underwear would have been preferable to this.
Not taking her eyes from Gabriele’s white face, she said, ‘Anna Maria, leave us.’
The door slammed sharply.
‘I suppose this explains why Anna Maria has been so uneasy around me,’ she said in a voice that sounded distant to her ears. ‘She’s known from the beginning?’
Gabriele dropped the papers onto the desk and stared at her with black ringing eyes. ‘Elena, let me explain.’
The coldness cleared, replaced with red-hot fury that she controlled by a whisker.
‘What do you want to explain? How you’ve been lying to me all this time? How you tricked me into marrying you to save my father from a prison sentence when all the time you were still plotting against him?’
Of all the things she’d struggled to believe since that fateful night on Nutmeg Island, this was the hardest. Of everything, this was the one thing she didn’t want to believe or accept, harder even than believing her father could have betrayed his best friend so heinously.
She’d given Gabriele everything of herself and it had all been a lie.
Sharply pointed talons clawed at her heart, slashing into her belly, slicing great chunks out of her.
‘I never lied to you.’ He spoke calmly but his chest rose and fell rapidly, his strong nose flaring. ‘The contract never said anything about me not continuing my fight to clear my name and finding the evidence to prove your father was behind the fraud.’
‘You’re lying to me now!’ Her control failed her. She grabbed a pile of the papers and began ripping into them, wishing it were his flesh she was tearing into. ‘You’ve been lying to me from the beginning. You knew damn well I thought it meant you would leave my father alone, that marrying you meant my family would be safe. God, I was starting to think you were someone special—I was prepared to have your baby! And you were lying to me and using me, you manipulative bastard.’
He yanked at his hair, his eyes black with feverish emotion. ‘Goddammit, Elena, I spent two years in prison for a crime your father committed. My dad died of a broken heart and you’ve seen how my mother is with your own eyes—do you really think I could just let that go? Your father deserves to pay for those crimes.’
‘If my father did it then yes, he does deserve to pay, but I don’t. I have done nothing, not to you, not to your family, not to anyone.’ Furious, heartbroken tears fell like a waterfall from her eyes. ‘And you know that’s true. You know I’m innocent but you couldn’t give a damn, so long as you get your vengeance.’
The colour that had returned to his face paled again. ‘Elena...’
‘How much did you pay Carlos to turn traitor?’ she screamed. ‘How much are you paying him to lie for you?’
Sadness now rang from his eyes and he raised a hand as if to reach for her before dropping it back down to his side. ‘It’s not lies. It’s the truth. That’s all I ever wanted—for the truth to be told and my family’s good name to be restored. But I swear to you, I didn’t know you were innocent. I would never have involved you in any of this if I had.’
‘And that’s supposed to make it all right? As if I will ever believe another word that comes from your mouth.’ She gave a maniacal laugh that ripped through her throat. ‘I’m nothing but a pawn in your game and I will hate you for the rest of my life.’
She couldn’t look at him, couldn’t look at the lying mouth she had kissed with such love. Couldn’t look in the eyes that had devoured her and made her feel so wanted and necessary.
It had all been a lie.
‘Where are you going?’ A trace of panic resonated from his voice.
Facing him for the last time, she said with all the loathing she muster, ‘As far away from you and your ugly vendetta as I can get. I never want to see you again.’
The door slammed shut and she was gone.
Gabriele stared at the blank space where only a moment before Elena had stood, his heart pounding and nausea rising from his stomach to his throat.
Dear God, what had he done?
What had he done?
ELENA STOPPED LONG enough at Gabriele’s apartment to get her passport and leave his car keys on the sideboard. Everything else could go to hell.
From Florence, she took a flight to Sweden, hired a car and headed for the sleepy town her mother had been raised in. She didn’t think she had ever needed her more.
During the long drive she did not allow herself to think of Gabriele. As far as she was concerned, he didn’t exist. She would spend the rest of her life scrubbing clean her memories of him if she had to.
Eventually she arrived at a large timber chalet on the edge of a lake.
She switched the engine off and gazed at it with a lump in her throat and an ache in her heart.
This was where her mother had spent her childhood. And here was the second-best thing to the woman who had given birth to her.
The front door opened and a tall white-blonde woman appeared, staring at the car with a quizzical expression.
Elena got out and gazed at her aunt.
‘Elena?’
She tried to speak but the words wouldn’t form.
Agnes must have seen something in her expression for concern flittered over her face and she hurried over to her. Instead of bombarding her with questions, her kindly aunt simply pulled her into an embrace and whispered into her hair, ‘Oh, Elena, it is so wonderful to have you here.’
And with those words, Elena burst into tears.
* * *
Hours later Elena sat at a scrubbed wooden kitchen table drinking sweet tea. Her aunt had sent Henrick, her husband, out on errands, with the words, ‘Don’t hurry back.’
Elena told her everything. Every sordid detail.
Agnes didn’t say much, seemingly content to listen and provide cakes and biscuits for the never-ending supply of tea.
‘Do you think your father’s involved?’ was the first question she asked when Elena finished talking.
‘I don’t know,’ Elena whispered. ‘I know there are many things I’ve been kept in the dark about.’
For the first time she forced herself to really think about her father, not just as the man who had raised and loved her but as something else. Someone else. Someone who could be cruel enough to frame his best friend and allow his own godson to go to prison for a crime he himself had committed.
‘Do you think he’s capable
