Italian Bachelors: Irresistible Sicilians. Michelle Smart
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everything you need for you and Lily, and I’ll get someone to get it for you tomorrow.’
Closing the door softly behind him, he went back to his room and fired up his laptop.
There was no way he would be able to get any sleep now.
Work would be his salve, as it had been since Grace disappeared. Work would help focus his attention on the matters that truly deserved it, not the deceptive, heartless bitch he had been foolish enough to marry.
* * *
As Grace tiptoed back into her bedroom from the adjoining nursery there was a rap on the door.
She hurried over and yanked it open, her fingers already flying to her lips.
‘Shh,’ she whispered. ‘I’ve only just got her down for a nap.’
‘Here’s your passport,’ Luca said without any preamble, extending it to her, making no move to step over the threshold.
Snatching it from his hand, she flipped through it. ‘I did wonder if you would give it back to me.’
‘Why would I want to keep it?’ he said, his top lip curving. ‘You are free to leave whenever you like.’
‘And Lily’s passport?’
‘I will be keeping that.’
She expected nothing less. ‘I suppose it’s pointless asking where, exactly, you will be keeping it?’
‘You presume correctly. Now give me your phone.’
‘I’m surprised you didn’t take it from me yesterday.’ Turning her back to him, she grabbed it off her bedside table where it was charging.
‘Today will suffice.’
She passed it to him. ‘I take it you’re going to put a tracker in it.’
‘You’re getting good at this—you assume correctly. If you need to make a call before I get it back to you, use the landline.’
How she hated the coldness of his tone. And how she hated that she hated it.
‘I’ll do that,’ she said with a brittle smile. As he had still not stepped over the threshold she took great delight in shutting the door, quietly, in his face.
The smile dropped. She leaned back against the closed door and crossed her hands over her racing heart.
* * *
Her phone was returned that afternoon by one of the maids. She took it from her gingerly and threw it onto the bed. It felt tainted. The first chance she got, she would buy herself a new pay-as-you-go one.
Purchasing another phone turned out to be trickier than anticipated.
When she felt ready to take Lily on a Sicilian shopping trip two days later, a Mercedes was brought out for her. Three heavies were sitting in it.
The number of her personal ‘guards’ had been increased.
Pushing Lily around Palermo, her gorillas surrounding her, she knew she was onto a lost cause.
Their presence only served to remind her of what she had hated most about her marriage. Before she had opened her eyes to her husband’s true nature, the biggest blot on the marital landscape had been the lack of privacy. Sure, on the estate she could come and go as she pleased, but she had always been aware of hidden cameras, supposedly there for all the Mastrangelos’ protection, watching her every move on the grounds. Outside the estate, she was under constant armed guard. She couldn’t even pop off to buy a paintbrush without one of Luca’s gorillas accompanying her.
She had hated it.
She still hated it, loathed the thought of her daughter growing up in an environment where freedom meant nothing.
Freedom was precious. It was unrealistic and dangerous to expect Lily to have the same levels of freedom she had enjoyed, but, unless she found an escape route, her daughter would never experience what it meant to be a proper, regular child. She would never be able to explore and get into mischief without her parents knowing her every move. She would always be in her father’s eyeline no matter where he was.
All the material advantages Lily would have being a Mastrangelo would be cancelled out by the disadvantages. And that was without considering what it would be like growing up with a father who was a dangerous gangster.
While Grace didn’t believe for a second that Luca would lay a finger on either of them, his rages, which in the last six months or so of their marriage had become more frequent, could be terrifying. Especially for a child. She never wanted her daughter to witness that.
When she returned to the monastery, she carried Lily to the private front door of their wing. Before she could unlock it, Donatella materialised. ‘I thought you would want to know that Pepe will be returning tomorrow,’ she said, referring to Luca’s younger brother who had his own, rarely used, separate wing in the monastery. Pepe was the family firebrand, a playboy rebel without any discernible cause. Yet, despite his outward rebelliousness, he was fiercely loyal to his family.
Grace was not looking forward to his return. Pepe would know the truth of what had gone on between her and Luca. The last time she had seen him, Pepe and Luca had had a massive argument. She still had no idea what the row had been about but it had been heated enough for her to worry that one of them would get hurt. It still made her blood freeze whenever she recalled questioning Luca about it afterwards and their own subsequent row.
‘Thanks for the warning.’ She placed the key in the lock and as she turned it Donatella placed a bony hand on her arm.
‘Why did you return?’
Grace eyed her warily. There was little point in saying it was because of love. The atmosphere between her and Luca was so cold and yet somehow so charged, the entire household had to be aware things were not right between them. ‘What has Luca told you?’
‘Luca does not confide with me. All he has said is that he found you and you agreed to try again. He still has not told me why you left to begin with, or what happened to his shoulder.’
Grace blanched. She shook her head, trying to clear the fog that clouded it every time she thought of it. She could still smell the gun smoke.
She could also see the poor beaten man whose eyes had widened with terror when he recognised her as Luca’s wife.
‘I’m sorry, but it’s for Luca to tell you what happened.’
Donatella studied her for a moment before digging into her pocket and producing a key.
Grace stared at it.
‘It’s the key for your studio,’ Donatella said, passing it to her. A shadow crossed her face. ‘Luca refused to let anyone in there. He said it was yours until you returned, even if you only came back to collect your belongings.’
‘He said that?’
A sliver of ice shot out of her mother-in-law’s eyes. ‘I am not a stupid woman. I can tell you do not wish to be here. But you are here even if the circumstances are not what you or my son would wish.’
With those enigmatic words, Donatella walked off.
IT TOOK ANOTHER two days before Grace gave in. Leaving Lily with Donatella, who was delighted to be granted her first official babysitting duty, she headed through the thick forest that surrounded the monastery to her cottage.
Her cottage. Given to her by Luca on their wedding day.
She could still recall her excitement when she’d first walked inside and seen the lengths he had gone to to make it into a proper studio for her. The walls of the ground floor had been knocked down to make one enormous room, and painted white to enhance the natural sunlight. Daylight-mimicking