was too aware of Giancarlo’s dark, brooding presence on the other side of the living room then, lounging there against the massive stone fireplace, supposedly scrolling through his phone’s display. She was certain he was hanging on every word. Or did she simply want to be that important to him?
There was no answer to that. Not one that came without a good dose of pain in its wake.
“I’m here now,” Paige said stoutly, trying to focus on the woman who had always been good to her, without all these complications and regrets. Not that she’d give you the time of day if she knew who you really were, that rough voice that was so much like her mother’s snarled at her.
“Then I have two questions for you,” Violet replied, snapping Paige back to the present. “Can you operate a manual transmission?”
That hadn’t been what Paige was expecting, but that was Violet. Paige rolled with it. “I can.”
It was, in fact, one of the few things she could say her mother had taught her. Even if it had been mostly so that Paige could drive the beat-up car she owned to pick her up, drunk and belligerent, from the rough bars down near the railroad tracks.
“And do you want to drive me to Lucca?” Violet smiled serenely when Giancarlo made an irritated sort of noise from the fireplace across the room and kept her eyes trained on Paige. “If memory serves, it has wonderful shopping. And I’m in the mood for an adventure.”
“An adventure with attention or without?” Paige asked without missing a beat, though she was well aware it had been a long time since Violet had gone out on one of her excursions into the public without expecting attention from the people who would see her out and about.
“Without,” Giancarlo snapped, from much closer by, and Paige had to control a little jump. She hadn’t heard him move.
“With, of course,” Violet said, as if he hadn’t spoken. “No one has fawned over me in a whole week, and I require attention the way plants require sunlight, you know. It’s how I maintain my youthful facade.”
She said it as if she was joking, but in that way of hers that didn’t actually allow for any argument. Not that it was Paige’s place to argue. Her son, however, was a different story.
“You’re one of the most famous women in the world,” Giancarlo pointed out, and the dark thing Paige heard in his voice was a different animal than the one he used when he spoke to her. More exasperated, perhaps. Or more formal. “It’s not safe for you to simply wander the streets alone.”
“I won’t be alone. I’ll have Paige,” Violet replied.
“And what, pray, will Paige do should you find yourself surrounded? Mobbed?” Giancarlo rolled his eyes. “Hold the crowd off with a smart remark or two?”
“I wouldn’t underestimate the power of a smart remark,” Paige retorted, glaring at him—but his gaze was on his mother.
“That was a long time ago,” Violet said softly. With a wealth of compassion that made Paige stiffen in surprise and Giancarlo jerk back as if she’d slapped him. “I was a very foolish young woman. I underestimated the kind of interest there would be—not only in me, but in you. Your father was livid.” She studied her son for a moment and then rose to her feet, smiling faintly at Paige. “We were in the south of France and I thought it would be a marvelous idea to go out and poke around the shops by myself. Giancarlo was four. And when the crowds surrounded us, he was terrified.”
“The police were called,” he said, furiously, Paige thought, though his voice was cold. “You had to be rescued by armed officials and you never went out without security again—and neither did I. I hope you haven’t spent your life telling this story as if I was an overimaginative child who caused a fuss. It wasn’t a monster in my closet. It was a pack of shouting cameramen and a mob of fans.”
“The point is, my darling, you were four,” Violet said quietly. “You are not four any longer. And while I flatter myself that I remain relevant, I am an old woman who has not commanded the attention of packs of paparazzi in a very long time. I’m perfectly capable of enjoying an afternoon with my assistant and, if you insist, one driver.”
“And you wonder why I refuse to have children,” he growled at her, and it took every shred of self-preservation Paige had to keep from reacting to that. To Giancarlo and the pain she could hear beneath the steel in his voice. “Why I would die before I’d subject another innocent to this absurd world of yours.”
“I didn’t wonder,” Violet replied. “I knew. But I hoped you’d outgrow it.”
“Mother—”
“I don’t like being locked away in Italian castles, Giancarlo,” she said, and there was steel in the way she said it, despite the smile she used. It was the famous star issuing a command, not a mother. “If you cast your memory back, you’ll remember that I never have.”
There was a strange tension in the room then. And though she knew better, though it would no doubt raise the suspicions of the woman who could read anyone, standing right there beside her, Paige found herself looking to Giancarlo as if she could soothe him somehow. As if he’d let her—
And she found that great darkness blazing in his eyes as he slowly, slowly turned his attention from Violet to her.
As if this was something she’d done, too.
Because, of course, she had. When he’d been far older than four. And what she’d done to him hadn’t been an accident.
The truth of that almost knocked her sideways, and she would never know how she remained standing. She wanted to tell him everything, and who cared what Violet thought? She wanted to explain about her mother’s downward spiral. The money owed, the threats from the horrible Denny, the fear and panic that she’d thought were just the way life was. Because that was how it had always been. Paige wanted him to understand—at last—that she never, ever would have sacrificed him if she hadn’t believed she had no other choice. If she hadn’t been trapped and terrified herself, with only hideous options on all sides.
But this wasn’t the place and she knew—she knew—he wouldn’t want to hear it anyway. He didn’t want to know why. He only wanted her to pay.
He didn’t realize that she had. That she still did. Every moment since.
And so she stood there, she said nothing the way she’d always said nothing and somehow she managed not to fall to her knees. Somehow Paige managed not to break into pieces. Somehow, she stared back at him as if she’d never broken his heart and she wished, hard and fierce and utterly pointless, that it were true.
“Don’t worry,” he said quietly, as if he was answering his mother. All of that darkness in his gaze. All of the betrayal, the loss. The terrible grief. It made Paige’s chest ache, so acutely that she forgot to worry that Violet would be able to sense it from a few feet away. So sharp and so deep she thought it might have been a mortal blow, and how could anyone hide that? “I remember everything.”
LUCCA WAS A walled city, an old fortress turned prosperous market town, and it was enchanting. Paige dutifully followed Violet through the bustle of tiled red roofs, sloped streets
