To tangle with his wife would mean relearning himself because Clio wouldn’t leave him untouched. And that was a risk he couldn’t take.
CHAPTER TEN
THREE WEEKS AFTER their wedding, Stefan had the usual early-morning online meeting with most of his executives around the world. The scent of freshly brewed coffee, which Clio religiously picked up, dragged him into the kitchen as it did every day.
He poured himself a cup, took a sip and watched Clio at the dining table, poring over a bunch of documents and making notes.
A frown tied her brow, her face was rapt, reminding him of the time they had crammed for an exam together years ago.
Suddenly, he felt a burst of warmth in his chest at the sight of her, an almost forgotten sensation.
It had become a ritual—one among numerous others that they had fallen into when they returned to New York between trips around the world.
Sharing a cup of coffee, looking through Jackson’s financials, discussing new initiatives for the charity, and the best of them all for him personally—rediscovering all the little offbeat eateries in different corners of New York they had all used to favor back when they had been at university.
He frowned, suddenly seeing the pattern, the determination with which Clio had dragged him against his will the first couple of times. As if she wanted to erase all the bitterness of his love affair with Serena, the bitterness he had let corrupt his memories of New York and the happy years he had spent here, the aversion he had developed to settling down in one place or making meaningful connections with anyone.
As if she wanted to remind him of his true nature, of the parts of himself he had destroyed to move on in life.
That he hadn’t recognized her intentions until now showed how deep he was into their farce of a relationship.
He was about to interrupt her when he heard the elevator doors open with a swish at the entrance to the suite, followed by familiar voices. Clio instantly went still, the knuckles of the fingers clutching the pink ballpoint pen becoming white.
Feeling an uncomfortable knot in his gut, Stefan made his way through the corridor into the lounge and stared wordlessly.
Wearing a beaming smile, his mother practically ran toward him. Threw her petite form into his arms, uncaring whether he caught her or not.
As it had been for a decade, shame sideswiped Stefan, robbing his ability to speak.
His father, tall and broad like Stefan, was more remote, watching him silently.
He hadn’t seen his father in almost a decade and his mother only a couple of years ago when she had traveled to Villa Mondelli, his friend Rocco’s house in Milan, to see Stefan.
Tears flowing over her cheeks, his mother launched into a rapid dialogue just as Clio arrived from the lounge.
His father, a traditional and usually reticent man, moved toward Clio and grasped her hand in his. Studied her with a mixture of curiosity and warmth. “You’re as beautiful as you are generous, bella.”
The familiarity his father showed Clio stunned Stefan, rendering him mute.
Her face suffused with warmth, Clio was shaking her head. Her hands trembled, her gaze resolutely turned away from Stefan. “It’s nothing, Mr. Bianco. I was just doing my duty.”
Duty?
“Thank you for inviting us to your home, Clio,” his mother said in heavily accented English from the circle of his arms.
“You have to excuse us, it’s not a proper home,” replied Clio, looking anywhere but at him.
“But home is where your heart is, sì?” his mother said, fresh tears filling her eyes again.
His head swapped between Clio and his parents as if he was at a tennis match, shock literally robbing him of coherent speech.
A decade ago, he had tried to convince his parents of the same thing—that he had fallen in love with Serena and that he wanted to stay back in New York.
They had been so against it that they had threatened to cut him off and he, so naive, so desperate to be in love, had told them he was fine with that.
But Serena had wanted nothing to do with him without his parents’ fortune.
“We would have loved to come for the wedding but it was not to be,” his mother piped up again, glossing over the fact that he had not invited them.
Except for phone calls, he hadn’t been able to even meet his father in the eye.
“He’s fortunate, to have such a loving wife.” This was said to his father.
“Please, come in,” Clio finally said, her voice hoarse. “Did you have a safe flight?”
“Yes,” his mother replied. “Aboard Stefano’s luxury jet means we don’t need anything.”
Shock shuddering through him, he grasped Clio’s wrist and tugged her toward him.
“I have to call the butler and have some food arranged for them,” she said, tugging her hand back.
“How long will you run, bella?” he whispered before his mother commanded his attention again.
He felt the shiver that racked through her slender frame.
The little minx had arranged everything, even commanded his pilot without his knowledge.
All Stefan wanted to do right then was to excuse himself from his parents, drag his wife inside and demand an explanation. Or maybe ravish her first and demand explanations later.
Because his desire for his alluring wife seemed to be the only constant thing in his life these days.
After a dinner of expertly prepared pasta con le sarde and impanata di pesce spada, swordfish pie, his favorite, which Clio had requested the butler learn and cook for dinner, and lots of colorful conversation—which had been mainly his mother’s curious questions about how they had fallen in love, the wedding and when they were planning bambini, and Clio’s deftly spun tales for answers—the silence in the cavernous lounge jarred on Stefan’s nerves.
Every time he had visited New York over the past decade, he had stayed in the same suite at the Chatsfield. Now it was as if a volcano had erupted all over his life and there was no way he could contain the damage being done, couldn’t turn it back into the safe, sterile place it had been just a month ago.
His father’s hand on his shoulder prodded him out of his thoughts. “You’re angry with your wife for inviting us.”
Stefan shook his head in automatic denial before he caught a flicker of understanding in his father’s eyes. His father had never lied to him, had never done anything but love Stefan.
“You know we would have welcomed you back all these years.” Not even a hint of hesitation could be heard in his father’s voice. “Why have you not returned to Palermo even once? Why have you stayed at a distance, Stefano?”
The unhidden ache in the question came at Stefan like a sharp punch, ripping through the shell he had built around himself.
Had he known, somewhere, that his father, of all the people in the world, could sense how changed he was from the inside? Had he been afraid that his father could see that there was nothing good left in his son after what Serena had done?
“Was it to punish us for threatening to cut you off all those years ago? Have you become such a cruel man, then?”
“No,” the denial waved out of him. His father would accept nothing but truth. For the first time in years, Stefan looked inward.
“What kind of a man keeps away from a mother who dreams of holding her son in her arms again?”
To hear that painful resignation in his father’s voice was Stefan’s undoing. Words rushed out of him on a wave of guilt and shame and so much more that he had locked up for so many years. “Serena…she took my very belief in myself when she left me. In just one day, I became a stranger to myself. I didn’t know myself and I could not face you as a failure. I…was not worthy of you and Mamma after choosing such a woman over you. How could I face you after I had so selfishly shattered all your dreams?”
Understanding dawned in his father’s gaze. “And all these years? After you built your empire, after you proved to yourself that you could succeed?”
Stefan shook his head, a lump in his throat. He had no answer for his father.
“Has she taken everything that was good and kind about you, too?”
She hadn’t. He’d given it all up willingly. He hadn’t wanted anything that could have made him vulnerable like that again. Along with his naïveté, he had also given up his heart.
After everything he had done to wipe her from his life, he had still let her win.
The realization clawed in his gut. He had held on to her rejection, had held on to the poison she had spewed into his life for so long.
Had let her corrupt everything that had been good and pure in his life even though he had been determined to prove her wrong.
He had denied himself and his parents the joy of seeing each other.
Clutching his father’s hands, Stefan spoke. “I have let my shame and guilt stop me from visiting you these years…I wanted to prove myself worthy of you again and in the process, I forgot what you taught me…I forgot everything that is important in life.”
Nodding, his father patted his back. “Your mother, she does not see things. But I would have been immensely sad to see my son become like this…if it were not for your Clio, Stefano. To see you with a woman like that, it makes my heart easy.”
What would his father say if he knew it was nothing but a farce? What was stopping him from making the woman he wanted with an insane hunger his own? The thought erupted on the heels of the first one.