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Alive.
Had she been with Johann so long she’d forgotten what it was like to speak to a man that really looked at her? Listened to her? Had she been so isolated these past four years she’d forgotten how men behaved?
“How soon until you see it, Baroness?”
Samantha blinked, knew she’d missed whatever question or point Cristiano had just said. “I don’t know,” she stammered.
He inclined his head, then turned, and walked through the hotel’s grand lobby toward one of the sitting areas at the far end of the room.
Sam had to hurry to catch up with him as he walked. He was tall, broad shouldered, and his steps, long but measured.
“We must talk,” she said breathlessly, trying to keep up with him.
Cristiano barely turned his head to look at her. “About what?”
She nearly sputtered in surprise. “You know perfectly well what I’ve come to discuss. It’s barbaric. Inhumane. You don’t gamble with people’s lives, much less children’s lives.”
He slowed his pace as they reached the low velvet couches upholstered in royal shades of purple, red and blue. “I don’t gamble with lives. I prefer cash. Stocks. Real estate. Unfortunately your husband had just you left so he offered you up.”
“You didn’t have to be unscrupulous, Mr. Bartolo! You could have taken the higher, moral ground.”
Cristiano’s eyebrows lifted, one black eyebrow arching slightly higher than the other, and Sam thought he looked exactly the way the devil would, if the devil played cards. “And why would I want to do that, Baroness?”
Samantha’s breath caught in her throat as she stared into Cristiano’s face. He was tall, big, broad. Taut. He’d walked with a long even step, his arms loose at his sides, apparently at ease, but she was far from relaxed. His very ease unnerved her. “Because you’re a gentleman, Mr. Bartolo.”
The corner of his mouth curved, a brief mocking smile. “You shouldn’t make assumptions. They’re usually wrong.”
Then he sat down, a slow drop into the low upholstered sofa. Sam remained where she stood, her mouth open with disbelief. He was mad, she thought, nearly as mad as Johann. “And what about Gabriela? What about her?”
He shrugged, stretched a long arm out over the back of the sofa. “What about her?”
“She can’t be left with Johann. He’s not a fit parent.”
“Then surely she has another relative who could take her, someone better suited to parenting a young child?”
“She might, but I don’t know of anyone. I think her mother’s family wanted her once, there was going to be a custody trial, but that was years ago. I don’t even know where to find her mother’s family now.”
He studied her for a long moment, hazel gaze assessing. “Why didn’t her mother’s family win the custody battle?”
Sam swallowed, plagued by guilt even two and a half years later. “I married Johann. To give Gabby—and prove to the court that she had—a stable, loving family.”
“Even though you knew it was a lie?”
Sam ducked her head, didn’t answer. She knotted and unknotted her fingers before finally sitting down in a chair opposite him. “I did it for Gabby, to protect her. The court did award us custody, and Gabby trusts me, Mr. Bartolo. She depends on me. I can’t let her down.”
“She’s not even your daughter and yet you’re so very protective of her.”
“I have to be. Someone has to be.”
Cristiano’s eyes narrowed as he studied her tight expression. “You love her.”
Without a doubt. “Yes.”
“And your husband. Do you love him this much, too?”
Sam’s eyes closed and she sagged inwardly, exhausted, overwhelmed. She’d never loved Johann even though she’d tried initially. She’d thought maybe her kindness, her compassion might save him…that her love could maybe make them a family but she’d been wrong. Naïve.
Opening her eyes, the fatigue weighed even more heavily on her. She felt as if she’d been battling to save Johann for far too many years now. She didn’t know how to keep fighting for him, for the family, for security any longer. The task had become too great, the toll too much. Living with Johann had drained her. “I’ve done my best to protect him.”
“And is that the same thing as love?”
Her lips curved grimly. “It is what it is, Mr. Bartolo.”
Cristiano’s expression didn’t change, and yet Sam felt something shift—her? Him?—and when he spoke again, the mood somehow was different. “I don’t like your husband,” he said. “I have never liked your husband, but I like him even less now.”
“Because he wagered me?”
“And then tried to sell his child, the very child he refused to give to her family.”
Her mouth went dry and she felt like a marionette doll, odd, gangly, all wooden arms and legs. “He wouldn’t sell Gabby.”
