A Shadow of Guilt - By Abby Green Page 0,23
and busied herself, silently begging everyone around her to leave her alone.
Where did she get the nerve to say these things to him? It was as if every time he came within feet of her she had to lash out. Say the worst thing possible, terrified that if he got too close he might see her cruel words for what they were—a very flimsy attempt to keep him at a distance at all costs.
Valentina knew on some rational level that Mario’s death had been a tragic accident; Gio hadn’t forced her brother onto that demonic horse. She’d even heard him discouraging it, initially. The knowledge that her parents appeared able to forgive him had been a huge blow to her own justification to stay angry at him. But the fact was, for so long now she’d held Gio responsible.
Her anger had been compounded by the way he’d disappeared after Mario’s death only to turn up playing the part of a playboy bent on nothing but slaking his basest needs. Disgusted with herself for having been so invested in what he was doing, Valentina had nevertheless stored up every tiny example of Gio carousing and generally acting as if he didn’t have a care in the world, while they’d mourned Mario.
Her anger at him had always comforted her on some level. It was familiar and … necessary. For her sanity. In all honesty Valentina knew that she was very afraid of looking at what might be left behind if she couldn’t hold Gio responsible. If she couldn’t be angry with him. That thought was so terrifying that something must have shown on her face.
‘Val? Are you OK?’
Valentina sucked in a big breath and forced a smile at Franco, who was looking at her intently across the island they were working at. She nodded abruptly. ‘Fine … I, ah, just remembered something I need to do.’
Thankfully he left her alone and that evening Valentina escaped to the clinic to see how her parents were settling in, rather than unpack in her new accommodation, telling herself it was more than just a ruse to avoid bumping into Gio again.
That evening Gio cursed volubly outside Valentina’s suite of rooms. There was no answer. She wasn’t there. Even though he knew logically she was most likely visiting her parents, he had to battle a spiking of something very proprietorial. And he didn’t like it.
Women had never been anything more than a diversion to him. His long childhood years of feeling less than, and inadequate, had left him with too many scars to trust anyone, apart from Mario. His subsequent successes had done much to chase away that sense of inadequacy, but since Mario’s death, the joy had been taken out of it to a large extent.
Gio’s mouth twisted wryly just remembering how Mario had been the one who’d fallen in and out of love like some besotted Romeo. Something within Gio had always remained aloof with a woman. They hadn’t ever touched some deep secret part of him. In the two years after Mario’s death there had been an endless parade of beautiful women but none he’d connected with, and more often than not Gio had found himself waking alone.
Valentina. She’d always been different. She’d snuck into a place that was locked away deep inside him. But he’d been acutely aware that his feelings and desires for her were strictly forbidden.
When he’d left Sicily first she’d been only ten or eleven. A gap-toothed child only on his radar as his best friend’s kid sister who had trailed them with almost religious devotion.
But when he’d returned years later—a millionaire, the new owner of the racetrack in Syracuse with plans to rebuild—she’d been fifteen. And Gio had found himself aware of her in a way that had made him ashamed. So he’d flung himself into socialising with Mario, pursuing the local beauties, anything to push dangerous thoughts and desires from his mind.
Over the next two years she’d only grown more and more beautiful and mature. She’d started to flirt with him, but with such sweet innocence that it had twisted his heart. One day he’d been weak. She’d arrived to look for Mario, who’d already left. A miscommunication. Gio had seen her get startled by Misfit and had acted on an impulse, lifting her onto the horse.
He’d swung up behind her, wrapping his arm around her taut young body. The weight of her firm breasts had been heavy on his arm. Those stolen indulgent minutes had been