lie to me!’ he rasped. ‘He may have got your name wrong, but you knew each other all right. The mutual horror was all too revealing.’
‘I said I’ve never met him before!’ she shouted. It was so out of character that he threw a sharp look at her. No puppet now, he noted. She was shaking so badly that it made the diamond at her throat shimmer. On a choked little gasp, she turned her face right away from him so he couldn’t read it. It was the act of someone caught in a lie.
Without another word, he turned his attention to getting through the traffic, while a new filthy suspicion began to tear into him. Anton Gabrielli was about the same age as Kranst. If she’d enjoyed Kranst as a lover then why not Gabrielli? After all, what did he actually know about Antonia’s life before Kranst?
Nothing, he realised. Absolutely nothing.
As the ugly green stuff began to replace his blood again, he finally managed to reach his goal and pulled them to a screeching stop in the basement car park of his apartment. He switched off the engine—then clamped a hard hand on Antonia’s thigh as she released her seat belt.
‘Stay,’ he gritted. It was a dire warning. She wasn’t going to make him kick his heels down here for a second time while she rode the lift alone.
The fingers fluttered, then went to rest on her lap, her body melting back into the seat. With a tight hiss of satisfaction he got out, swung round the car, opened her door then bent to help her alight.
The lift took them upwards, with her shaking like crazy and him with his fists clenched to stop him taking hold of her and shaking her some more! When they reached the apartment door it was Marco who opened it; Antonia didn’t seem capable. But, once inside, the few seconds it required for him to deactivate the alarm system gave her the chance to get away from him.
She headed straight for the bedroom. He stayed where he was long enough to utter a few choice curses before grimly striding after her. If she’d locked the bedroom door on him then she was in for one hell of a shock! he vowed.
But the door wasn’t locked. And what he found when he tossed it back on its hinges stunned him to a complete standstill.
CHAPTER SEVEN
‘—WHAT the hell are you doing?’ he raked out incredulously.
But he could see what she was doing. A suitcase already lay open on the bed and she was tossing things into it like a criminal on the run.
‘Antonia!’ he demanded when she didn’t answer.
‘I’m l-leaving,’ she stammered, then froze within the midst of what he realised was full-scale panic to stand with body stiff, arms straight, fists tightly clenched, while she fought a battle with whatever emotion was suddenly trying to overwhelm her.
‘The hell you are,’ he grimly countered, but his own voice no longer sounded quite so steady.
He began striding towards her, and the act jolted her back from wherever she’d gone to and she turned on him, paste-white, stark-eyed—he had never seen an expression like it in all his life.
‘Cara…’ he murmured hoarsely. ‘For goodness’ sake…’
‘I’m leaving you, Marco!’ She almost screamed the words at him she was so out of control. ‘Now—tonight! I n-never want to see you again.’
The fact that he could see it had almost killed her to say that didn’t make him feel any better, because he could see she actually meant it—and that was scaring the life out of him.
She turned back to the suitcase. With a swipe of his hand he sent it flying to the floor. Clothes scattered everywhere. Silly things like a couple of sets of underwear, a couple of skirts, a couple of simple cotton tops.
He tried swallowing and found he couldn’t. He tried making sense of the evidence he was looking at. He couldn’t do that either. For no woman—no woman! left Marco Bellini with only the clothes she’d come to him with!
No woman left Marco Bellini.
‘You aren’t going anywhere until you’ve answered some questions,’ he growled, and grabbed her hand. ‘Maybe once you’ve done that I’ll be glad to see the back of you!’ he threw in for furious good measure, and began trailing her behind him out of the bedroom and down the hall while she tried her best to get free of him.
No chance, he vowed silently. No damn chance.
Throwing open the door to his study, he strode them over to the locked door. Still holding her hand prisoner, he stabbed in the security pin-number, hauled her inside, then over to the Mirror Woman.
‘Now, let’s start right here,’ he gritted. ‘Who is she?’
Anastasia, Antonia thought tragically, and began shaking all over again, fighting a battle with tears that reached right down to her abdomen. Sad, tragic—beautiful Anastasia.
‘Mirror—mirror,’ she whispered thickly. ‘What is that supposed to mean?’ Marco said harshly.
It was no use lying, no use trying to pretend that she didn’t know what he was talking about. The game was up. She had been exposed as the fraud she was.
‘This,’ she said, ‘is Anastasia…’
It took a few moments, then it hit him. ‘My God,’ he rasped. ‘Are you saying that she is your twin?’
A laugh left her throat on a strangled sob. Her amber eyes shimmered with tears and a pained kind of humour, because Anastasia would have so loved to have been here to hear this big handsome Italian say that.
‘No, not my twin,’ she murmured softly. ‘She was my mother…’
My poor, wretched, haunted mother, she silently extended, while the silence grew thick all around her.
‘Mother,’ Marco repeated, as if he had to do so to understand the concept. ‘You mean, you and Kranst actually….’
The words stopped. Antonia turned to look at him. For once he was literally floundering on the rocks of shock. And he looked white. He looked horrified.
‘What?’ she snapped as anger began flooding up from the depths of a bitter knowledge of where they were about to go with this. ‘Did we collaborate to deceive everyone? Yes.’ She openly admitted the charge. ‘Did I pose nude for Stefan so he could pretend I was my mother? No, I did not,’ she denied that. ‘Stefan and my mother were lovers for ten years! He adored her. And no again, before the cogs inside your head start turning to something nasty,’ she sliced at him. ‘Stefan did not bed-swap between my mother and myself!’
‘I was not about to assume—’ Marco began stiffly.
But angrily she cut in. ‘You’ve always assumed!’ she cried. ‘From the very beginning you assumed we were lovers. But Stefan is my friend!’ she threw at him. ‘My dear, dear friend who arrived in our lives when we really needed someone warm and loving and endlessly giving like him! Between us, we nursed my mother through a long and miserable illness. And the result of those dark years?’ She gestured with a trembling hand towards the painting. ‘How
