The Italian's Twin Consequences

by Caitlin Crews

  And that same distraught feeling welled up in her again, but it had shifted. It felt bigger, more wobbly. And was complicated by the fact he clearly remembered their short time together as clearly as she did. As distinctly.

  Almost as if it was something else entirely. Something less tawdry.

  “Let me explain something to you.” And Matteo’s voice was a silken ribbon of sheer fury that wound around and around her, then pulled tight. “I have spent my entire life trying not to mimic my father’s worst impulses even as I admired his ability to get things done. He took what he wanted and damn the consequences. He would have reacted very differently to a woman he desired sneaking off the way you did. I chose to take the high road.”

  He belted that at her, as if he was truly astonished that she didn’t recognize his great sacrifice.

  “The high road?” She let out her own pale rendition of a laugh. “You can’t be serious. I wasn’t required to leave you an outline of my reasons for not wishing to wake up in your bed.”

  “You didn’t simply leave my bed, Sarina. You escaped from my home, setting off down the drive like a fugitive. On foot.”

  “I didn’t owe you anything. I still don’t owe you anything, including an explanation.”

  He moved even closer, and her body was a traitor. It didn’t care if she was angry with him. It didn’t care that she had resolved, over and over again these past months, to pretend he had never happened to her at all. Women raised babies on their own all the time. Sarina had built up a sizable nest egg and she was more than capable of taking care of her own children. She assured herself of that at least fifteen times a minute.

  But her body didn’t care what she felt prepared to do. It wanted him.

  It wanted him badly.

  Here. Now. Anywhere.

  “Keep lying to yourself if you must,” Matteo seethed at her. “But do not expect that I will believe it, too. I was there, Sarina. I know exactly what happened between us that night, and so do you.”

  This would be easier, surely, if she could just get a breath, but that didn’t appear to be on offer.

  “I’m sorry if you let your feelings get involved.” She raised her chin as his eyes widened in astonishment. Tinged with that same fury. “We should have discussed our terms. I would have told you how unlikely it was that I would feel anything at all for a man who threatened my livelihood and held that over my head.”

  She couldn’t read the emotions that chased across his face then, one after the next. And what terrified her was how much she wanted to read them. How much she wanted to know him, in every possible way. Surely that said things about her she didn’t want to acknowledge.

  She had betrayed herself completely. She had tarnished Jeanette’s memory. Sarina already knew that. What she couldn’t understand was why she...kept right on going.

  It was possible some part of her believed that raising her babies alone was no more than she deserved for having been so deeply foolish as to let this man close to her in the first place.

  But that didn’t explain why she longed for him. Why she woke in the night, her cheeks wet and images of him so real in her head she had to turn the light on to make sure he wasn’t there beside her.

  “I’m not going to argue with you,” Matteo said when the silence drew out long enough to become its own weapon. “Though I think you will find that it will not be so easy to walk away from me this next time. You can do as you like. But my children will remain with me, Sarina. Believe this, if nothing else.”

  She wanted to argue with him, but her throat was too tight—as if he’d wrapped his hands around it. And maybe there was something wrong with her, because there was some part of her that wished he would. That wished he would just...touch her again. No matter what that looked like. No matter what it did to her.

  He did not take her to a hotel. He did not take her home to her barely lived-in condo. They drove instead to an airfield, where Matteo clearly expected her to board his private plane, heading—wherever he wanted to go.

  Sarina thought about pitching a fit out there on the tarmac, but to what end? There was no one there to help her. There was no one there at all, save more of Matteo’s ever-present staff.

  His staff, his steady glare, and her own bad decisions.

  She had no choice but to board the plane, take the seat he pointed toward, and wait to see what happened next.

  The answer was—nothing. They flew through the night, and if she expected there would be more fighting and arguing, or any interaction at all, she was disappointed.

  You are not disappointed, she lectured herself, because she shouldn’t have been. This is a reprieve.

  Matteo disappeared into one of the staterooms and didn’t emerge again until the plane began its descent into what looked like a never-ending mountain range, stretching out in white-tipped splendor on all sides.

  “Do I get to know where we’re going?” Sarina asked when he took one of the seats near her for their landing. “Or is the mystery part of my punishment?”

  Matteo took his time answering her. His gray eyes were darker than she had ever seen them and she told herself the only response she had to that was the disinterest she ought to have felt. That it did not in any way scrape around inside of her, then make her melt in places she should have remained strong.

  “The San Giacomos do not merely own property in Venice,” he told her, his tone cool. Aristocratic, even. “They also took possession of a monastery in the Dolomites many centuries ago. It is more properly a fortress, unreachable by any means other than a very strenuous, weeklong hike or a significantly more convenient helicopter. We will be boarding one shortly.”

  “You are locking me away, in other words.”

  He shrugged, though his eyes gleamed. “If you like.”

  “You do realize, of course, that every single person in that bar saw you with me. When it becomes clear I have disappeared off the face of the planet, you will be the first person they ask.”

