Scandals Of The Powerful: Uncovering the Correttis / A Legacy of Secrets (Sicily's Corretti Dynasty) / An Invitation to Sin (Sicily's Corretti Dynasty) (Mills & Boon M&B)

by Carol Marinelli

  Rude, in fact.

  There were certain rules in all families, but none more so than a Sicilian one, Ella thought as she walked through the glass revolving doors.

  There was a faded beauty to the hotel, a quiet elegance to it, and the staff were formal but friendly. Once checked in, Ella headed to the gated lifts, blinking as Taylor Carmichael stepped out. She was wearing huge dark glasses, and Ella gave a shy smile of greeting, but of course, Taylor had no idea she worked for Santo and naturally she was ignored.

  Still, it was so exciting to glimpse such a celebrity, and to think that tomorrow she might get a chance to watch her acting and the movie Ella loved start to unfold.

  Ella found her room and swiped the card but frowned as the door opened. The hotel was gorgeous, but this room was seriously stunning. Ella stood a moment. The French windows were open to a large private terrace, taking every advantage of the aquamarine sea, and surely she would ask for the rich heavy drapes to be left open at night, just to drink it all in. Ella looked at the antique furniture and huge gilded mirrors and wondered if she’d been upgraded. There were vases of fresh flowers, even champagne chilling in a bucket, and she blushed at the memory of the other night, a smile playing on her lips as she did so. Realising now that this was the work of Santo, she was touched that he had been so thoughtful. But it faded as she heard Santo talking from the bedroom and, realising the mistake, she walked over and picked up the internal phone.

  ‘Ella...’ Santo came out then. ‘At last, you’re here.’

  ‘I am!’ She was suddenly awkward, embarrassed that she had thought he’d ordered flowers and champagne for her room. ‘There’s been a mistake at reception. I think they thought I was sharing with you.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘I spoke in Italian when I made the booking. I must remember not to in future.’

  ‘There’s no mistake.’ Santo smiled. ‘I asked them to send you to here. I thought we could have dinner, talk—there has been so much happening....’

  ‘You can’t just move me in.’

  ‘I am not just moving you in,’ Santo said.

  ‘So where’s my room?’ Ella asked.

  ‘Ella, we will be working fifteen-hour days...or at least I hope that we will.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘The director quit.’

  Ella’s mouth gaped open, her living arrangements temporarily forgotten.

  ‘He quit?’

  ‘He gave ultimatums. I do not like ultimatums.’

  Ella had seen him clash with directors now and then, but to lose one on the first day of filming...it must have been a pretty spectacular row. She asked him what had happened.

  ‘It’s finished with now.’ Santo shrugged. He was never one to go over the past, as always he moved easily on. ‘I have been chasing around trying to think of who would be best to direct the movie, and who is available too, but I think that finally it is sorted.’ He was pouring champagne and there was a small flurry in Ella’s stomach as he handed her the glass that had bubbles rising in it, like the sudden hope that for Ella flared. ‘I have found someone good, someone who I think shares my vision, who really is keen to bring out the very best in Taylor.’ He smiled at Ella and she gave a tentative one back. ‘Tomorrow we have a new director starting, Rafaele Beninato.’

  ‘Rafaele Beninato?’ He must have heard the disappointment in her voice. She simply was too upset to hide it. Because of the champagne, the smile, the conversations they had had about the movie, the visions they had shared, Ella really had, for a blind, stupid moment, thought that Santo was going to give the role to her.

  ‘Ella...’ Not only did Santo hear her disappointment, he saw the burn of her cheeks. ‘You didn’t think—’

  ‘No.’ She was embarrassed to admit that yes, she had thought he might consider her. After all, this was a major movie they were talking about, as if he was going to trust it to her. But then Ella was suddenly angry too, that he hadn’t. ‘It’s that you didn’t think! That you didn’t even consider me for the role.’

  ‘How could I?’ He was incredulous. ‘Ella, you have no experience whatsoever.’

