‘So you worked obsessively,’ Kristen said, gaining sudden insight into why the Castellano Group had been more important to him than anything else, including his relationship with her. Did he still feel the need to prove his worth to his father? she wondered. If so, where would Nico come in his priorities?
He must have read her thoughts because he said quickly, ‘Nothing is more important to me than building a relationship with my son. Fortunately, he is young enough that he will hopefully not remember that I wasn’t around for his baby years. It is not too late for me and Nico—as it was with me and my father. I will work hard to make up for the time I lost with him.’
The accusation that the lost years were her fault hung between them and Kristen felt even guiltier now that Sergio had told her about his childhood. ‘I did what I thought was best,’ she said stiffly. ‘You were so distant at the hospital after I’d had the miscarriage, and I truly believed you did not want a child with me.’
‘The fault was mine, not yours,’ he assured her. ‘I was so well-practised at hiding my emotions and it didn’t occur to me that you needed to see that I was grieving for our baby too.’
Kristen bit her lip as a dozen ‘if onlys’ ran through her mind. If only Sergio had confided in her during their affair then she might have understood why he seemed so coldly unemotional. If only she had remained in Sicily with him, instead of going back to England in high dudgeon because he had only asked her to be his mistress, then she would have told him she was still pregnant with her dead baby’s twin, and maybe he would have married her rather than the beautiful Sicilian woman whose photo he kept in his bedroom.
She turned away to the window and saw that the sun had sunk below the horizon while they had been talking and a few faint stars were appearing in the purple sky. Somehow the beauty of the heavens seemed tainted by the ugliness of Sergio’s revelations and she felt an aching sadness for him, for her and for the course of events that had led them to be on opposite sides, each fighting to be full-time parents to their son.
‘When you came to live with your father, did you tell him how your mother had treated you?’
‘No.’ He shrugged. ‘I have explained that we are not close...and there was a part of me that wondered if Patti’s mistreatment of me was somehow my fault. It was not something I wanted to talk about with Tito. And I couldn’t say anything to Salvatore. He was already angry that our mother had abandoned him when he was a young child. In many ways Salvatore’s childhood was as unhappy as mine. He told me that our father was very bitter after Patti left. Tito focused all his time and energy on the company and shut off his emotions. It must be a family trait,’ Sergio said grimly. ‘I couldn’t tell Salvatore that the mother he had missed so desperately when he was a child was a spiteful, unpleasant woman.
‘Patti died a year after I returned to Sicily—she drowned in the bath after a heavy drinking session. My brother and I didn’t have the chance to ask her why she had treated us the way she did. I was an angry and confused young man, but thankfully one person understood me. I confided in Annamaria and she helped me come to terms with my past.’
Kristen had never heard Sergio speak in such a gentle tone, and she felt a stab of jealousy. ‘Who is Annamaria?’ The photograph of the dark-haired woman in Sergio’s bedroom leapt into her mind, and she knew the answer to her question before he could answer. ‘She was your wife, wasn’t she?’
‘Yes.’ Sergio hesitated. ‘I think I should explain about Annamaria.’
‘There’s no need.’ Kristen stalled him quickly. The green-eyed demon inside her couldn’t bear to hear details of the woman he had married soon after their own relationship had ended. She swung around to the window and crossed her arms in front of her, subconsciously retreating from him as he had done to her in the past.