by Maisey Yates
A virgin.
His. Only his.
Except she had not been his. It had been a lie. The next morning, Alessia was gone. And when he’d returned to Sicily, she’d been there.
He’d been invited to a family party but he had not realized that all branches of the Corretti family would be present. Had not realized it was an engagement party. For Alessandro and Alessia. A party to celebrate the end of a feud, the beginning of a partnership between the Battaglias and the Correttis, a change to revitalize the docklands in Palermo and strengthen their family corporation.
“How long have you and Alessia been engaged?” he asked, his eyes trained on her even as he posed the question to Alessandro.
“For a while now. But we wanted to wait to make the big announcement until all the details were finalized.”
“I see,” he said. “And when is the blessed event?”
“One month. No point in waiting.”
Some of the old rage burned through the desire that had settled inside of him. She had been engaged to Alessandro when he’d taken her into his bed. She’d intended, from the beginning, to marry another man the night she’d given herself to him.
And he, he had been forced to watch her hang on his cousin’s arm for the past month while his blood boiled in agony as he watched his biggest rival hold on to the one thing he wanted more than his next breath. The one thing he had always wanted, but never allowed himself to have.
He had craved violence watching the two of them together. Had longed to rip Alessandro’s hands off her and show him what happened when a man touched what belonged to him.
Even now, the thought sent a rising tide of nausea through him.
What was it Alessia did to him? This wave of possessiveness, this current of passion that threatened to drown him, it was not something that was a part of him. He was a man who lived in his mind, a man who embraced logic and fact, duty and honor.
When he did not, when he gave in to emotion, the danger was far too great. He was a Corretti, cut from the same cloth as his father and grandfather, a fabric woven together with greed, violence and a passion for acquiring more money, more power, than any one man could ever need.
Even with logic, with reason, he could and had justified actions that would horrify most men. He hated to think what might happen if he were unleashed without any hold on his control.
So he shunned passion, in all areas of life.
Except one.
He pulled his car off the road and slammed on his breaks, killing the engine, his knuckles burning from the hard grip he had on the steering wheel, his breath coming in short, harsh bursts.
This was not him. He didn’t know himself with Alessia, and he never had.
And nothing good could come from it. He had spent his life trying to change the man he seemed destined to be. Trying to keep control, to move his life in a different direction than the one his father would have pushed him into.
Alessia compromised that. She tested it.
He ran his fingers through his hair, trying to catch his breath.
Then he turned the key over, the engine roaring to life again. And he turned the car around, heading away from the airport, away from the city.
He punched a button on his dashboard and connected himself to his PA.
“Lucia?”
“Sì?”
“Hold my calls until further notice.”
It had been three hours. No doubt the only reason her father and his men hadn’t come tearing through the airport was that they would never have imagined she would do something so audacious as to run away completely.
Alessia shifted in the plastic chair and wiped her cheek again, even though her tears had dried. She had no more tears left to cry. It was all she’d done since she’d arrived.
And she’d done more since it had become clear Matteo wasn’t coming.
And then she’d done more when she’d suddenly had to go into the bathroom and throw up in a public stall.
Then she’d stopped, just long enough to go into one of the airport shops and pick up the one thing she’d avoided buying for the past week.
She’d started crying again when the pregnancy test had resulted in two little pink, positive, yes-you’re-having-a-baby lines.
Now she was wrung out. Sick. And completely alone.
Well, not completely alone. Not really. She was having a baby, after all.
The thought didn’t comfort her so much as magnify the feeling of utter loneliness.
One thing was certain. There was no going back to Alessandro. No going back to her family. She was having the wrong man’s baby. A man who clearly didn’t want her.
But he did once.
That thought made her furious, defiant. Yes, he had. More than once, which was likely how the pregnancy had happened. Because there had been protection during their times in bed, but they’d also showered together in the early hours of the morning and then … then neither of them had been able to think, or spare the time.
A voice came over the loudspeaker, the last call for her flight out to New York.
She stood up, picked up her purse, the only thing she had with her, the only thing she had to her name, and handed her ticket to the man at the counter.
“Going to New York?” he asked, verifying.
She took a deep breath. “Yes.”
CHAPTER TWO
HE’D NEVER EVEN opened the emails she’d been sending him. She knew, because she’d set them up so that they would send her a receipt when the addressee opened her message, but she’d never gotten one.
He didn’t answer her calls, either. Not the calls to his office, not the calls to his mobile phone, not the calls to the Palazzolo Corretti, or to his personal estate outside Palermo.
Matteo Corretti was doing an exceptional job of ignoring her, and he had been for weeks now while she’d been holed up in her friend Carolina’s apartment. Carolina, the friend who had talked her into a New York bachelorette party in the first place. Which, all things considered, meant she sort of owed Alessia since that bachelorette party was the source of both her problems, and her pregnancy.
