An Inheritance of Shame - By Kate Hewitt Page 0,5

his laptop. Not that he actually read those rags, but this one blazed bad news about the Correttis. Alessandro Corretti was meant to have wed Alessia Battaglia, but she’d run off with his cousin Matteo at the very last second. Angelo smiled grimly. The chaos that had ensued was devastating for his half-brothers and cousins, but good news for him.

With Matteo out of the way and the other Correttis scrambling to make sense of the chaos, he could saunter in and take another slice of the Corretti pie, starting with the docklands regeneration. Antonio Battaglia, the Minister of Trade and Housing as well as Alessia’s father, would be all too willing to consider his bid, since he was already funding a housing project in the area. Angelo had made initial overtures, and planned to cement the deal this week.

He glanced back at the list of employees. Anturri, Lucia was the first name under the housekeeping section. As soon as he’d arrived back at the hotel he’d pulled up the employee files and seen that Lucia had been working here for seven years, the entire length of time since he’d last seen her.

Why did that hurt?

No, it didn’t hurt. Annoyed him, perhaps. From his bed to making the Correttis’. Had she had a moment’s pause, a second’s worth of regret, before she took a job working for the family he hated, the family who had rejected him even as his association with them had defined and nearly destroyed his life?

Or had she just not cared?

Yet Lucia had always cared. She’d always been there when they were children, waiting for him to come home, ready to bathe his cuts or just make him smile with a stupid story or joke. More often than not he’d pushed her away, too angry to accept her offers of friendship. Mi cucciola, he’d called her. My puppy. An endearment but also a barb because she had been like a puppy, dogging his heels, pleading for a pat on the head. Sometimes he’d given it, sometimes he’d ignored her and sometimes he’d sent her away.

Yet still she’d come back, her heart in her eyes just like it had been the night he’d shown up at her door, too numb to feel anything except the sudden, desperate passion she’d awoken in him when she’d taken him in her arms.

Guilt needled him again as he thought of that night, how he’d slipped from her bed before dawn without a single word of farewell. He should have said goodbye, at least. Considering their history, their shared childhood, she’d deserved that much. Even if it didn’t seem like it mattered to her any more. It mattered, annoyingly, to him.

He stood up, pacing the spacious confines of the office with his usual restlessness. He should be feeling victorious now, savagely satisfied, but he only felt uneasy, restless, the remnants of his migraine mocking him.

He’d spent another sleepless night battling memories as well as his migraine. For seven years he’d schooled himself not to think of that night, to act as if it hadn’t happened. Yet last night in the throes of pain he’d been weak, and he’d remembered.

Remembered the sweet slide of her lips against his, the way she’d drawn him to herself, curling around him, accepting him in a way he’d never been before or since. How he’d felt tears spring to his eyes when he’d joined his body with hers, how absolutely right and whole that moment had felt.

Idiotic. He was not a romantic, and a single encounter—poignant as it may have been—didn’t mean anything. It obviously hadn’t meant anything to Lucia, who had seemed completely unmoved by his appearance last night. And if Lucia, who had hero-worshipped him as a child, could be indifferent and even cold towards him now, than surely he could act the same. Feel the same.

In any case he had too many other things to accomplish to waste even a second on Lucia Anturri or what had happened between them. Nothing would happen between them now. He’d come back to Sicily for one purpose only: to ruin the Correttis. To finally have his revenge.

Determinedly Angelo pulled the phone towards him. It was time to call Antonio Battaglia, and start carving up that Corretti pie.

Lucia felt the throb in her temples and wondered if headaches could be contagious. She’d had one since she’d left Angelo in the penthouse suite last night, and spent a sleepless night trying not to remember their one night together.

Yet far worse

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