Giancarlo had failed on all counts. It was why he knew that the vows he’d made when he was younger were solid. Right. No marriage, because how could he ever be certain that someone wanted him? And no heirs of his own, because he’d never, ever, subject a child to the things he’d survived. He might not be able to save himself from his own father’s disappointment, he might find his life trotted out into public every time his mother starred in something new and needed to remind the world of her once upon an Italian count fairy-tale marriage, but it would end with him.
Damn Nicola—Paige—for making him think otherwise, even if it had only been for two mostly naked months a lifetime ago.
It was that, he thought as he broke into a run again, his pace harder and faster than before as he hurtled down the hill, that he found the most difficult to get past. He hated that she had betrayed him, yes. But far worse was this thing in him, dark and brooding, that yearned only for her surrender no matter how painful, and that he very much feared made him no different than she was.
He thought he hated that most of all.
CHAPTER FOUR
AFTER A LONG SHOWER and the application of his own hand to the part of him that least listened to reason, Giancarlo prowled through the house, his fury at a dull simmer. An improvement, he was aware.
La Bellissima was the same as it ever was, as it had been throughout his life, he thought as he moved quietly through its hushed halls, gleaming with Violet’s wealth and consequence in all its details. The glorious art she’d collected from all over the planet. The specially sourced artisan touches here and there that gave little hints of the true Violet Sutherlin, who had been born under another name and raised in bohemian Berkeley, California. Old Hollywood glamor mixed with contemporary charm, the house managed to feel light and airy rather than overfed, somehow, on its own affluence.
Much like Violet herself, all these years after her pouty, sex kitten beginnings in the mid-seventies. He should know, having been trotted out at key moments during her transition from kitten to lion of the industry, as a kind of proof, perhaps, that Violet could do more than wear a bikini.
There was the time she’d released a selection of cards he’d written her as a small child, filled with declarations of love that the other kids at school had teased him about all the way up until his high school graduation. There was the time she’d spent five minutes of her appearance in a famous actor’s studio interview telling a long, involved anecdote about catching him and his first girlfriend in bed that had humiliated fourteen-year-old Giancarlo and made his then-girlfriend’s parents remove her to a far-off boarding school. He knew every inch of this house and none of it had ever been his; none of it had ever been safe. He was as much a prop as any of the other things Violet surrounded herself with—only unlike the vases, he loved her despite knowing how easily and unrepentantly she’d use him.
He followed the bright hall toward Violet’s quarters, knowing how much she liked to spend her days in the office there with its views of the city she’d conquered. He had memories of catapulting himself down this same hallway as a child, careening off the walls and coming to a skidding halt in that room, only to climb up on the chaise and lie at his mother’s feet as she’d run her lines and practiced her voices, her various accents, the postures that made her body into someone else’s. He’d found her fascinating, back then. He supposed he still did, and Giancarlo couldn’t remember, then, at what age he’d realized that Violet was better admired than depended upon. That her love was a distantly beautiful thing, better experienced as a fan than a family member. The first time she’d released a photo of him he’d found embarrassing? Or the tenth, with as little remorse?
He only knew they’d both been far happier once he’d accepted it.