a mass of unruly black curls, striking grey eyes fringed by long lashes and a happy grin, the child was enchanting.
‘Yes.’ Cesario’s voice was suddenly terse. He drained the brandy in his glass and glanced briefly at the photo. ‘That’s Nicolo.’
A second photo was of Nicolo and a dark haired woman. Beth stared at her, certain from the expression of fierce adoration in the woman’s eyes as she looked at the child that she was Raffaella. ‘Your wife was very beautiful.’
‘Yes, I suppose she was.’ His indifference was chilling.
Beth swallowed, compelled to try to unlock the secrets of his past. ‘You told me that you didn’t love her. If that was so, why did you marry her?’
He turned his head and fixed her with a narrow stare. As the seconds ticked by she was sure she had overstepped an invisible boundary, that she had been too intrusive and he would refuse to answer. He reached for the bottle of brandy, refilled his glass and downed half its contents in one swallow.
‘It was a business arrangement—a merger between our two families, Piras and Cossu, which resulted in the formation of the largest and most successful private bank in Italy. I was brought up to believe that power is everything,’ he said harshly, when he saw her shocked expression. ‘Marriage to Raffaella Cossu was an opportunity that I knew would give me a level of power even my father would find impressive.’ He gave a bitter laugh. ‘In my arrogance I did not understand that everything comes at a price. I was taught by my father that emotions are a weakness and love is a failing—something that afflicts lesser men but never a Piras.’
Cesario took another swig of his drink and felt the burn of fiery heat at the back of his throat. He knew from experience that temporary oblivion from the demons which haunted him could be found in a bottle of spirits. There had been times since Nicolo’s death when the only way he’d been able to cope with his grief had been to seek solace in alcohol. He had never revealed his pain. Not even to his closest friends. Old habits die hard, he thought grimly. The lessons from his childhood were deeply ingrained.
But tonight, for the first time since he was a small boy, he could not control his emotions. Something was building inside him: a need, almost a desperation to voice his feelings and release the pain that scourged his soul. It was Beth, he thought savagely. She had cast a spell on him with her slanting green eyes and made him feel things he did not want to feel. But her inherent gentleness was something he had never experienced before. He had witnessed her compassion, and he sensed that if he told her about Nicolo she would not judge him.
‘Was Raffaella in love with you?’ she asked softly, intuitively.
It was time to be honest and face up to the mistakes of his past. ‘Perhaps,’ he acknowledged heavily, ‘in the early days of our marriage. But at the time I did not know it. She never spoke of her feelings, and it suited me to assume she was content with the relationship we had, based on friendship and respect. Love was an alien emotion to me—something I had been taught to deride. I did not know that I was capable of feeling it until I held my newborn son for the first time and finally understood that there is no greater power than love.’
He drained his glass and moved to the window to stare out at the crescent moon, suspended like a silver sickle against the black sky. ‘I would have died for Nicolo,’ he said roughly. ‘He was my purpose in life, my reason for being, and nothing else mattered—not power or wealth, not the bank. I loved my boy beyond reason. What I failed to understand was that Raffaella loved Nicolo just as deeply.’
‘Allegra Ricci said that you sent Raffaella away and refused to allow her to see Nicolo.’
‘That’s not true. Raffaella had an affair and wanted to leave me for her lover. I can’t blame her. I couldn’t give her the marriage she wanted or deserved,’ Cesario admitted grimly. ‘But I couldn’t let her take our son. The idea of living apart from him, of being sidelined in his life while another man took on the role of father to him, tore me apart. I was willing to share custody. I had been separated from my own mother at a young age, and I considered it vital that Nicolo spent an equal amount of time with his mother as with me. However, I felt it was better for his main home to be the Castello del Falco. Raffaella didn’t agree, and was desperate for him to live with her. Our relationship disintegrated and the rows grew more acrimonious.’
Cesario’s voice rasped in his throat. ‘After a particularly bad confrontation Raffaella snatched Nicolo and fled with him. It had been raining, and she probably drove too fast.’ He delivered the words in a tightly controlled monotone. ‘I heard the crash—it’s a sound that still haunts my dreams. I guessed what had happened. As I ran, I prayed I was wrong. But my worst fears became a nightmare when I saw that the car had skidded off the road and ploughed down the side of the mountain.’
He heard Beth draw a sharp breath, but now that he had opened the floodgates the words kept on coming in an unstoppable tide. ‘I managed to climb down, hanging onto rocks, tree roots. The car had flipped over and landed on its roof. I saw instantly that Raffaella was dead, but Nicolo…I prayed he was still alive.’
‘Dear God,’ Beth whispered. She wanted to walk over to Cesario and take his hand, offer him what comfort she could. But something told her he needed to relive his agonising memories, that this was perhaps the first time since the accident that he had talked about what had happened that day.
‘I had to smash the window with my bare hands to get him out. I didn’t even feel the broken glass slice open my face.’ He ran his hand over his scar and his voice dropped to a harsh whisper, as if his throat had been scraped raw with sandpaper. ‘I was like a madman. I was frantic to save my boy, to hold him in my arms and see his smile, to hear him call me Papà. But he had gone.’ His voice shook. ‘My son was dead.’
Tears were running down Beth’s cheeks, but she brushed them away as she flew across the room and halted in front of Cesario. It tore her heart to see his hard-boned face ravaged with pain. How could she have believed him to be unemotional? She knew now that his way of dealing with the devastation of losing his son had been to bury his emotions deep inside him. But tonight his agony was raw and exposed, and impelled by a desire to try to comfort him she slipped her arms around his waist and held him tightly, willing him to believe that she understood his grief.
For a moment he stiffened, but then he put his arms around her and held her, and Beth felt some of the terrible tension that gripped him slowly ease.
‘The accident was my fault,’ he said roughly.
‘No! How can you say that? Raffaella—’
‘Raffaella was torn between her feelings for the man she had fallen in love with and her love for her son. For Nicolo’s sake I should have tried harder to reach an agreement with her on how we could share his upbringing, instead of forcing her into a desperate act that had such tragic consequences.’
He stepped away from her and walked over to the desk to pour another glass of brandy before sinking onto the sofa. He tugged her down beside him, curving an arm around her shoulders as if he needed the physical contact.
‘The party to celebrate the opening of the English subsidiary of the Piras-Cossu Bank in London last year was on the anniversary of the date Nicolo died. I didn’t want to go, but I had a duty to attend.’ Cesario swirled the amber liquid around in his glass. ‘It wasn’t the first time I’d turned to alcohol to numb my mind. God knows how much I drank that night.’ He grimaced. ‘It shames me to admit I have no memory of Melanie Stewart. The DNA test will prove if I slept with her. If it is true, then I cannot condone my behaviour and I regret that I clearly did not treat her with consideration