  ‘No!’ She was beyond hurt now. They had lain in bed just yesterday, acting it out, going over scenes. But clearly, not once had it entered his head that she might make a good director.

  Yes, it hurt.

  ‘Santo, I love that movie. I have gone over and over the script. I know it inside out. I know exactly what’s needed.’ She put down her glass, missing the coaster, her feelings raw, because while his words made perfect sense, were completely logical, Ella wasn’t thinking logically right now. ‘I’m going to change the booking....’ She just wanted away before she said too much, wanted to think, and she couldn’t with Santo so close. Ella, who never cried, was dangerously close to doing so as she picked up the phone and asked that the booking be reverted back to the one she had made. She told the receptionist that she’d come down and get the key now.

  ‘So you’re storming out because you didn’t get the part?’

  ‘No!’ Ella snapped. ‘I was leaving already. That’s the whole point of separate rooms, Santo—there’s somewhere to go when you row!’

  Ella’s bags arrived then and she quickly diverted them, but there was her room key to collect and it took forever until she was finally alone. Ella attempted to gather her thoughts, but even that didn’t last for long, because in no time at all, Santo was rapping on her door, refusing to budge till she let him in.

  ‘You want it both ways.’ It was Santo who was angry and aggrieved now. ‘You insist that we keep work separate—you make this great song and dance as to how we cannot work and sleep together, that we are to keep things professional at work, yet when it suits you want all the favours of being my lover.’

  ‘That’s not true.’

  ‘Yes.’ Santo stood firm. ‘It is true. You want it both ways,’ Santo said. ‘I want it only one. I am myself now and in the bedroom, but at work I make the best decisions for my movies.’ She heard the passion then, the absolute single-mindedness that made him so brilliant. ‘When I am at work I choose only the best for my films and I make decisions with my head only at all times, and if you think I am going to hand over a director’s role because we have good sex, then you are the one who has an issue, not me.’

  ‘I wanted that role long before yesterday.’

  ‘And I did not consider you for that role long before yesterday too, because the fact is, Ella, you have no experience.’

  ‘Because you won’t give me any.’

  ‘When a suitable vacancy comes up, it will be yours, but the world is not waiting for you to debut, Ella. You have to earn your stripes in the industry to be respected and not in the bedroom.’

  She wanted to slap him, his words burnt so, but instead Ella stood with her face scalding, because what he was saying was true and he hadn’t finished yet. ‘So, to reiterate, I enjoyed our time together. I hoped to take things further today. I hoped to share a meal, to talk, to make love. But instead, because you cannot manage to separate work from the bedroom, instead we sleep alone.’

  ‘I’m handing in my notice....’

  ‘More fool you,’ Santo said. ‘Go work for Luigi, go let him dangle you the promise, and you will find out I am not such a bastard after all. And at least you enjoy sleeping with me.’

  ‘Luigi is nothing like that,’ Ella flared. ‘He’s a brilliant director and he’s keen to have a willing assistant—’

  ‘Hey,’ Santo interrupted, ‘you know when people wait while their potential employers ring for references. I often wonder why don’t the potential employees do the same? Why don’t they take a little while to find out what they are getting into before they jump?’

  ‘I wish to hell I had.’

  ‘No.’ So swift was his retort. ‘You knew exactly what you were getting into. As I said, I don’t hide my supposed mistakes and I don’t expect favours and neither do I give them for sex.’ For a man who appeared to have no morals, he stood there and prov
ed otherwise. ‘For all the bastard you seem to think I am, think carefully, Ella—because your job has never depended on sleeping with me and it still doesn’t. I know how to close the bedroom door and carry on with my work.’

  Her back was to the wall, and not just literally, because he was right.

  ‘How much notice are you giving?’

  ‘Four weeks.’

  ‘Fine,’ Santo said. ‘Ring the agency tomorrow for your replacement, see if you can get someone who can start ASAP so that you can train them up. And, this time, can you tell them I want someone fully fluent in Italian, please?’

