“Yes. He’s not set foot in the villa since he left, but I still visited in the hope of convincing my mother to leave. I knew my father was evil, but even with all the evidence it took me a long time to fully comprehend that her enabling and condoning of his violence is a form of evil too. I was in my mid-twenties when I realised she loved her position in life as hiswife too much to ever leave him, and I’ve not been back home since. I meet up with her occasionally for lunch, but only because she’s my mother, and never in the villa.”
“And your father?”
“Once this wedding is done with, the next time I see him will be in hell.”
She opened her eyes and looked square at Gennaro as everything about their marriage slotted into place. “You believe you have this gene too, don’t you. That’s why you refuse to get close to people.”
His neck extended before his features twisted. “I have spent my life knowing I’m capable of great violence. All my life people have compared me to that man. All my life. And all my life I’ve known I’m as capable of violence as he is, and when I found him kicking Niccolo that time, I let that violence out. I didn’t just threaten to kill him; Iwantedto kill him, and the only reason I didn’t is because my mother came into the room – I didn’t just punch him through the coffee table, I kicked him just as he’d kicked my brother. I only restrained myself because she screamed at me to stop, something, I should add, that she never did for my brother. And so yes, to answer your question, I don’t just believe I have that cruel, violent gene in me, IknowI have it. I nearly killed my father and I haven’t shed a second of remorse for it.”
Chapter Ten
It was the empathy ringing in Luisa’s eyes that twisted the knife in Gennaro’s guts and filled his chest with ice.
What the hell was he doing?
He hadn’t climbed into the bath for a cosy chat – Gennaro didn’tdocosy chats, and he certainly never shared confidences, especially not ones of this magnitude.
He’d never shared what had happened the day he’d tried to kill his father with anyone, so why the hell had he just shared it with the woman he’d spent two years keeping at a deliberate distance?
He'd only breached the distance he’d imposed so they could spend their last days together screwing, not so he could reveal his darkest secrets.
It was those damned doe eyes. They were as capable of ringing with fire as with empathy and softness. He’d always hated looking into them, had always sensed they saw more than she or anyone had any business seeing, and right then it felt like she was gazing into the very heart of him, a sensation that twisted the knife.
“I did try to warn you about the man I am,” he said in avoice as cold and tight as the ice in his chest. “Be thankful you only have four days left with me.” Water that was considerably cooler than when he’d got in sloshed as he climbed out of the bath.
He dried himself with quick vigour before taking a fresh towel off the heater. Opening it wide for her, he caught her stare. “Are you ready for me to start making amends? Or has my murderous tendencies killed your desire?”
It took a moment for understanding to penetrate and for her cheeks to stain with colour. “Amends? After all that, you want me to get out of the bath so you can have sex with me? Just like that?”
“That is why we’re here and not at the ball, is it not?”
The stain of colour deepened, a line creasing in her forehead as she searched his face, and he experienced that same gut-twisting sensation that she was peering into his heart.
“Do you have to put it quite so bluntly?” she whispered.
He narrowed his stare and sardonically said, “If you want a man to seduce you with fluffy, meaningless words before fucking you then you only have to wait a few more days for that freedom to be yours.”
Her mouth dropped open, eyes widening into orbs before the starkness vanished and she shook her head with a bitter laugh. “Welcome back, Android Gennaro. Looks like your creators have fixed your malfunction.” She rose to her feet like a majestic goddess, bath water pouring off her…
In an instant, his mouth ran dry.
Suddenly, he couldn’t breathe, could only stare at her with his heart smashing through the ice block in his chest and a sense that the world was moving beneath his feet.
He’d believed Luisa semi-naked in a bikini was the pinnacle of beauty, that what was left to be revealed could add only a little enhancement, but the reality of her naked flesh was so much more. In one swift glance, he tookit all in, the high, full breasts that had clearly never seen a second of sunlight, the cherry red colour of her large nipples, the dark V of her pubis…
He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen pubic hair on a woman, but, God, the thrills at seeing it, of seeing Luisa in her full feminine glory, was like nothing he’d experienced before, and when he gazed back into her blazing eyes, the world didn’t just move again, it tilted off its axis.
The towel he held out to her was snatched from his hand.
“Did it all get a little too intimate for you?” she snapped, looking him square in the eye as she rubbed her back dry, all earlier shyness vanquished under the weight of her visibly growing anger. “A little too human? Is that why you felt the need to put me back in my place by insinuating that I’m good enough to fuck but nothing else?”
It felt like everything inside him clenched. “I never said that,” he refuted hoarsely.
“Oh yes you did,” she spat, rubbing the towel over her stomach and between her legs. “You said it with your eyes. One minute you were telling me about your bastard father – I could feel actual human emotion coming from you then – the next a shutter came down, and you reverted to the cold arsehole I’ve spent the last two years hating and demanded sex… although in fairness, you graciously implied you’d let me off if yourmurderous tendencieshad killed my desire.” Her face contorted with loathing. “The only thing that’s killed my desire is the man standing before me now, not the sixteen-year-old boy he used to be who probably saved his brother’s life. If your programming is still giving you sexual urges, I suggest you either get a sex doll delivered or use your hand to relieve it because I will not be used as a warm body to get yourself off on, now get the fuck away from me.”
Angrier than she’d ever been but for reasons she couldn’t even begin to dissect, Luisa dropped the towel then shovedGennaro out of the way to step out of the bath, water dripping from her calves and feet as she stormed across the tiled floor to the door.
She wasn’t just furious, she realised with an awful sinking feeling. She was hurt. Deeply, deeply hurt. Wounded enough to burst into tears.