CHAPTER THREE
CARA felt consciousness return as if from far away. Sensations came back into her body, which felt deliciously heavy and languorous. Strange new aches and pains were present in her muscles, but she amended her first impression: not painful, pleasant. She was relishing waking slowly, and the blissful haze that clouded her brain was like a drug, keeping all painful concerns out. She knew they were there, clamoring for attention, but she wanted to hold them off on the periphery just a bit longer.
She became aware of the fact that she was no longer tucked into Enzo’s body, with his legs and arms wrapped protectively around her. She smiled. She’d had no idea it could be like that. She put out a hand, expecting to feel a big hard body, but the bed was empty beside her.
Immediately her eyes flew open and she blinked in the early dawn light coming through the windows. How long had she been asleep?
She sat up and looked to the other side of the room. Enzo was sitting in a chair, watching her in the bed. Cara felt her heart stop and start again in heavy slow thuds. She felt momentarily light headed. She smiled hesitantly, feeling extremely shy.
‘Morning…’
Enzo said nothing, just continued to watch her. Cara frowned and felt a trickle of foreboding slither down her spine. The air in the room felt frosty and she had no idea why.
Her smile faded.
‘Enzo…?’ Her voice was more hesitant, unsure.
With lithe animal grace he pushed himself up from the chair and strolled to the window, where he looked out for a long moment with his back to her, hands in his pockets. Cara saw that he was fully dressed, in a suit and tie. It made her pull the sheet higher up around her breasts. She felt at a disadvantage, not knowing why this mattered.
He turned then, and she felt speared by his eyes. Any trace of tenderness and passion was gone. His visage was as stern and forbidding as if she’d just insulted him in some way. And then he said, with quiet devastation,
‘My full name isn’t actually Enzo—although close family and friends have been known to use the abbreviation. It’s Vicenzo. Vicenzo Valentini.’
For a blissful moment Cara had no reaction. As if something was protecting her. And then the import of his words started to sink in. That name. It couldn’t be. The air left her lungs. Her belly fell.
She heard herself asking shakily, ‘What did you say?’
‘You heard me.’ He was curt. Abrupt.
She shook her head as if to try and clear it, could feel her hands clenching tight around the sheet. She felt confused and bewildered. ‘You’re Allegra’s brother?’
‘Well done.’
Cara could not understand his animosity. She felt as though she were in a bad dream, and the fact that this man was dragging the awful nightmare of that night and the painful reality of her life into this room was incomprehensible.
‘You know who I am?’ Obviously he did, yet something compelled her to ask. The fact that he wasn’t jumping to offer her condolences on the death of her brother was glaringly obvious.
He settled back against the window, for all the world as if they were having a nice chat, but Cara could sense the tension in his frame. And the thought of that, his frame, made her feel weak. She was already compartmentalizing what had happened last night and what was happening right now into two very separate places—as if some functioning part of her brain was ahead of her in deciphering what was happening.
‘Yes, of course I do, Cara.’ His voice was mocking, confusing her even more. ‘I knew who you were before we even introduced ourselves. I came to that club specifically to find you.’
She shook her head again. It felt woolly. ‘But why…why didn’t you just tell me who you were?’
Something indecipherable flashed across his face for a moment, before it became a smooth hard mask again. ‘Because I wanted to see you at first hand. Up close and personal. The little sister of Cormac Brosnan, the man who was planning on marrying my sister in Vegas on the eve of her twenty-fifth birthday so that he could claim her fortune before cruelly dumping her.’
Cara’s face leached of all color. She’d only found out about Cormac’s plans the day of the accident. She could remember remonstrating with him, aghast that he would do such a thing. He’d laughed in her face. And then that night…
‘You knew.’
He saw her reaction, and his voice was implacable and condemnatory.
Cara met his eyes, everything around her swirling slightly. ‘Yes, but—’
Vicenzo stood away from the window with a violent movement, halting her words. And somewhere Cara marveled at how she was already thinking of him as Vicenzo. Enzo had long gone.
‘Yes, but nothing. You knew, and you had as much a hand in the plans as your brother. Tell me, were you the perfect little confidante to Allegra?
