He let out a breath, as if he’d suffered a blow.
“I’m so sorry,” he said quietly. So quietly she almost didn’t notice the way it sneaked into her, adding fuel to that small fire that still burned for him, for them. That always would. “I wish you’d come to me. I wish I’d seen what was happening beneath my nose. I wish I’d had any idea what you were going through.”
“It doesn’t matter now.” And she found she meant that. She kept going, because she needed to finish. To see it through. “I did it. I got half a million dollars for those pictures and I lost you. I gave the money to my mother. It was enough to pay Denny and then some. I was such an idiot—I thought that meant we’d be fine.”
“How long?” he asked, and she knew what he meant.
“Another month or so and the money was gone. Then she was in debt again. And it turned out Denny was even less understanding than he’d been before, because there was no rich boyfriend any longer. There was only me. And he was pretty clear about the one thing I was good at. How could I argue? The entire world had seen me in action. I was a commodity again.”
“My God.”
“I don’t know about God,” Paige said. “It was the LAPD who busted Denny on something serious enough to put him away for fifteen years. My mother lost her supplier, which meant she lost her mind. The last time I saw her, she was on the streets and she might be there still. She might not have made it this long. I don’t know.” She lifted her chin to look him in the eye. “And that’s what happened ten years ago.”
“You can’t possibly feel guilty about that.” He sounded incredulous. He frowned at her. “Paige. Please. You did everything you possibly could for that woman. Literally. You can’t stop people when they want to destroy themselves—you can only stop them from taking you along with them.”
She shrugged again, as if that might shift the constriction in her throat. “She’s still my mother. I still love...if not her, then who she was supposed to be.”
Giancarlo looked at her for a long time. So long she forgot she’d been too ashamed to tell him this. So long she lost herself again, the way she always did, in that face of his, those dark eyes, that mouth.
“I’m so sorry,” he said, his voice so low it seemed to move inside of her, like heat. “I wouldn’t blame you if you hated me. I don’t think I understand why you don’t.”
“Because my whole life, Giancarlo,” she whispered, unable to hide anything from him, not after all this time and all the ways they’d hurt each other, not any longer, “you’re the only person I’ve ever loved. The only one who loved me back.”
He shifted back and then he reached over to brush moisture from beneath her eyes, and Paige reminded herself that she was supposed to be resisting him. Fighting him off. Standing up for herself. She couldn’t understand how she could feel as if she was doing that when, clearly, she was doing the opposite.
“Violet adores you,” he said then. “And despite her excursions around the Tuscan countryside purely to be recognized and adored, she does not, in fact, like more than a handful of people. She trusts far fewer.”
Paige made a face. “She has no idea who I really am.”
He smiled then. “Of course she does. She tells me she’s known exactly who you are from the moment she met you. Why else would she let you so deep into the family?”
But Paige shook her head at that, confused. And something more than simply confused.