The Italian's Final Redemption - Jackie Ashenden Page 0,52

on to my mother.’ He’d been so oblivious. So stupid. So blinded. ‘Two days later Gabriella’s father was killed in a hit carried out by unknown assailants.’

Lucy’s eyes widened and he could see the shock in them. Now it was his turn to face judgment, and it would happen. She would soon see his own special brand of hypocrisy.

‘Gabriella knew what had happened. She knew that I’d betrayed her. But she didn’t blame me. She blamed herself instead.’

Lucy’s hand pressed hard against his chest, as if she could sense his self-loathing and wanted to ease the burn of it. But nothing would. Nothing would ever make that get any better. Only the fire of justice ever came close.

‘I was complicit in her father’s death,’ he said flatly, so there could be no mistake. ‘I’d ignored the doubts I’d had for years about my mother, too blinded by my love for her to think that everything she’d told me about our family, about myself, could be a lie. But after Gabriella’s father died I couldn’t ignore it any longer.’ He remembered the weight of his own realisation. The crushing burden of understanding that had nearly annihilated him. ‘I confronted my mother about it and she laughed. Told me it was just business. That if I wanted to remain part of the family I should get used to it. That I’d already done so much to help, after all...’

He gritted his teeth, remembering his mother’s warm, familiar smile. And the cold, cold look in her eyes. ‘It was a threat and we both knew it. A reminder that I was as guilty as she and that she had the power to do something about it if I became a problem.’ His mouth moved in a smile, though there was no humour at all in it. ‘It was common knowledge that there was only one way out of the de Santi family and that was in a box.’

Lucy’s gaze was dark and liquid, but she didn’t say anything.

‘So I made a decision.’ He could still feel the flame of that decision, burning hot and strong. It never went out. He couldn’t afford to let it. ‘I gathered all the pieces of information I could find on my mother’s activities and I forwarded them to the police. I made sure I was at her trial to give evidence and I made sure she went to prison. She didn’t look at me at all as they led her away. I was dead to her already.’

There were so many things that had scarred him in that moment. The knowledge that he’d negotiated his own immunity from prosecution by betraying his mother. An immunity he’d wanted so he could dedicate his life to pursuing his own justice.

The way she’d ignored him so completely. He didn’t blame her in the end, but it had hurt all the same. Confirmation, as if he’d needed it, that he’d never been her son to love.

There was silence afterwards, but he couldn’t hear anything above the pounding of his own heartbeat.

‘If I can’t blame myself for what happened with my mother, then you can’t blame yourself for what happened with yours, Vincenzo,’ Lucy said quietly. ‘You weren’t complicit. You were used.’

CHAPTER NINE

VINCENZO’S DARK EYES were full of fire. ‘You think I don’t know that?’

‘I do think you know that.’ The anger in his face told her that clearly. ‘But you don’t feel it, do you?’ She’d phrased it as a question, but it wasn’t meant to be one. Not when she knew the truth so intimately herself. ‘You feel responsible.’

‘Of course I feel responsible. I lured that woman to that van. And I used my friendship with Gabriella to betray her father. My actions caused his death, and I knew all along that something wasn’t right about it. I knew all along that there was doubt. But I didn’t listen to that doubt. I didn’t listen to my instinct. And if I had—’

‘If you had, what would have changed?’ She didn’t know why she was arguing with him. It was only that there was pain in his heart the way there was in hers, and that he blamed himself just as she blamed herself. They were so alike. Both children of monsters. It made her feel his agony as if it were her own. ‘You might have saved him, but someone else might have got hurt instead. And if the past doesn’t matter for me, then it can’t matter for you. We