“He tried. It wasn’t enough he’d settled his debts with you. He thought perhaps he’d buy back some of his lost property, an even exchange, the town villa for his daughter.”
“No.”
“Yes, indeed.”
Sam looked past Cristiano to the creamy marble columns supporting the ornate stained-glass dome. “And what did you say?” she whispered, her mouth so dry, her throat scratchy.
“I don’t buy children, Baroness.”
She shook her head, shocked. She knew Johann was selfish and a drunkard, a gambler, and a player—but this…it was repulsive. “Do you see why I can’t leave her there? Do you see why I must protect her?”
“Baroness, I have no authority over her. I can’t take her. Only the courts—”
“But I can!” Sam clasped her hands together, leaned towards Cristiano, hands pressed as if in prayer. “I’m still her stepmother.”
“Johann won’t allow it. Not if he thinks he can get me to pay for her.”
“How much?” Sam whispered. “How much does he want?”
“Three million. The price of his town villa.”
Her eyes burned and she smiled bitterly to hide her pain. “I was ten million and his child was only three?”
“My thoughts exactly.”
Sam ground her teeth together, panic growing on the inside. Panic at the future, the present, panic that she was losing her grip on reality, panic that it seemed she was going to lose Gabby.
“Sit back,” Cristiano said. “Breathe. You look as if you’re going to faint.”
She shook her head, woozy and nauseous all over again, and struggled to speak, but couldn’t find her voice, couldn’t even shape her lips. Her face felt stiff, frozen. Her whole body trembled.
Cristiano reached out, touched her arm. “Do you need water?”
She shook her head again. “No,” she croaked, but she did feel terrible. Terrible, horrible, devastated. It was as if her world had been a little snow globe and it had been dropped, shattered.
For a moment Sam did nothing but concentrate on breathing, in and out she breathed, deep slow breaths to ease the pain inside her. But just breathing didn’t help. If she breathed in, it hurt. If she exhaled, it hurt. Nothing would change the pain.
“She’s not your child,” Cristiano said quietly.
Anger rolled through Sam, hot and wild, cutting through her fog. “But she feels like my child, and I’ll protect her like my child, and I will worry about her, and I will worry for her. You can be selfish and cold but I won’t be.”
“No, I know you won’t be. That’s why I wanted you. That’s why I played hard for you. You didn’t fall into my hands by chance.”
If he hoped to reassure her, he was failing, miserably. Every word he spoke only heightened her unease and the sense that everything was changing—quickly, dramatically, drastically—and Samantha resisted change, particularly if it was beyond her control. “You wanted this?”
“Very much so.”
“You can’t take another man’s wife.”
One of his strong black eyebrows lifted quizzically. “You do if she’s neglected.”
Dazed, she gave her head a slight shake and Cristiano merely smiled, a cool smile, much like the glittering light thrown off by the huge chandeliers overhead. Neither his smile nor the bright light above them warmed his eyes now.
“Doesn’t it grate you, Baroness,” he said after a slight pause, “that while you’ve scraped and struggled to pay bills, your husband sat in the casinos for months losing thousands a night?”
It did, oh God it did, but she couldn’t find the words, or the protests. She blinked, held back the tears. “He stopped for a while.”
“Not very long. I know. Because every time he lost, I won. And everything he offered, I took.”
“So this is your fault.”
“He’s a compulsive gambler.”
“It’s a sickness.”
“So I discovered.”
“And could you show no mercy?”
“No.” And his expression slowly changed, jaw firming, cheekbones jutting beneath hard eyes. “I am not a merciful man.”
CHAPTER THREE
CRISTIANO SENT SAM home in a taxi and traveling back home, she glanced at her watch constantly. Two minutes later, five minutes, eight.
She felt obsessed with time. Driven by time. It was a quarter to noon now. Cristiano had said the car for her would arrive at four, which meant she now had less than four hours to pack and arrange her life, less than four hours to say her goodbyes. Which really meant saying goodbye to Gabby. Four hours to say goodbye after four years of being together…
Sam couldn’t fathom it, couldn’t get her head around it. The situation boggled her mind, not because Johann had gambled and lost his entire fortune, but the fact that she’d been dragged into this. Johann and Cristiano’s gambling had nothing to do with her, or Gabriela. If they wanted to gamble, let them live with the consequences. She and Gabriela shouldn’t have to suffer for their poor decisions.
