by Jennie Lucas
His shoulders were suddenly tense. He knew what she meant. Dropping his hand, he said defensively, “I was working at the hotel—”
“It doesn’t matter. You failed to uphold my rules. So you’re in breach of our agreement,” she said, stepping back.
Her husband stared at her, his dark eyes wide. His lips parted to speak and closed again.
He looked vulnerable. Shaken.
Hallie forced herself not to care, to treat him exactly as he’d treated her.
“As you’re in breach of the prenup, I will get primary custody. So I’m taking Jack with me to New York. Please feel free,” she added lightly, in the same tone he’d used, “to visit whenever you want.”
Cristiano stared at her in shock, not moving.
No. Hallie blocked the pain from her heart. She wasn’t going to feel anything. She wasn’t going to let him push her around ever again.
She turned away, dragging the suitcase behind her. Stopping at the door, she faced him one last time across the shadowy bedroom where they’d once set the world on fire.
“Thank you, Cristiano.” Her voice echoed between them as she said flatly, “Thank you for teaching me how the world really is.”
And she left.
CHAPTER NINE
“SIGNOR.” LOOKING UP from where he’d been pacing the hotel’s terrace just after dawn, Cristiano saw Luca Pizzati, the new manager. The young man gave him an apologetic smile. “Sir, you are acting crazy. The entire staff is threatening to quit.”
Cristiano’s mouth fell open. How could the man say such a thing?
The day after his wife and child left him, Cristiano had planned to leave for Tokyo. And after that, Seoul. And after that... Cristiano couldn’t remember. But he’d been forced to stay in Cavello. Something wasn’t right here, and until he could find the source of the problem, he couldn’t leave. He could barely eat or sleep. All he could do was pace the halls of the hotel, checking every detail, trying to find the problem that haunted him, taunted him, just out of his reach.
“Look at this,” Cristiano ground out. He yanked a purple flower from a bougainvillea bush that was a slightly different shade from the rest. “A disgrace! Do I have to fix everything?”
The young manager looked at the flower, then Cristiano.
“Signor Moretti,” he said gently, “when was the last time you slept?”
He bit out furiously, “How can I sleep, until the hotel is perfect?”
“It will never be perfect,” the manager said. “Because people are living in it.”
Cristiano took a deep breath. Blinking hard, he looked up at the beautiful new hotel. It was already full of guests and getting nothing but praise. He looked down at the flower in his hand. He’d been about to scream at the gardening staff because the bougainvillea flowers were not all the exact same shade of purple.
Pizzati was right. He was acting crazy.
Crushing the bloom in his fingers, Cristiano tossed it to the ground.
“You’re right,” he said in a low voice. “Please give the staff my apologies. I...I will stop.”
The manager came closer, a look of concern in his eyes. “Shall I send for your driver? Or would you like Esposito to take you home?”
The empty villa was the last place Cristiano wanted to be. There, he heard only the echoes of his baby son’s laughter in the nursery, of his wife’s sweet singing in the garden. And in the bedroom, the haunting echo of her soft moans from the times he’d made love to her.
Lost, all lost.
And he was tired. So tired. Thinking of his wife and child, a strange ice spread slowly through Cristiano’s body, down his neck, to his spine, until his fingers and toes felt numb. At that point he felt nothing, absolutely nothing.
“Sir?”
He focused with effort. Then he nodded heavily. “Thank you, Mr. Pizzati. I leave the hotel in good hands. Please order my pilot to ready the plane for Tokyo.”
“Of course, sir.” The manager sounded relieved. Cristiano could only imagine how many problems he’d caused the man over the last ten days.
He tried to remember what his scheduled meetings in Asia were about. Marcia had left him multiple messages, as had various board members, all of which he’d ignored. He took a deep breath. He pictured the Campania Hotel Tokyo, ultramodern and gleaming in the Shinjuku district.
But when he tried to recall the details, all he could remember was the darkness in his wife’s eyes the night she’d left him.
Thank you for teaching me how the world really is.
“Have a pleasant trip, sir,” the manager said.
Turning, Cristiano left the terrace without a word. When he came out of the lobby into the bright Italian sunshine, Marco was waiting to take him back home.
Home. The word tasted bitter on his tongue. There was no such thing. It was a lie. A dream. Like love.
As the Rolls-Royce passed through the gate one last time, he looked up at the magnificent nineteenth-century villa. He wished he’d never come here. He’d done it to prove that he’d triumphed over his past.
Instead, it had triumphed over him.
When Hallie had told him she loved him, he should have said the words back to her and made her believe them. Why hadn’t he tried? It would have been a lie, but at least their marriage would have endured. She would never have known the difference.
Why, instead, had he mocked her, then told her the truth—that he didn’t have the ability to love her or anyone? Was it pride?
Or had he just wanted one person on earth to really, truly know who he was deep inside? A man so flawed that he didn’t know what love was, or home?
But he did know one thing.
He looked at Luigi Bennato’s spectacular villa, clinging to the cliffs above the bright blue sea.
He was done with this place. He would put it on the market at once.