Buttering her up, telling her how much your brother loved her? Priming her for the fall?’
Cara recoiled, her eyes huge. ‘No. I didn’t know what Cormac was planning—that is not until last week, I swear. I liked your sister…’
Pain gripped Cara again at how she’d failed to help—and yet she hadn’t had enough time. Vicenzo advanced towards the bed and she recoiled back even further. He said something rude in Italian undoubtedly a curse.
‘Of course you liked my sister, Miss Brosnan. She represented your easy ride to a future where you would never have to worry about money again.’ He clicked his fingers, making Cara flinch. ‘All your brother’s debts gone, in an instant.’
When he called her Miss Brosnan she felt her heart shrivel a little inside her. It cast a slur on the passion they’d shared in this very room. She could see it now: his resemblance to Allegra. She’d noticed it last night, but of course she had had no frame of reference for it.
Cara found some strength under the laser-like gaze and scooted up in the bed, kneeling, holding the sheet around her with both hands. She still had to make sense of all of this. Her head hurt with so many questions.
‘I don’t understand.’
‘I’ll help you, shall I?’
Cara gulped. He looked positively intimidating, a muscle beating in his tight jaw, glaring down at her. A million miles from the man who had become her first lover.
‘As soon as your brother realised that Allegra was heiress to a substantial part of the Valentini fortune he pursued her with nothing more in mind than to rape her for her wealth.’
Cara flinched at his words but he went on.
‘He introduced her to drugs to make her more malleable, make her dependent on him totally. And all the while he was doing this he was keeping me busy at home with a bogus takeover bid, ensuring I wouldn’t check up on her.’ Vicenzo laughed harshly. ‘After all, she was here working a grown woman, as she kept reassuring me, well able to take care of herself. Why should I be worried about her?’
Cara felt sick. She’d witnessed her brother’s actions. What Vicenzo said now didn’t surprise her, but she’d had no idea how influential Cormac had been over Allegra. She’d only ever seen Allegra come and go, stay the night a few times. She’d seemed sweet, perfectly happy. It had only been when he’d revealed his plans that she’d begun to see Allegra as a potential victim. And that revelation had come far too late.
Cara swallowed painfully. ‘If you knew this—’
‘That’s the problem.’ His voice was unbearably harsh, the lines in his face tightly drawn. ‘I didn’t know. Until we figured out that Brosnan’s bid was bogus. Immediately I suspected he was up to something more, and I also realised that he was the new boyfriend Allegra had been so cagey about. I put an investigative secret security detail on her and your brother.’
‘That’s how you knew me,’ Cara breathed, new shock flooding her system.
He didn’t answer. Just continued ruthlessly. ‘Your brother had quite a taste for trust fund girlfriends, but he was in dire straits and desperate when he met Allegra. Unfortunately by the time I found all this out and got to London…it was too late.’
The bleak, haunted tone in his voice reached out to Cara, hitting her heart directly. But before she could say anything in her defense he was rounding on her.
‘And you…’ His eyes flicked up and down, taking in her half-covered body, derision and disgust in his eyes. ‘You and your brother killed my sister. But he’s gone and can’t be held accountable. You, however, walked away from that crash without a scratch.’ His mouth twisted. ‘Isn’t fate serendipitous?’
The true horror of her situation finally spread through Cara. She sank back on her heels, her hands shaking now, unable to stay upright. Vivid images of the crash came back—the awful driving rain, the twisted metal.
the smell of petrol and smoke. The dreadful silence after the terrible screeching and tearing had finally stopped.
‘It was an accident,’ she said faintly, her insides in a black knot. Only the other day she had sent a sympathy card to the Valentini offices in London, not having any idea of their address in Sardinia. She’d felt so ineffectual…had wanted to do something—make some kind of contact with Allegra’s family. She’d asked at the hospital but they’d been tight-lipped about what the family were doing, where they were, and Cara had figured that they must have already taken Allegra home. Evidently he hadn’t received the card. Or if he had, she imagined now that it would have added salt to the wound.