No, that wasn’t fair. It was her fault. Well, a lot of it was. The rest was Matteo Corretti’s. Master of disguise and phone-call-avoider extraordinaire.
She wished she didn’t need him but she didn’t know what else to do. She was so tired. So sad, all the time. Her father wouldn’t take her calls, either, her siblings, the most precious people in her life were forbidden from speaking to her. That, more than anything, was threatening to burn a hole in her soul. She felt adrift without them around her. They’d kept her going for most of her life, given her a sense of purpose, of strength and responsibility. Without them she just felt like she was floundering.
She’d had one option, of course. To terminate the pregnancy and return home. Beg her father and Alessandro for forgiveness. But she hadn’t been able to face that. She’d lost so much in her life already and as confused as she was about the baby, about what it would mean for her, as terrified as she was, she couldn’t face losing the tiny life inside of her.
But she would run out of money soon. Then she would be alone and penniless while Matteo Corretti spent more of his fortune on sports cars and high-rise hotels.
She wasn’t going to allow it anymore. Not when she’d already decided that if he didn’t want to be a part of their baby’s life he would have to come tell her to her face. He would have to stand before her and denounce their child, verbally, not simply by ignoring emails and messages. He would have to make that denouncement a physical action.
Yes, she’d made the wrong decision to sleep with him without telling him about Alessandro. But it didn’t give him the right to deny their child. Their child had nothing to do with her stupidity. He or she was the only innocent party in the situation.
She looked down at the screen on her phone. She had her Twitter account all set up and ready to help her contact every news outlet in the area.
&nbs
p; She took a breath and started typing.
@theobserver @NYTnews @HBpress I’m about to make an important announcement re Matteo Corretti & the wedding scandal. Luxe Hotel on 3rd.
Then she stepped out of the back of the cab and walked up to the front steps of Matteo’s world-renowned hotel, where he was rumored to be in residence, though no one would confirm it, and waited.
The sidewalks were crowded, people pushing past other people, walking with their heads down, no one sparing her a glance. Until the news crews started showing up.
First there was one, then another, and another. Some from outlets she hadn’t personally included in her tweet. The small crowd drew stares, and some passersby started lingering to see what was happening.
There was no denying that she was big news. The assumption had been that she’d run off with Matteo but nothing could be further from the truth. And she was about to give the media a big dose of truth.
It didn’t take long for them to catch the attention of the people inside the hotel, which had been a key part of her plan.
A sharply dressed man walked out of the front of the hotel, his expression wary. “Is there something I can help you with?”
She turned to him. “I’m just making a quick announcement. If you want to go get Matteo, that might help.”
“Mr. Corretti is not in residence.”
“That’s like saying someone isn’t At Home in a Regency novel, isn’t it? He’s here, but he doesn’t want anyone to know it.”
The reporters were watching the exchange with rapt attention, and the flash on one of the cameras started going, followed by the others.
“Mr. Corretti is not—”
She whirled around to face him again. “Fine, then if Mr. Corretti is truly not in residence you can stand out here and listen to what I have to say and relay it to your boss when you deliver dinner to the room he is not in residence in.”
She turned back to the reporters, and suddenly, the official press release she’d spent hours memorizing last night seemed to shatter in her brain, making it impossible to piece back together, impossible to make sense of it.
She swallowed hard, looking at the skyline, her vision filled with concrete, glass and steel. The noise from the cars was deafening, the motion of the traffic in front of her making her head swim. “I know that the wedding has been much talked about. And that Matteo chasing me out of the church has been the headline. Well, there’s more to the story.”
Flashes blinded her, tape recorders shoved into her face, questions started to drown out her voice. She felt weak, shaky, and she wondered, not for the first time, if she was completely insane.
Her life in Sicily had been quiet, domestic, one surrounded by her family, one so insular that she’d been dependent upon imagination to make it bearable, a belief of something bigger looming in her future. And as a result, she had a tendency to romanticize the grand gesture in her mind. To think that somehow, no matter how bleak the situation seemed, she could fix it. That, in the end, she would make it perfect and manage to find her happy ending.
She’d done it on the night of her bachelorette party. New York was so different than the tiny village she’d been raised in. So much bigger, faster. Just being there had seemed like a dream and so when she’d been confronted with Matteo it had seemed an easy, logical thing to approach him, to follow the path their mutual attraction had led them down. It was a prime example of her putting more stock in fantasy, in the belief in happy endings, over her common sense.
This was another.
But no matter how well planned this was, she hadn’t realized how she would feel, standing there with everyone watching her. She wasn’t the kind of woman who was used to having all eyes on her, her aborted wedding being the exception.
“I’m pregnant, and Matteo Corretti is the father of my baby.” It slipped out, bald and true, and not at all what she’d been planning to say. At least she didn’t think it was.
“Mr. Corretti—” the employee was speaking into his phone now, his complexion pallid “—you need to come out here.”