  How that stung but she refused to jump.

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘With a lot of experience.’

  ‘Good looking too?’ Ella jeered.

  ‘I would hope so,’ Santo said without contrition. ‘And preferably without too many hang-ups and issues.’

  ‘You can go on your own dating sites....’

  ‘I don’t go on dating sites,’ Santo said. ‘I don’t need to, and anyway, I don’t have time,’ he retorted. ‘I want someone who is good at their job, who is pleasing to the eye, and someone who doesn’t pin everything on what happens between the sheets.’ And with that he walked out and slammed the door.

  He was right.

  Ella sat shaking on the bed.

  Her disappointment was on a professional level but it was personal too.

  It was she who couldn’t separate things, but of course, with Santo, she’d never been able to.

  Ella admitted it herself then—every woman he’d dated, every time he’d crooned into the phone to his latest lover as she drove, she’d had bile black and hissing in her stomach and it had felt like a personal slight.

  She had known what she was getting into but had completely ignored it, just to have the refuge of work. Had chosen to keep her days busy when she should have lain on a beach and somehow healed from all that had happened with her father. When she should perhaps have curled up and hid for a while to process things, instead she’d insisted to herself she was fine and had looked for a job, had ignored what now she could not.

  A hotel room was not a nice place to be gripped by panic and unlike Santo’s there was no private terrace, just shuttered windows which Ella flung open and gulped in night air. She wanted to ring home, wanted to scream, wanted to run to Santo and batter down his door, for she could not stand to be alone with her thoughts.

  She could not bear to remember the feel of her father’s fist in her face and the screams and shouts from her mum and the feeling of being twenty-seven and feeling as if she were six.

  Except right now she was doing exactly that.

  Remembering every horrible moment, every terrible feeling, crying and sobbing for the first time since it happened, reliving the nightmare when she didn’t want to...

  ...and in a hotel room alone.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  FOR THE FIRST time since she had started working for him, Ella wondered if she could face breakfast with Santo and going through his diary. They always started the week like that, and as she’d had yesterday off, it would be assumed she would meet him in the hotel restaurant at 6:00 a.m., as they did when on location.

  Ella stood in front of the mirror after a very sleepless night. A cool shower had done little to reduce her swollen eyelids and the tip of her nose was bright red.

  She looked like a woman who had spent the night crying.

  Except she hadn’t, as Santo would no doubt assume, been crying over him—it was the issues that he had alluded to that had finally made her break down.

  It had been six months without tears.

  Six months of telling herself that she was strong, that she would not let what her father had done affect her, would not let his fists bruise her soul.

  But they had.

  It wasn’t just the beating that had left its mark.

  It was the years that had.

  Years of watching her mother suffer, years of walking on eggshells so as not to upset him, years of scrimping and saving to afford a home where she could take her mother away from him.

  Ella was in danger of crying again, so she chose not to think about that awful day. Instead she attempted magic with a make-up brush, but nothing was really going to work. So, once dressed, it was Ella who donned huge sunglasses this morning and took the elevator down, fervently hoping that Santo would be polite and pretend not to notice the state of her face.

  ‘Jesus!’ He stood up as she approached the table. Of course he looked immaculate and well rested. Because it was Santo he promptly took her glasses off—he was just so bloody Italian—and wrapped her in his arms. ‘Sorry, baby...’

  ‘Stop it.’

  ‘I went too far.’ He was talking into her ear, slowing her heart that had been beating frantically all night. ‘Hire someone ugly—’ she felt tears fill her eyes at his attempt to help ‘—a man, I don’t care.’

  ‘Santo.’ She pushed him off a little, took a seat. ‘I wasn’t crying about that.’ A waiter poured her coffee and Santo sweetened it for her. She took a drink of it and wished he wasn’t being so nice, because it would be so easy to again break down. ‘I’ve got stuff going on. You were right.’