  “First they will have to find me,” Matteo replied, all silken intent and that impenetrable darkness in his gaze.

  Sarina had no idea how to respond to that without screaming, so she kept her mouth shut. And wished her heart would stop catapulting itself against her ribs as if it, too, wanted to escape.

  Once they landed, there was no point refusing to exit the plane into the thin, cold air that rushed down from the snowy heights and burrowed beneath her skin. Or refusing to board the helicopter that waited for them there on the otherwise-deserted airfield.

  But when the helicopter lowered them down behind the high, medieval walls that were carved into the side of a mountain and resembled nothing so much as a spectacularly remote prison, she understood that she should have fought harder. Or at all.

  Because there was nothing here. Nothing at all but her certain doom.

  And the brooding man at her side who would make sure he led her there.

  “Snap out of it,” she muttered to herself, under her breath, as the sound of the rotors faded into the crystal blue sky.

  If Matteo heard her, he gave no sign.

  He started across the courtyard, headed toward the ancient building chopped into the rock. And once again, Sarina felt that she had no option but to follow him.

  She didn’t want to stand out in the elements, waiting for it to snow. Which seemed surprisingly likely this high up, despite the fact that it was supposed to be spring. She expected the inside of a monastery turned fortress to be decorated much like Alcatraz, so she wasn’t prepared when Matteo pushed open the great doors, solid wood and reinforced iron, and led her inside.

  Where everything was... Warm. Right.

  Sumptuous, she would have said.

  And there was no particular reason that comfortable furnishings and a cozy, welcoming feeling should have left her feeling so confused, except it was one mo
re way he had pushed her off balance.

  He led her down a hallway, then up a set of stairs. And everywhere they went there were lights flickering in sconces, making the old stone hallways gleam gold. There were rich, bright tapestries on the walls, thick rugs on the floors, and it made the place built out of remote stone—built from fear of God or fear of invaders, or possibly both—seem inviting.

  Especially when he brought her to a sprawling bedchamber set up in the center of the building, with a view out over the courtyard and down over the cliffs, on and on into the mountaintops forever. The windows were old and arched, suitable for men with bows and chain mail, to Sarina’s mind. But there were lights on in the bedchamber and a fire crackling away on one wall. It felt almost...homey.

  When she turned to face the man who had brought her here, it didn’t help any. The look on his face was severe. Stern and intense.

  And Sarina had told herself so many stories to explain her behavior. She had gone over it again and again, trying to make sense of it for herself.

  But she still didn’t understand why it was that Matteo Combe could simply look at her and make her feel far too many things, complicated and enduring, deep inside.

  “It’s very pretty,” she said, only aware that she was whispering when she heard the faint touch of her voice come back at her from the stone walls. “But it’s still a prison, no matter how pretty you make it.”

  “Perhaps you should consider it more of a retreat.”

  “Kidnaps don’t tend to turn into retreats, as a rule. No matter how pleasant the surroundings.”

  “Kidnaps.” His dark eyes moved over her, and it felt the way laughter might, if he was a different man. If they were different people standing here, high above the world. “I do not recall putting a bag over your head and tossing you in the boot of my car, Sarina. Nor do I recall you objecting to that car. Or my plane. Or, indeed, the helicopter we rode here in happy silence with no restraints or gags. Doesn’t a kidnap generally involve coercion?”

  She sniffed. “I feel coerced.”

  Matteo looked almost pitying. “I don’t think so. You concealed your pregnancy from me, yet I discovered it, quite by accident. That is not coercion you feel. It is your conscience.”

  And the fact her stomach twisted at that, making her feel uncomfortably hot and a little too close to sick again, suggested to her that he was a little more on the nose than she wanted to admit.

  “Congratulations,” she said after a moment, when she thought she could sound less...rattled than she felt. “You’ve transported me across the world and made sure we are about as secluded as anyone could be. Now what?”

  “I’m so glad you asked.” And though Matteo stood in the door to the room, looking wholly at his ease, a kind of warning shivered all over Sarina. “You have taken it upon yourself to psychoanalyze me at length, Doctor. Allow me to return the favor.”

  “I am a trained psychiatrist,” Sarina pointed out, and told herself it was for professional reasons that her heart picked up its beat. “You are not.”

  “I will muddle through somehow.”

  Matteo waited. Until her mind stopped reeling around in pure terror. He waited until she surrendered to that steady gray gaze of his, no matter how little she wanted to, and simply stood there in the center of the bedchamber. Staring back at him. Wishing she had the power to mute him from afar, or transport herself back to San Francisco, the better to avoid all this from the start.

  A terrible sense of foreboding grew in her, more intense by the second. It washed over her like that cold mountain wind outside, slicing into her, burrowing beneath her skin.

  Making her think she might never be warm again.

  “You look as if I have asked you to face the guillotine,” he said after a moment. “Calm yourself, please. I have no intention of taking your head off.”

  Sarina forced a smile. “Let’s just say I doubt very much you want to psychoanalyze me to tell me how wonderful you think I am.”

