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“Of course,” the cashier said.
Alessia scurried into the changing room and started tugging off the gown, the hideous, suffocating gown. The one chosen by her father because it was so traditional. The virgin bride in white.
If he only knew.
She contorted her arm behind her and tugged at the tab of the zip, stepping out of the dress, punching the crinoline down and stepping out of the pile of fabric. She slipped the jeans on and tugged the stretchy black top over her head.
She emerged from the room a moment later, using the rubber bands she’d purchased to restrain her long, thick hair. Then she slipped on the trainers, ruing her lack of socks for a moment, then straightened.
And she breathed. Feeling more like herself again. Like Alessia. “Thank you,” she said to the cashier. “Keep the dress. Sell it if you like.”
She dashed out of the store and onto the busy streets, finally able to breathe. Finally.
She’d ditched the limo at the bank, offering the driver a generous tip for his part in the getaway. It only took her a moment to flag down a cab.
She slid in the back, clutching her bag to her chest. “Aeroporto di Catania, per favore.”
“Naturalmente.”
Matteo hadn’t lingered at the basilica. Instead, he’d sidestepped his cousin’s furious questions and gotten into his sports car, roaring out of the parking lot and heading in the direction of the airport without giving it any thought.
His heart was pounding hard, adrenaline pouring through him.
He felt beyond himself today. Out of control in a way he never allowed.
In a way he rarely allowed, at least. There had been a few breaks in his infamous control, and all of them were tied to Alessia. And they provided a window into just what he could become if the hideous cold that lived in him met with passionate flame.
She was his weakness. A weakness he should never have allowed and one he should certainly never allow again.
Dark eyes clashing with his in a mirror hanging behind the bar. Eyes he would recognize anywhere.
He turned sharply and saw her, the breath pulled from his lungs.
He set his drink down on the bar and walked across the crowded room, away from his colleagues.
“Alessia.” He addressed her directly for the first time in thirteen years.
“Matteo.” His name sounded so sweet on her lips.
It had been a month since their night together in New York City, a chance encounter, he’d imagined. He wondered now.
A whole month and he could still taste her skin on his tongue, could still feel the soft curves of her breasts resting in his palms. Could still hear her broken sighs of need as they took each other to the height of pleasure.
And he had not wanted another woman since.
They barely made it into his hotel room, they were far too desperate for each other. He slammed the door, locking it with shaking fingers, pressing her body against the wall. Her dress was long, with a generous slit up the side, revealing her toned, tan legs.
He wrapped his fingers around her thigh and tugged her leg up around his hip, settling the hardness of his erection against her softness.
It wasn’t enough. It would never be enough.
Matteo stopped at a red light, impatience tearing at him. Need, need like he had only known once before, was like a beast inside him, devouring, roaring.
Finally, she was naked, her bare breasts pressing hard against his chest. He had to have her. His entire body trembling with lust.
“Ready for me, cara mia?”
“Always for you.”
He slid inside of her body, so tight, much more so than he’d expected, than he’d ever experienced. She cried out softly, the bite of her nails in his flesh not due to pleasure now.
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.
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.