An hour later, after the staff had packed his clothes, he was on the way to a private airport twenty minutes inland.
Cristiano stared out of the sedan’s back seat window, not noticing the palm trees or tiny stone churches or lush groves of lemon trees.
He wondered how Hallie was enjoying New York. Was she happy? How was the baby?
Was Hallie already looking for a new home? A new love?
His stomach twisted.
He’d heard she’d signed some kind of record deal with a top executive at an independent label in New York, the man who’d casually given her that card in Rome. Life could be like that. One chance meeting could change your life.
Like coming home early to find a beautiful maid singing in his penthouse while she changed the sheets of his bed.
Clarence Loggia, the manager of the Campania New York, had called Cristiano last night to tell him that Hallie’s agent had arranged for her to make her big debut tonight at the Blue Hour, the hotel’s jazz club.
“I assume you approve,” Clarence had said delicately.
His wife? Appearing on stage, singing for strangers, while Cristiano was on the other side of the ocean? No way. He wanted her to sing only for him, like a songbird in a cage.
Closing her eyes, he’d thought of Hallie’s sweet, haunting voice. Her songs of longing and heartbreak. Love. Home. Family.
“No...” Cristiano had started, but he forced himself to finish, “No problem. Tell the club’s manager to give her everything she needs. The best time slot, good lighting, advertising. Everything.”
“Of course, Signor Moretti.” He’d paused. “You will be there, no?”
“No,” Cristiano had replied, and he’d hung up.
He wondered how Hallie was feeling right before her New York debut. Was she scared? Would the audience appreciate her, as she deserved? Would they realize what a gift she was to them?
Staring out the window, he saw they were passing an old
shack he knew, even though he’d never been there.
There was only one way to put the past behind him. Only one way to truly triumph over it, once and for all. And it had nothing to do with money.
You’ll never talk to him, will you? You hate him beyond all reason. You’ll never be free.
“Stop,” he said.
His driver looked confused but obligingly pulled over into a gravel drive on the side of the road.
“Wait here,” he told Marco and Salvatore.
Outside, as he shut the sedan door behind him, he could hear the roar of the sea beneath the cliff, hear the soft sway of palm trees in the hot summer wind, scented with sea salt and spices from across the Mediterranean.
His heart was pounding as he slowly went to the front door. I’m afraid of nothing, he told himself. He pounded on the door with his fist. He heard footsteps. Then it opened.
And Cristiano saw Luigi Bennato for the first time in fifteen years.
The man looked bowed, gray. A shadow of the boisterous, vital man he remembered. Had time done this? he wondered. Or had it been his betrayal?
Seeing him, Luigi’s dark eyes widened. Suddenly life and color came back into the old man’s pale cheeks. “Cristiano?”
“I’m giving you back your villa,” he said tersely. “It’s yours. Keep it. Just never contact me or my family again.”
Hands clenching at his sides, he turned away.
“No,” the old man said.
Cristiano stopped, turning around in shock. “What?”
The gray-haired man looked at him. “I don’t need a villa. What I need,” he whispered, “is a son.”
“You should have thought of that before you tried to force my mother to get rid of me when she was pregnant,” he said, “then tossed her out on the street.”
“All I did was keep her from drinking while she was pregnant. And she hated me for it.”
“Why would you do that?”
“Because from the moment Violetta told me she was pregnant, I loved you.”
The wind blew softly against Cristiano’s face. From a distance, he could hear traffic on the road, the cry of seagulls.
“That’s a lie,” he said in a low voice.
“You know how she was. You know better than anyone,” he said sadly. “Violetta was beautiful. Charming. But so broken. She accused me of keeping her prisoner. A few months before you were born, she disappeared without a trace.”
Cristiano thought of his mother’s fury if anyone tried to take her alcohol away. Once, when he was nine, he’d dared to pour out her bottles of whiskey while she was passed out. She’d slapped him so hard his ears rang for weeks.
“You made her a drunk.”
“I did?” Luigi slowly shook his head. “We met in a bar, when she offered to buy me a drink. I’d never seen any woman hold her liquor so well. Stupidly, I was impressed.”
That made sense to Cristiano, too. Agata had told him that when she worked for Bennato, the man had rarely touched alcohol. He took a deep breath.
“If you knew I existed, and you claim to care,” he said slowly, “why didn’t you keep trying to find me?”
“I did. For years,” the old man choked out. He blinked fast, shaking his head. Tears streamed down his wrinkled cheeks. “But you’re right,” he whispered. “I should have looked harder. It wasn’t until I saw her picture in the paper, a few days after she died, that I knew where you were. But before I could leave for Naples, you showed up at my hotel in Capri, asking for a job. I thought it was a miracle. I thought it was my chance.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
“I told myself I needed proof first. But the truth was... I was afraid.” He swallowed. “After the way Violetta raised you, why would you ever forgive me? I was a coward. And I waited too long. By the time I had proof you were my son, you’d already left. And I didn’t want to cause you more pain.”
“I betrayed you.”
“I didn’t see it as a betrayal.”
