would be the one to run away, Enzo.’
For a second it felt as though she’d shot him.
But only for a second.
Then he walked out of the door without a backward glance.
CHAPTER TWELVE
ISOLA SACRA, THE island Enzo had bought from Henry St George, with its terraced gardens and white stone villa, was beautiful. Peaceful too, with the deep, blue sea all around, the waves lapping against the rocky cliffs.
There was a perfect little beach at the base of the cliffs beneath the villa where a boathouse had been built to house the small yacht Enzo had bought for his son.
One day Simon would come here to sail.
But it wouldn’t be today.
Enzo had spent the past week on the island cleaning up the ruins of his wedding, paying the people who needed to be paid and making his excuses to those who needed them, while ignoring those who didn’t.
The media of course made a big fuss, but he tried to keep the glare of the camera on himself and not on Matilda or Simon. His staff had reported that they were safe in his house in London—at least until they’d disappeared a couple of days later.
At the same time, he’d received a text from Matilda telling him she and Simon were heading out of town and that he needn’t try to look for them. It was easier for her to remain out of the public eye that way.
Everything in him had wanted to pay some people to go and find her, track her down to make sure she was safe, but he didn’t. Instead, he let her go.
It was the hardest thing he’d ever had to do.
The second hardest thing was being on this island, wandering the empty halls of the villa he’d built for his family and knowing that it was going to stay empty for ever.
He’d come back here, determined to have the home he’d wanted anyway—because he’d paid for it, by God. He’d sacrificed everything for it.
Yet it didn’t feel like home.
All it felt like was a house with no one in it.
A throne with no kingdom.
He didn’t know what to do with himself.
Every night he came into the room he’d planned for himself and Matilda, and he lay in the big, low four-poster bed hung with gauzy curtains patterned with jasmine flowers. For her scent.
And he lay awake, staring at the canopy above his head, a burning coal in his chest, painful and hot, eating him alive.
Nothing was going to put it out.
In the mornings, when he rose gritty-eyed from the bed from lack of sleep, and he came out onto the terrace to eat his breakfast, he kept seeing that beach where he’d been supposed to teach his son to sail.
And it made him want to smash something.
So he got up from the table, went into the bedroom, tore the jasmine-patterned curtains from the bed and ripped them apart from end to end.
Which naturally didn’t make him feel any better.
One morning the sound of helicopter rotors echoed in the air, and when he came out onto the terrace to see who was daring to interrupt his exile he saw his brother’s tall figure making his way through the gardens to the house.
Enzo waited on the terrace until Dante finally stepped out and then he said, ‘Go away, Dante. I have nothing to say to you.’
‘And good morning to you.’ Dante ignored him, coming over to the table and pulling up a chair. ‘You look like hell, if you don’t mind me saying.’
‘Didn’t you hear what I said?’ Enzo demanded.
‘Of course. I’m just choosing to ignore it.’
‘Dante—’
‘Enzo,’ Dante interrupted. ‘Sit down and shut up.’
There wasn’t anything else to do and, as he didn’t have the energy to put up a fight, Enzo sat down and shut up.
‘Now,’ Dante said, pouring himself some of the thick black coffee that stood in the carafe on the table. ‘Isn’t it time you stopped punishing yourself?’
Enzo blinked at him. He’d expected his brother to say many things, but it wasn’t that. ‘What?’
‘Papa was a bastard. And, yes, I know why Mama left and what she said to you. About how you poured out her wine—I’m afraid to say she preferred vodka—and how she told you that you were just like him. But she was wrong. You’re nothing like him, Enzo, and you never were.’
‘But I—’
‘Did you ever put a throne before anyone?’
‘No, but I—’
‘Did you ever ignore your own child so completely you made him feel like he didn’t exist?’
‘Dante—’
‘You were restless and impatient, and moody and volatile, sure. But you know what set you apart from him?’
‘Control,’ Enzo said flatly, finally getting a word in. ‘I controlled my emotions, unlike him.’
‘No, Enzo.’ Dante’s voice was unexpectedly gentle. ‘What set you apart from him was that you cared. You cared about people. You cared about Mama. And you cared about me.’
Enzo sat there, feeling as if he’d been turned to stone. ‘No, that’s a lie. It was myself I cared about. I didn’t care that she was—’
‘Drinking herself to death because she was
unhappy?’ Dante reached over, picked up his coffee cup and took a sip. ‘Mama had her issues, it’s true. But she didn’t need to put them all on you or blame you for them. And she did, Enzo. You were sixteen and you needed her. And she wasn’t there for you. You didn’t deserve to be abandoned the way she abandoned you. The way they both abandoned you. And it wasn’t your fault.’