  “I think that tells us both something about how you view your profession, does it not?” But that hard, determined look on his face shut down any response she might have made. “This is what I know about you, Sarina. You talk a good game. You run around the world while you do it. But in the end, all you know how to do is grieve.”

  She paled straight through. She felt tectonic plates shift and buckle, and thought she ought to dive for cover, but she could see that Matteo didn’t move.

  Which meant it was happening inside her.

  She was the thing that was breaking apart, right here where she stood.

  “What would happen,” Matteo asked in an idle voice that was at complete odds with the intent look on his face, his dark gaze that same wild storm that had always been her undoing, “if you decided to live instead?”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  MATTEO HAD NOT intended to bring Sarina here.

  The monastery was a gift. A special place for family only that the San Giacomos had never shared with the outside world after its last days as a fortress against some long-ago war.

  He had intended to take her back to Venice. To bring her full circle, and see where they ended up. He’d entertained several dark ideas as they’d driven through the streets of San Francisco.

  He had boarded his plane in a cold fury, then taken himself off, because he was afraid that if he stayed in close proximity to her, he would succumb to the lure of her body. And if he succumbed to her, he suspected it was entirely possible he would take the edge off that fury in him. Matteo had not wanted soothe himself in any way.

  He wanted to nurse it, he had realized an hour into the flight, when he had done nothing but pace in the confines of his stateroom at the back of the jet, brooding over all the ways Sarina could have continued to deceive him well into her pregnancy. Well into his children’s lives, in fact.

  Would he ever have known about the babies she carried if he hadn’t run into her?

  He could feel that rage in him. It was like a fire, flames leaping and smoke billowing, and it would have been the easiest thing in the world to simply throw himself into it. To make himself a factory of his own fury, the way all his Combe ancestors had done, one after the next.

  If he thought about it, it was the only thing he really knew how to do.

  Here within these cold stone walls high in the Dolomites, warmed by a too-cheery fire and ancient tapestries, Sarina only gazed back at him. Her dark eyes were troubled and her cheeks were pale, as well they should be.

  And she didn’t answer his question.

  “I wanted to make you pay,” he told her, and the words felt as heavy as the stone walls all around them. The mountains looming above them. “You have wronged me and there should be a price for that. That was the way I was raised.”

  She blinked, and her lush, wide mouth twisted slightly. “I think many people would consider being stranded on the top of a mountain in the middle of nowhere, with no way out that doesn’t involve a helicopter or a Sherpa, an extreme consequence in and of itself.”

  But he noticed that she didn’t sound as brash and sure of herself as she had before. He had seen the way his words had rocked her, and unless he missed his guess, she was still reeling. Still trying to find her feet.

  He was enough of his father’s son to use that.

  To use any means necessary.

  “When I list all my sins and try on my own personal hair shirt, it always comes back to the same choice,” he said. It was what he had returned to again and again during the long flight, first over the great North American continent, then across the Atlantic Ocean, all of it dark and fathomless beneath the clouds. “I have told you more than anyone need know about my father. But on the other side of that equation there was my mother. She either fought back in the same way, with desperate, drunken scenes, dramatics and fireworks. Or she checked out.”

 
“You mean...she left? Or she drank?”

  Matteo’s felt his expression turn harsh. “They both drank. The drinking made them loud and unpredictable. When my mother checked out, she went quiet. It was as if she wrapped herself in gray and disappeared.” He remembered Alexandrina that way, wrapped in blankets on her selection of chaises, gazing steadily at nothing. Not responding. Not reacting. Not really there at all. “And I will never know if she did it because it infuriated my father or if it was the only way she could escape him.”

  “Are you angry for your father or for you?”

  “I’m angry at me,” he told her, and the sheer honesty of that shook through him. “I thought there would be time. That they would grow old and I would have years and years to figure them out. To understand why they did the things they did. And I never will. They will keep their secrets and their mysteries and I will never know if my mother checked out because she hated my father...or me.”

  Sarina said his name, soundlessly.

  But he shook his head. “It doesn’t matter, I suppose. My choices were clear to me from a young age. Engage violently. Or disappear. Guess which one I chose?”

  Sarina swallowed hard at that, as if she was still fighting to keep her balance. As if the stone floors of this monastery pitched and rolled beneath her feet. After a beat or two, one delicate hand rose to her throat and she pressed her fingers against the very pulse point that told him truths about her he suspected she would rather keep to herself.

  But he had every intention of using that, too.

  “You are not required to act like either one of your parents, Matteo,” she said into the quiet, and her voice was so soft. So lacking its usual bite that it nearly gave him pause.

  Nearly.

  “My whole life I have prided myself on feeling nothing,” Matteo told her, dark and sure now. He could feel the shift in him. As if he had spent his whole life blind, but now could see. And what he saw was Sarina. “Human emotion has always been a great mystery to me. I have had it shouted at me. I have lived in houses filled with it. But I have never understood its power, so I turned it off years ago. Or thought I did.”