But the door wasn’t locked. And what he found when he tossed it back on its hinges stunned him to a complete standstill.
CHAPTER SEVEN
‘—WHAT the hell are you doing?’ he raked out incredulously.
But he could see what she was doing. A suitcase already lay open on the bed and she was tossing things into it like a criminal on the run.
‘Antonia!’ he demanded when she didn’t answer.
‘I’m l-leaving,’ she stammered, then froze within the midst of what he realised was full-scale panic to stand with body stiff, arms straight, fists tightly clenched, while she fought a battle with whatever emotion was suddenly trying to overwhelm her.
‘The hell you are,’ he grimly countered, but his own voice no longer sounded quite so steady.
He began striding towards her, and the act jolted her back from wherever she’d gone to and she turned on him, paste-white, stark-eyed—he had never seen an expression like it in all his life.
‘Cara…’ he murmured hoarsely. ‘For goodness’ sake…’
‘I’m leaving you, Marco!’ She almost screamed the words at him she was so out of control. ‘Now—tonight! I n-never want to see you again.’
The fact that he could see it had almost killed her to say that didn’t make him feel any better, because he could see she actually meant it—and that was scaring the life out of him.
She turned back to the suitcase. With a swipe of his hand he sent it flying to the floor. Clothes scattered everywhere. Silly things like a couple of sets of underwear, a couple of skirts, a couple of simple cotton tops.
He tried swallowing and found he couldn’t. He tried making sense of the evidence he was looking at. He couldn’t do that either. For no woman—no woman! left Marco Bellini with only the clothes she’d come to him with!
No woman left Marco Bellini.
‘You aren’t going anywhere until you’ve answered some questions,’ he growled, and grabbed her hand. ‘Maybe once you’ve done that I’ll be glad to see the back of you!’ he threw in for furious good measure, and began trailing her behind him out of the bedroom and down the hall while she tried her best to get free of him.
No chance, he vowed silently. No damn chance.
Throwing open the door to his study, he strode them over to the locked door. Still holding her hand prisoner, he stabbed in the security pin-number, hauled her inside, then over to the Mirror Woman.
‘Now, let’s start right here,’ he gritted. ‘Who is she?’
Anastasia, Antonia thought tragically, and began shaking all over again, fighting a battle with tears that reached right down to her abdomen. Sad, tragic—beautiful Anastasia.
‘Mirror—mirror,’ she whispered thickly.
‘What is that supposed to mean?’ Marco said harshly.
It was no use lying, no use trying to pretend that she didn’t know what he was talking about. The game was up. She had been exposed as the fraud she was.
‘This,’ she said, ‘is Anastasia…’
It took a few moments, then it hit him. ‘My God,’ he rasped. ‘Are you saying that she is your twin?’
A laugh left her throat on a strangled sob. Her amber eyes shimmered with tears and a pained kind of humour, because Anastasia would have so loved to have been here to hear this big handsome Italian say that.
‘No, not my twin,’ she murmured softly. ‘She was my mother…’
My poor, wretched, haunted mother, she silently extended, while the silence grew thick all around her.
‘Mother,’ Marco repeated, as if he had to do so to understand the concept. ‘You mean, you and Kranst actually….’
The words stopped. Antonia turned to look at him. For once he was literally floundering on the rocks of shock. And he looked white. He looked horrified.
‘What?’ she snapped as anger began flooding up from the depths of a bitter knowledge of where they were about to go with this. ‘Did we collaborate to deceive everyone? Yes.’ She openly admitted the charge. ‘Did I pose nude for Stefan so he could pretend I was my mother? No, I did not,’ she denied that. ‘Stefan and my mother were lovers for ten years! He adored her. And no again, before the cogs inside your head start turning to something nasty,’ she sliced at him. ‘Stefan did not bed-swap between my mother and myself!’
‘I was not about to assume—’ Marco began stiffly.
But angrily she cut in. ‘You’ve always assumed!’ she cried. ‘From the very beginning you assumed we were lovers. But Stefan is my friend!’ she threw at him. ‘My dear, dear friend who arrived in our lives when we really needed someone warm and loving and endlessly giving like him! Between us, we nursed my mother through a long and miserable illness. And the result of those dark years?’ She gestured with a trembling hand towards the painting. ‘How my mother wanted Stefan to remember her. Not the withered and worn-out shell she became towards the end!’