  ‘Of course I was right,’ Santo said. ‘About what?’

  ‘You know...’ God, but she hated the word. ‘Issues...’

  And where most men would run Santo was over in a flash. He moved his chair right beside her and wrapped an arm around. ‘Tell me.’

  ‘No!’ She did not want his arm, did not want a man who was so comfortable in his own skin that he could sit in a restaurant and not care who saw, nor one who thought she could discuss such things.

  ‘I’ll tell you mine.’

  ‘No.’ She was not going to let him make her smile.

  ‘I’ve got hundreds of them,’ Santo said, and yes, he made her smile. Then he was terribly kind. ‘But right now, my main issue is you.’

  ‘We’ve got to head over to the set.’

  ‘I’ll say when we go.’

  ‘I can’t talk about it.’

  ‘You could.’

  ‘No.’ Ella shook her head. She didn’t have to explain her choices to him, except she found herself trying to. ‘You don’t talk about things you don’t want to, you don’t discuss your family.’

  ‘You know my family are...’ He didn’t finish and she looked over, watched his hand move to the collar of his shirt as he struggled to come up with a suitable answer, but Ella found it for him.

  ‘You’re a Corretti,’ Ella said. ‘So your troubles are far darker and far more serious than mine could ever be.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I was being sarcastic, Santo.’

  ‘I know,’ he said. ‘And so was I, but what I’m trying to tell you is that there is little that hasn’t happened in my family. My nonno, Salvatore, started with nothing and died one of Sicily’s most powerful men, so yes, there are things that I cannot talk about. His sons—my father, Carlo, and his brother, Benito...’ Santo stopped then. ‘You know what they say about loose lips...’

  ‘Speaking of ships...’ She went to tell him about an arrangement for the film but he stopped her.

  ‘Don’t change the subject.’

  ‘I am changing it, Santo, because in being so open about your family and issues, you’ve told me precisely nothing.’

  ‘I’m trying to let you know that you can tell me if you want to,’ he said. ‘And if you can’t, that is fine, but you are never to spend a night like that alone again when I am a short elevator ride away.’

  ‘Santo...’ Someone was calling out to him, telling him it was time to head off, but he called over his shoulder that he would catch up with them there.

  ‘Do you understand me?’

  ‘Sometimes it’s better to be on your own.’

  ‘You prefer what you went through last night to making love with me?’ He kissed her temple. ‘Then you are mad.’

  ‘Sex isn’t the answe
r to everything.’

  ‘It’s a good one though,’ he said. ‘It works very well for me. But if you want to continue with your sex strike, still we can talk.’ He stood, offered his hand. ‘Come on, we can walk to the set.’

  ‘It will take too long.’

  ‘They can wait for me,’ Santo said with all the arrogance of someone who knew that the world would. He handed her back her sunglasses as they stepped outside and he was the nicest company, pointed out villages as they walked down the hillside.

  ‘My mum’s from there,’ Ella said, wondering if it was being here that had upset her and perhaps brought it all to a head. ‘I’ve got aunts there.’

  ‘Are you going to visit?’

  ‘Maybe after we finish shooting.’

  ‘Don’t tell them you work for me then,’ he nudged. ‘They will warn you.’

  ‘I already know your reputation.’

  ‘Not me,’ Santo said, ‘my family.’ He pointed yonder. ‘My nonna lives over there. There is a lot of history, a lot of enemies have been made. Ours is not always a good name.’ He gave her another nudge. ‘Issues.’ But this time it didn’t make her smile and for the first time Santo knew he couldn’t just joke his way out of things, that her silence was perhaps a demand for something more, something he had never given. Except he looked at her swollen lips and thought of her eyes puffy behind the glasses. If he wanted more, then Santo realised he had first to give.

  ‘My father and his brother were killed in a warehouse fire.’ He wasn’t telling her any great secret. It had been the talk of Sicily then and still was at times. ‘That is when my grandfather divided everything up.’