‘I didn’t think it was.’ Liar.
Dante’s dark eyes were very direct. ‘Didn’t you? Cancelling your wedding? Sitting all alone here in this lovely villa? Letting go of Matilda and Simon, when anyone with eyes in their heads can see that they were the centre of your world?’
Enzo couldn’t speak. The words stuck in his throat, the burning in his heart taking everything. ‘I had to,’ he eventually forced out. ‘I would have only caused them hurt. I would have broken them the way I broke our family.’
‘Why? Because you poured out Mama’s wine? Because you believed her when she told you that you were like Papa?’ Dante snorted. ‘Please. You’ll have to think of better excuses than that. Now, if you really want to be like Papa, then by all means sit here sulking and thinking about everything you’ve lost. But there’s a beautiful girl out there who, if I’m not much mistaken, loves you. And every day you sit here is another day that you’re causing her pain.’ His brother raised a brow. ‘So what’s it to be? Here’s a hint for you: a truly unselfish man would give her the choice, not decide what’s best for her himself. Especially not if that decision was based solely on fear.’
The words shuddered down Enzo’s spine like an axe blade biting deep into a tree trunk.
She’d told him she loved him and he’d simply shut down even harder because he hadn’t wanted to hear it.
He hadn’t wanted to know.
He hadn’t wanted to look inside his own heart and examine why letting her go had hurt so much. Why, at the end, he’d been so afraid himself.
You love her too.
The hot coal burned in his chest. ‘I don’t deserve her,’ he said hoarsely. ‘I will never deserve her.’
Dante sipped his coffee and looked at him over the rim of his cup. ‘Maybe you won’t. But what she deserves is the chance to find out for herself.’
Another shudder went through him, deep and hard.
Yes, she did deserve that. And so much more. She deserved to have everything she wanted, and that included love.
She’d loved him as he was; she’d never asked him to change. She’d given him everything and never asked him for anything in return.
But, by God, she should have.
And now it was time for him to give back to her. With interest.
Enzo put his hands on the table top and he pushed himself out of his chair.
Dante raised a brow. ‘What are you doing?’
But Enzo was already moving. ‘If you don’t want to spend the next week on this island by yourself, you’d better come with me now.’
Dante put down his cup. ‘Why?’
‘Because I’m taking your helicopter.’
* * *
Enzo’s house in Knightsbridge was lovely, but Matilda knew she couldn’t stay there. There had been some media attention, once the news that the wedding had been cancelled had hit, but his staff had been very good at fending off the worst of it.
But still, she didn’t want to stay.
She didn’t want to be anywhere that reminded her of him.
Simon kept asking why Papa wasn’t with them, but she kept going back to what Enzo had told Simon the morning they’d left: that she and Simon would be going on a small holiday to visit England while Papa stayed in Italy working. He’d see Papa again soon enough.
Her son seemed to accept this though he kept talking about the island and the boat that Enzo had promised to teach him to sail in, and all the sandcastles he was going to build when they got ‘home’.
It made tears clog in Matilda’s throat.
She hired a car in the end—even though Enzo’s house had a garage full of them that she could have borrowed—and drove out of London, thinking that perhaps she’d take Simon to her aunt and uncle’s place. But when she got there she found the house shut up and empty. A neighbour told her that her aunt and uncle had gone on an extended cruise and wouldn’t be back for at least six weeks.
It hurt that they hadn’t told her. But then, they never told her what they were doing—as if, once she’d married Henry, it was out of sight, out of mind.
After that, she actually called Henry, thinking that perhaps she and Simon could visit and maybe stay. But he didn’t answer his phone.
There was nowhere for her to go after that, nowhere for her to stay.
She and Simon had no one.
She stayed the night in a run-down hotel beside the motorway, which was all she could afford as she was trying to use her own money and not Enzo’s, but Simon didn’t like it. He was grumpy and restless, and he didn’t want to go to bed. He wanted ‘a long mis-understandable story’ first. It took her a while to figure out that apparently Enzo had been telling him long bedtime stories in Italian that Simon hadn’t understood but that he really liked hearing anyway.
‘I miss Papa,’ he said as Matilda tucked him into bed.
