said before placing the softest of kisses to her lips.
Diving into the ladies’, she went straight to the mirror and took a deep breath.
What was happening to her? Her emotions were all over the place, pulling her in directions she knew could never lead anywhere.
Was she suffering from a version of Stockholm syndrome? She’d heard of kidnapped women falling for their captors and making excuses for them but had never understood how such a thing could happen.
But she hadn’t fallen for Gabriele, she told herself stubbornly. She’d just come to accept he wasn’t the complete bastard she had thought him to be. He was much more complex than that.
And so were her emotions.
Satisfied her face was repaired as well as it could be, she left the sanctuary of the ladies’ to find her father waiting for her.
He opened his arms and she gratefully slipped into his embrace.
How could she have such doubts about him? He was her father. He’d raised her alone and while he had certainly made mistakes he’d only ever done his best by her.
Hadn’t he?
‘You are happy, Elena?’ he asked, stepping back a little but keeping a tight hold on her arms to peer at her closely.
What was he looking for? Signs of her doubt?
The disloyal thought made her feel even worse.
‘Mantegna, he treats you well?’
‘He treats me very well and I’m very happy with him.’ And as she spoke the words she knew them to be true.
She was happy with Gabriele.
There were times—many times—when she forgot why she was with him and would feel full to the brim. And he treated her better than she had ever been treated in her life. He listened to her. He took her opinions as seriously as he took his own. He made love to her as if she meant something to him.
If he could treat her, a Ricci, like that, she could only imagine how he would treat a woman he was in love with.
His ex-fiancée needed her head examined. If she’d been Sophia she would have fought to clear his name. She would never have doubted him.
Her head began to swim.
‘When are you coming back to work?’ her father asked, still holding her arms. ‘Your staff miss you.’
‘I need to sort some things out,’ she said, avoiding a straight answer. Because what her father hadn’t mentioned was that she hadn’t stopped working. She might not have physically gone to work since marrying Gabriele but she communicated with her staff daily and dealt with any problems as and when they occurred. Which was rarely. ‘I’m sure I’ll be back in the office soon.’
Back in the office, running myself ragged around Europe, trying desperately to justify why I have the position I worked so hard for but which is ultimately worthless.
These weeks away had forced her to see the truth. Her job was nothing but a sop. She was nothing but a highly paid supervisor. The divisions she managed didn’t need her. They were well run by their individual management teams and functioned perfectly well without her.
She didn’t even enjoy it!
Why had it taken her so long to see the truth?
But what else could she do?
She wasn’t qualified to do anything else.
‘I’ll let you know very soon,’ she promised, kissing his cheek and gently extracting her arms from his hold.
‘If he hurts you...’
‘I know.’ She nodded wryly. ‘I’ll tell you. But he won’t hurt me.’
‘What does he say about me?’ he asked as she made to move away.
She had dreaded this question, had been certain that when confronted with it the temptation to confess all would be too great, that she wouldn’t be able to lie to him.
It was the look in his eyes that made her keep her confessions to herself.
He was worried about something.
And it terrified her to think what that something could be.
She was saved from having to answer by the singer of the band doing a call-out for her from his vantage point on the stage. Gabriele was standing by the stage, his arms folded and a mock-scowl on his face.
She gave her father one last impulsive hug, cleared the lump in her throat, and made her way through the laughing crowd to the stage.
Gabriele watched his wife walk to him, so much flittering over her face he couldn’t discern one distinct emotion. Until she looked at him that was, and all her features softened and something flickered in her eyes he’d never seen before.
He didn’t think he’d ever seen a more beautiful woman than Elena that night. When she finally reached him and took his hand, a tightness pooled in his gut that almost doubled him over.
The singer from the band said a few words then handed the microphone to Gabriele, who jumped straight into his thanks to everyone for attending and apologised for marrying in such haste.
‘You know what it’s like,’ he drawled, pitching his speech between humour and sincerity, ‘you meet someone and within a day the life you know is gone and you find yourself signing the rest of your life away.’
He waited for the laughter to subside before continuing. ‘But that’s what love does to you. It turns everything on its head and marks you to the person you’ve fallen for.’
His intention had been to direct those last words at Ignazio, to hammer home the message that Ignazio’s beloved daughter had got into bed with the enemy, but he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t tear his gaze away from the woman who wore his ring.
He thought of Ignazio’s right-hand man, who was on the brink of defecting to him with all the incriminating documents. He thought of how Elena would react when she learned of this and learned that he still intended for her father to spend the rest of his miserable life in prison.
But then he thought of his own father, dying within days of Gabriele being incarcerated, knowing full well that his only son was innocent and the man he’d considered a brother had betrayed him in the most heinous way.
He thought of his mother, so full of life if a little forgetful when this nightmare had started, the stress of seeing her son imprisoned and the sudden death of her husband accelerating the loss of her mental capacity at an alarming rate.
That was all Ignazio’s doing.
It came to him that he hadn’t added Sophia to that list.
But then Sophia paled in comparison to Elena. Elena would never have abandoned him. She would have been one of those wives who visited every weekend, the first to arrive and the last to leave. She would