She released a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding.
“When is the baby due?”
“Are you certain he’s the father?”
“When did you discover you were pregnant?”
The questions were coming rapid-fire now, but she didn’t need to answer them because this was never about the press. This was about getting his attention. This was about forcing a confrontation that he seemed content to avoid.
“I’ll answer more questions when Matteo comes to make his statement.”
“Did the two of you leave the wedding together, or are you estranged? Has he denied paternity?” one of the reporters asked.
“I …”
“What the hell is going on?”
Alessia turned and her heart caught in her throat, making it impossible to breathe. Matteo. It felt like an eternity since she’d seen him, since he’d kissed her, put his hands on her skin. An eternity.
She ached with the need to run to him, to hold on to him, use him as an anchor. In her fantasies, he had long been her knight in shining armor, a simplistic vision of a man who had saved her from a hideous fate.
But in the years since, things had changed. Become more complex, more real. He was her lover now. The father of her child. The man she had lied to. The man who had left her sitting alone in an airport, crying and clutching a positive pregnancy test.
For a moment, the longing for those simple, sun-drenched days in Sicily, when he had been nothing more than an idealized savior, was so sharp and sweet she ached.
“Mr. Corretti, is this why you broke up the wedding?”
“I didn’t break up anyone’s wedding,” he said, his tone dark.
“No, I ran out of the wedding,” she said.
“And is what why I broke up the wedding?” he asked, addressing the reporter, stormy eyes never once looking at her.
“The baby,” the reporter said.
Matteo froze, his face turning to stone. “The baby.” Color drained from his face, but he remained stoic, only the change in his complexion a clue as to the shock that he felt.
He didn’t know. She felt the impact of that reality like a physical blow. He hadn’t even listened to a single message. Hadn’t opened any emails, even before she’d started tagging them to let her know when he opened them.
“Is there more than one?” This from another reporter.
“Of course not,” Matteo said, his words smooth, his eyes cold like granite. “Only this one.”
He came to stand beside her, his gaze still avoiding hers. He put his arm around her waist, the sudden contact like touching an open flame, heat streaking through her veins. How did he manage to affect her this way still? After all he’d done to her? After the way he’d treated her?
“Do you have a statement?”
“Not at this point,” he bit out. “But when the details for the wedding are finalized, we will be in touch.”
He tightened his hold on her waist and turned them both around, away from the reporters, leading her up the steps and into the hotel. She felt very much like she was being led into the lion’s den.
“What are you doing?” she asked, wishing he would move away from her, wishing he would stop touching her.
“Taking you away from the circus you created. I have no desire to discuss this with an audience.”
If he wasn’t so angry with her, she might think it was a good idea. But Matteo Corretti’s rage was like ice-cold water in a black sea. Fathomless, with the great threat of pulling her beneath the waves.
His hold tightened with each step they took toward the hotel, and her stomach started to feel more and more unsettled until, when they passed through the revolving door and into the hotel lobby, she was afraid she might vomit on the high-gloss marble floors.
A charming photo to go with the headlines.
He released her the moment they were fully inside. “What the
hell is the meaning of this?” he asked, rounding on her as his staff milled around very carefully not watching.
“Should we go somewhere more private?” she asked. Suddenly she felt like she’d rather brave his rage than put on a show. She was too tired for that. Too vulnerable. Bringing the press in was never about drawing attention to herself, it was about getting information to Matteo that he couldn’t ignore. Giving the man no excuse to say he didn’t know.
“Says the woman who called a bloody press conference?”
“You didn’t answer my calls. Or return my messages. And I’m pretty sure now that you didn’t even listen to any of them.”
“I have been away,” he said.
“Well, that’s hardly my fault that you chose this moment to go on sabbatical. And I had no way of knowing.”
He was looking at her like she’d grown an extra head. “Take me to your suite,” she said.
“I’m not in the mood, Alessia.”
“Neither am I!” she shot back. “I want to talk.”
“It’s just that last time we were in this hotel, talking was very much not on the agenda.”
Her face heated, searing prickles dotting her skin. “No. That’s very true. Which is how we find ourselves in this current situation.”
“Communication seems to be something we don’t do well with,” he said. “Our lack of talking last time we were here together certainly caused some issues.”
“But I want to talk now,” she said, crossing her arms beneath her breasts.
He cocked his head to the side, dark eyes trained on her now with a focus he’d withheld until that moment. “You aren’t afraid of me.”
“No.”
“A mistake, some might say, cara mia.”
“Is that so?”
“You won’t like me when I’m angry.”
“You turn green and split your pants?”
“Perhaps taking this somewhere private is the best idea,” he said, wrapping his fingers around her arm, just above her elbow, and directing her toward the elevator.
He pushed the up button and they both waited. She felt like she was hovering in a dream, but she dug her fingernails into her palms, and her surroundings didn’t melt away. It was real. All of this.