‘So do I,’ she replied, her voice husky as she smoothed the bed clothes over her son, staring down into golden eyes so familiar, they broke her heart. ‘So do I.’
Once Simon was asleep, she sat on the run-down, musty-smelling couch and got out her phone, unable to stop herself from looking at the news sites, searching for any story about him. Just to see what he was doing. But, following the fuss over the wedding cancelation, any gossip seemed to have calmed down. Or maybe Enzo had just exerted his influence to silence it.
Her heart ached. Everything ached.
It should have made it easier that she hadn’t been the one to run this time, but it didn’t. If anything, it was worse. Because she’d told him that she loved him and he’d simply thrown that back in her face.
Love hadn’t been enough in the end.
But she wasn’t going to beat herself up like she had in the past, or settle for any scraps he was going to throw her, because if that had been true she would have begged Enzo that night. Got down on her knees and pleaded for him to keep her.
But she hadn’t. She’d walked away from him with her head held high.
This time she hadn’t been the one who was afraid. That was all on him.
There was a knock on the door and Matilda’s heart seized.
It wasn’t that late, but still it was dark outside, and she wasn’t expecting anyone. Who on earth could it be?
Simon was asleep in the bedroom so she quickly went over to the door and pulled it shut. Then she cast around for something large and heavy, just in case.
The knock sounded again and, failing to find a weapon, she crept over to the door, her heartbeat shuddering inside her chest, and put her eye to the peephole.
A tall, broad man stood outside, staring at her, and his golden eyes seemed to see straight through the peephole and into her.
Enzo.
A wave of fury washed through her and she’d flung open the door before she had a chance to think straight.
‘How dare you?’ she said in a shaking voice. ‘How dare you come back here and—?’
He didn’t let her finish. He merely reached out, cupped her face between his big palms and kissed her. And he kissed her. And he kissed her.
And then he urged her back into the room and kicked the door shut behind him.
Then he raised his mouth from hers and looked down at her, all fierce, predatory claim. ‘You were right, Matilda,’ he said roughly. ‘You were right about all of it. I thought letting you go was the right thing to do, that you and Simon needed to be protected from my selfishness. I’d already broken one family. I didn’t want to break another. But..
.’ His fingers were hot on her skin and her heartbeat wouldn’t slow down. ‘The only person I was protecting was myself. Cara, I didn’t want to be like my father, and yet I ended up proving my mother right and being exactly like him in the end. I was afraid and I let my fear be more important than the fact that you loved me.’ His voice got even rougher. ‘But it shouldn’t be.’
Her hands pressed against his chest, her throat tight and sore. She couldn’t breathe for the ache in her heart. Could barely understand what he was even saying. ‘Is that why you came back? To tell me you were afraid?’
His eyes were bright, blazing gold. ‘No. I came back to tell you that I love you, Matilda. That you are more important than my fear, than all my money, than my lost kingdom. You’re more important than anything on this earth, except perhaps my son.’ He kissed her, suddenly hard and fierce. ‘I’m yours. I was yours the moment I saw you on that island. Body and soul.’
He was holding her so tightly, his heat warming up the cold places inside her. All the cold places.
She shivered, curling her fingers into the cotton of his shirt, her heart feeling far too full and large for her chest. ‘I will never leave you,’ she said fiercely, holding onto him. ‘Understand me? There’s nothing you do that will make me walk away from you again.’
His gaze burned. ‘Don’t worry, cara. I wouldn’t let you anyway. You’re mine now. Truly mine. And I never let go of what’s mine.’ He gripped her a little tighter, fitting her more closely against him, as if he could make her part of him. ‘I think you’re what I’ve been wanting my whole life. Searching for and never finding, until I saw you on that island.’
Tears stung her eyes, but they were good tears this time. ‘Enzo...’
‘I’m afraid,’ he said softly. ‘Don’t let me break you. Don’t let me destroy what we have.’
‘You won’t break me and you won’t destroy anything.’ She pressed her hand above his heart. ‘You didn’t destroy your family, Enzo. That wasn’t your fault. You’re not your mother or your father, and I’m not my uncle and aunt. Yes, we’ll have difficult times, but don’t forget that we have something they never did. We have love. And it’s love that will get us through those difficult times, and it’s love that will heal us afterwards.’
Demanding His Hidden Heir (Mills & Boon Modern) (Secret Heirs of Billionaires, Book 26) Page 16
