It wasn’t just Luisa’s body that had turned cold, her erratically beating heart had turned icy with fear, not for herself but for Gennaro. “If it comes to it, will you increase your security?”
“If it comes to it,” he agreed. “I think, though, that if Lorenzo goes for anyone then it will be Georgia.”
“Who’s Georgia?”
“Niccolo’s English lover... His ex-lover,” he corrected himself. “Her sister is in Tuscany with Dante – that’s why he’s not here. He’s keeping her locked in his castle so she can’t destroy the wedding.”
Confused, she lifted her face again. “What do you mean?”
“Georgia’s sister flew to Naples on Monday intending to give intimate photos of Niccolo and Georgia to the press. We only found out about it because Georgia warned Nic. Dante agreed to hide the sister away until after the wedding.”
“Why would the sister do that?”
“That, for me, is the million-dollar question. Why would the ex-lover’ssistercome all this way to try and stop a wedding? There has to be more to it than the reason Georgia gave which is essentially that her sister’s gone crazy. Crazy or not, surely it would have been simpler and more effective to give those pictures to the British press? There has to be more to it than what Georgia told Nic. I’m certain their affair was a lot more serious than he’s admitting,and if my suspicions are correct then Lorenzo will know it too – he has spies everywhere – and he will go for Georgia first. If my suspicions are wrong then he will likely go for Dante first.”
Or Gennaro, Luisa thought with a cold shiver that raced from her toes to the roots of her hair. Niccolo despised his parents, but he loved his brother.
She had to clear her constricted throat to say, “But this is all hypothetical, yes? A hypothetical that could only become a reality if Niccolo jilts Siena?”
His eyes had narrowed almost imperceptibly. “Yes. Purely hypothetical. Lorenzo is dangerous but also unpredictable in his methods of hurting people, so your crush might still be safe even if Nic does take the nuclear option.”
She blinked and was about to ask what he meant by hercrushwhen it came to her that Gennaro had felt her shiver and had thought it was out of fear for Dante.
He was jealous…
Stretching herself over him to bring her face closer, she palmed his cheek and gently rubbed the bristles of his beard.
“Gen… I have never wanted Dante. I like him very much but I’ve never wanted him in that way.”
Black eyes bored into hers with an intensity she felt all the way to the pit of her stomach.
“It was the thought of anything happening toyouthat made me go cold,” she whispered. “You. Just you. You’re the only man in the world for me. You always have been.”
Those final words came from nowhere but as they fell from her tongue, Luisa knew they were true, and as they spilled out, something broke free inside her and her chest filled with the light of the truth.
And the truth was she loved Gennaro. She’d always loved him.
He’d been a brooding figure who’d loomed over the whole of her life, but he’d elicited fascination as much as terror. She’dbeen drawn to him in the way children and adolescents are often drawn to books and films guaranteed to reduce them to terror, a morbid fascination that in her case had always been accompanied by a strong quailing sickness. She’d hidden behind her mother whenever he’d come into a room but had still peeked between her fingers for a glimpse of him. As she’d approached adolescence, she’d spent the days before a visit to the Martinelli home unable to sleep or eat properly, and though she’d always believed herself to be frightened of him, she would take her drawing pad or whatever book she was reading and snuggle in the nearest nook to wherever in the house he happened to be… and she’d always been like a compass able to determine his exact location with pinpoint accuracy. When he’d come out of the room she’d scurried away like a frightened rabbit... but never scurried far.
Her love for him had subconsciously guided everything she’d done since he’d casually gifted the art stuff to her in that unexpected random act of kindness that had stolen her heart.
That gift had determined the course of her life.
Luisa could have gone to art school anywhere but she’d chosen Florence, not for its prestige but because that’s where Gennaro lived.
She’d never consciously sought out the art shop he’d bought her supplies from but she remembered how her heart had thumped the day she’d recognised the name on the shop front. It had thumped because it had matched the name elegantly printed on the bespoke paper bag his gift to her had been wrapped in and which she’d kept. She hadn’t bought supplies from any other shop since.
The day he’d passed her on thePiazza della Signoria… that had been the day she’d known it was over with her boyfriend. She’d ended the relationship days later, wracked with guilt for hurting him when he’d done nothing wrong and not even understanding her reasons for needing to end it.
She understood it now. The only thing he’d done wrong was not being Gennaro.
In breathless silence, she soaked in all the features of the face she’d fallen in love with before she was even old enough to know what love was.
Her promise not to fall in love with him hadn’t been a lie because she’d already been in love with him, a love that had always been there, hovering out of sight, waiting for her to see.
Her feelings had been the monster of her childhood. Not Gennaro.
His eyebrows drew together, his black eyes studying her with the same intensity she was studying him. Suddenly terrified of just how deeply and absolutely she loved him and terrified he could see it, she fused her mouth to his and poured out all the words she could never say in a kiss.