The Italian's Final Redemption - Jackie Ashenden Page 0,50

wet with tears, her eyes red-rimmed and her nose pink. She looked so sad and yet so unutterably lovely. How had he ever thought her plain?

‘You cannot blame yourself for that, Lucy.’ He put force into the words. ‘You escaped him. You were afraid, but you made a promise to your mother and so you didn’t let that stop you. In the end, you were brave and you escaped, and that’s the only thing that matters.’

But pain lingered in her eyes. ‘If I had truly been brave, I would have stood up to him. My mother did. She knew he would hurt her and yet she stood up to him anyway. I should have done that. Should have refused to do all those things, gone to the police.’ A tear ran down her cheek. ‘And I didn’t. I...allowed him to keep me prisoner because I was just terrified.’

He cupped her cheek in his palm, his thumb brushing away the tear. ‘You had reason to be terrified, civetta. He is ruthless and violent and he would have hurt you very badly if you’d done any of those things.’

Even the thought of what Armstrong could have done to her made Vincenzo’s blood run cold and a red haze of rage descend over his vision.

Does she really matter that much to you?

But he ignored that thought entirely.

Lucy shook her head. ‘Mum was afraid of him, but she didn’t let it stop her. She was so brave, while I just sat in my room cowering for years. She would have been so ashamed.’

‘No,’ he said flatly and with absolute conviction, tightening his fingers in her hair for emphasis. ‘To see you now, she would have been proud. And she would have thought her death worthwhile if it kept you from harm.’

Lucy’s lovely face was tearstained, and she looked at him, as if she was searching for something that only he could give her. ‘How do you know that?’

He didn’t, of course. He didn’t know anything about loving mothers who protected their children. But he did know this little civetta and what she’d done for him. Because she had changed him. With her honesty and her trust, with the heat of her passion and the cold grip of her fear. With the heart she wore on her sleeve...

‘Because you are worth saving, Lucy Armstrong,’ he said quietly.

Lucy flushed and the pain in her eyes eased, and he found himself going on, for what reason he didn’t know. Maybe because he didn’t want her to feel alone.

‘And because I have done things I regret too, things I cannot change no matter how I wish I could.’

She blinked, tears glittering on the ends of her lashes. ‘What things?’

He shouldn’t tell her. No one knew. And he hadn’t thought he’d want anyone to know either. But somehow it felt wrong to hold this back, to let her know that she wasn’t as alone in the world as she might think. That he understood in a way few other people would.

You weren’t supposed to let your emotions become a part of this.

No, but it was too late for that now and he knew it. His emotions were engaged already. All he could do now was to make sure he didn’t allow them to get in the way of what needed to be done.

‘I never knew what my family was.’ He kept his voice quiet, his thumb moving on her cheek. ‘My mother maintained a fiction of the proud de Santi legacy, an aristocratic family of warriors fighting to protect what was theirs. I believed her. A proud de Santi prince, she called me, and that’s what I believed myself to be. I was arrogant and spoiled. So sure of myself and my place in the world. I didn’t see what was wrong with that place until it was too late. Until people died because of what I’d become.’

Lucy’s eyes were very wide. ‘What did you become?’

‘I became complicit.’ He couldn’t stop the bitterness that coloured his tone. ‘Though I was always complicit, I just chose not to see it.’

A deep crease lay etched between her brows. ‘What did you choose not to see?’

Even now he didn’t like to think about it. But he couldn’t not tell her, not when she’d shared what had happened to her.

‘My mother was beautiful and very loving, but she was also a de Santi through and through. I wasn’t a son so much as her tool. She used me from a young age, mostly