And Gabriela would suffer if Sam left her. Gabby wasn’t even five, and yet how many homes had she known? How many different guardians and adults had drifted in and out of her life? How many had actually helped her? Considered her needs before their own? How many had given love?
Love, Sam silently repeated, stepping from the taxi, there was a concept. But it was love Gabby needed, not things. Love, not money. Love, not power or control or whatever it was men seemed to think made the world go round.
And facing the tired villa in need of repairs and refurbishment, Sam knew what she needed to do. She needed to take Gabriela away from here, far from the brittle glamour of Monte Carlo, the selfish, greedy games Johann and Cristiano had played, the shallowness of people who cared more for money than a child. She’d been pushed too far this time.
Johann was wrong and so was Cristiano. Sam refused to let Gabby be hurt yet again. Once Sam knew what she needed to do, she also knew where she’d go. The moment Gabby came home from school they’d be gone.
Upstairs, Sam checked the bedrooms and discovering Johann still passed out facedown on his bed, she quickly packed, knowing they didn’t need much for their trip—clothes, yes, and Gabby’s favorite toys but there weren’t many toys, there hadn’t been money for toys in the past year.
Quietly Sam opened the drawers in Gabriela’s dresser, scooped up the small shirts and skirts, tucking them into the smaller of the two suitcases Sam had brought with her from her last job in Seattle.
Then Sam went to her room—she and Johann had never shared a bedroom—and packed her own suitcase. It would be cold in England this time of year, far colder than it was in Monaco and the south of France, but it would be safe. Cristiano wouldn’t know to look for them there.
Suitcases packed, Sam double-checked that she’d put all her documents in her purse, their passports and the other things she’d need once they reached England, then called a taxi.
Inside the door to Gabriela’s bedroom, Sam paused, glanced one last time around the room that had been a nursery when Sam had arrived three and a half years ago.
The room was still pale green and white, a scheme that should have been garden fresh but just looked severe thanks to Johann selling the carpet, furniture and artwork out from beneath everyone’s feet whenever money grew tight. And with Johann’s gambling problem money always grew tight.
But now Johann and his problems would soon be behind them. In less than an hour she and Gabby would be on their way to a new life far from Johann’s drinking, indifference and abuse.
By the time Sam had finished packing, it was time to meet Gabby. On her way out the front door, Sam set their two suitcases just inside the door, ready to be carried to the taxi the moment it arrived.
Sam spotted Gabby as the little girl skipped down the school’s front steps and Sam lifted a hand in a wave. Gabby waved back eagerly. Bless the child. What a love she was. In all her years Sam had never met anyone—child or adult—so ready to love, and be loved. Gabby’s heart was pure gold.
Gabby burst through the school gate, threw herself at Sam’s knees.
“How was your day, my pet?” Sam asked, hugging her.
“Very good. But I forgot I had sharing today. I didn’t take anything.” Gabby’s eyes, a lovely green-gold, darkened briefly with emotion before brightening. “But then Mademoiselle said we could tell a story, and I told a very funny story about a mouse that lived in Daddy’s pocket and the adventures the mouse has at Le Casino.”
Sam blanched, set Gabby on her feet. “You told a story about your papa at the casino?”
“No, Sam, not Papa, but the mouse in Papa’s pocket.”
“And did the mouse stay in your papa’s pocket?”
“No. He played cards with Papa at the casino. But he was a very clever little mouse and he didn’t lose. Not like Papa. And everyone wanted the mouse because the mouse won so much money he bought us a big new house and a car just for you and me so we could go driving whenever we want.” Gabby took a breath and beamed up at Sam. “Isn’t that a good story?”
Sam felt sick inside. “You are a very clever girl, Gabriela Grace, but you know that, don’t you?”
Gabby just laughed, and they walked hand in hand back to the villa, but the closer they came to the villa, the more Sam worried. How was she going to break the news to Gabby that they were leaving? How was she going to tell her they were going to live apart from Johann in a country Gabby had never even been to?
Oh God, none of this was easy.
And reaching the old town villa not far from the Place de Casino, it only got harder, as parked in front of the villa was Cristiano’s red sports car.