“How did you see it?”
The elderly man whispered, “Justice.”
A tear slid down his wrinkled cheek.
Cristiano stared down at him in shock. Everything was different than he’d imagined. Everything.
“Can you ever forgive me?” Luigi choked out. He reached his shaking hand to Cristiano’s shoulder. “I loved you so much. But I could not protect you. I failed.”
Cristiano stood frozen in front of the old wooden shack. The sun felt too bright on his face. Clenching his jaw, he looked out at the sea.
Hallie had tried to tell him. She’d tried to save him from his own darkness.
“So you just let me destroy you,” Cristiano said slowly. “You let me take everything from you, and make it mine.”
“Of course I did,” Luigi said quietly. “You’re my son. Your happiness means more to me than my own. I love you.”
Cristiano heard the echo of Hallie’s voice.
Love makes a family. Love makes a home.
“My mother said you abandoned us,” he said. “After she died, I wanted to make you suffer.”
“It’s not your fault, my son,” Luigi said hoarsely. “I should have taken you into my arms the day you walked into my hotel. I should have—”
With a sob, Luigi pulled him into his arms.
For a moment, Cristiano stiffened.
“So much time has been lost,” Luigi whispered, hugging him. “Because I was afraid. Because I was ashamed. Years we can never get back. Oh, my son. Can you forgive me?”
So much time has been lost.
Still held in his father’s arms, Cristiano thought of the ten days he’d been separated from his wife and child. Ten days had felt like eternity, driving him half-mad.
What if they were separated for a lifetime? Until he, too, was apologizing for his cowardice and shame?
He gasped, and suddenly realized he was hugging his father back. Hearing Luigi’s sobs of joy, Cristiano’s heart cracked in his chest.
Emotions suddenly poured through him. Grief and anguish and every other feeling he’d blocked for years. Everything he hadn’t let himself feel.
And love.
Love so big it seemed to be exploding out of his body with light brighter than the sun.
As he stood in a little village on the edge of the Amalfi Coast, hugged by his father for the very first time, Cristiano took a deep breath. Even the air seemed different in his lungs.
“Thank you for that,” Luigi said, finally releasing him. He wiped his eyes. “You’ve made an old man so happy.”
As Cristiano stared down at his father, everything became crystal clear.
Hallie.
Oh, God, how could he not have realized it before?
She was the one who’d tried to convince him to forgive his father. She’d loved Cristiano, even when he didn’t deserve it. She’d seen the hurt and darkness inside him, and, instead of scorning him, she’d tried to heal it. She’d been brave enough to love him, flawed as he was.
He’d tossed it back in her face.
His spine snapped straight as he looked across the sea and realized, for the first time, exactly what love meant. What family meant.
Love didn’t consume, like fire.
It gave, like the sun.
Cristiano took a deep breath and felt his shoulders expand as he sucked all the world into his lungs. His eyes narrowed in a private vow.
If she forgave him, he would show her that her faith in him hadn’t been wrong.
He would give his wife, every single day on earth, a reason to sing.
“Cristiano?”
Eyes wide, Cristiano stumbled back from his father.
“I have to go find Hallie,” he said. “I have to tell her...tell her...”
“Go.” His father smiled
at him through his tears. “And when you see her, please tell her something more. Tell her thank you.”
* * *
“I can’t do this,” Hallie whispered.
“You can,” Lola told her firmly. “I didn’t go to all the trouble of getting dressed and leaving the house with a newborn just for you to back out at the last minute. You can do it.”
From behind the Blue Hour’s curtain, Hallie glanced out at the audience. “There are so many people.”
“They’ll love you. Look,” Tess said. “I’ve got your biggest fan right here!”
Hallie smiled down at Jack, who was in a stroller next to Esme’s, trying to grab his own chubby feet.
Hallie bit her lip as she looked out again from the wings of the jazz club’s small stage. She would have preferred some out-of-the-way coffeehouse, with only five or six people in the audience. But her agent was no fool. He’d argued for Hallie to make her debut at the Blue Hour. “Why would you go anywhere else? You’re married to Cristiano Moretti!”
Even for someone with half a million hits, the number of people who’d watched the YouTube video of her singing in Rome, it wasn’t easy to perform in such an exclusive venue. So she’d told her agent to ask the manager, confident that when Cristiano heard about it he’d tell them all to go to hell.
But, apparently, he’d agreed.
Why was Cristiano being supportive of her career, when he’d made it clear he didn’t give a damn about her?
It was a mystery.
Even after ten days, Hallie still couldn’t believe he’d let them go so easily. Cristiano wasn’t the kind of man to let himself be defeated, certainly not by some legal technicality. Why hadn’t he come after her? Why hadn’t he fought?
The answer had to be that he was secretly relieved to be rid of them.
She took a deep breath, looking down at the short black dress the music label’s stylist had found for her. Tomorrow she was supposed to start work on an album, followed by a publicity tour. Once, this would have felt like a dream come true.
Now, it just felt like a job. A way to support her child so she wouldn’t have to depend on a man who didn’t love her.
