There was, however, no partying going on at the Mondelli suite at Fifteen Central Park West on the afternoon of the Italian fashion house’s show, Olivia’s first appearance on a runway in over twelve months. The show, combined with the details of planning the society wedding of the year, had Olivia hurtling close to the edge. She was wearing the face of Medusa. Rocco was afraid if he touched her, she would snap in half.
She stood, hands on jean-clad hips, in the salon, blue eyes shooting fire at him. “I told you I don’t care,” she muttered in response to his question about the wedding color scheme. “Maybe we should make it a black-and-white theme—the light and the darkness.”
“Perfetto,” he murmured. “You would be the darkness and I would be the light.”
“As if.” She shoved the guest list back at him. “I told you. Violetta, Sophia, my mother and my father. That’s it. And my father is not walking me down the aisle.”
“Why?”
“Because he has his own family now, and who knows if he’ll be able to take the time off work. He works long hours for the transit company.”
Rocco frowned. “So I’ll send him some money to cover the week. Maybe he and his family can even make a vacation out of it.”
“You will not.” Heat flared in her eyes. “He hasn’t wanted anything to do with my mother and me for years. Leave him alone.”
“Let’s talk about your mother, then. If you’ve forgiven Giovanni and her for the affair, why the animosity?”
“Forgiving her for the affair has nothing to do with my general feelings for my mother.”
“Which are?” He lifted a brow. “I’m going to be meeting her tonight. Maybe you should give me a heads-up as to what I’m walking into.”
“Like you did with Stefan?” She shook her still-damp hair back over her shoulders. “All she cares about is status. Keeping up with the Joneses.”
He frowned. “It must have been hard for her when her career fell apart. When she lost Giovanni and your father.”
“She brought it on herself. And then she made everyone pay.” Olivia got down on her hands and knees and peered under the coffee table. “Have you seen my sneakers? We have to be out of here in five minutes.”
He shook his head and shrugged on his jacket. “What do you mean ‘made everyone pay’?”
“Dammit, I need those sneakers.” She crawled over and looked under the sofa. “They’re my lucky ones. Are you sure you haven’t seen them?”
Rocco walked to the door, found her sneakers jammed under a pair of his dress shoes and fished them out. He carried them over to her but held them out of reach.
“Tell me.”
She got to her feet and grabbed the running shoes out of his hands. “When I began to have success with modeling, my mother latched on to me as if I was her saving grace. Her career was done, and she had a hard time holding a normal job. So she spent my money like it was cheap wine. Went on living her life like she had in the good old days. The more she spent, the more I had to work to pay the bills. I was exhausted, in a different city every week. But it never stopped. It was an endless vicious cycle of wanting to cut back and not being able to.”
His brows came together. “Are you saying she spent all your money?”
She sat down and tugged a shoe on. “I’m saying that when I returned home from a trip to Europe where my credit card was declined, the bank manager told me I was broke. As in zero dollars in the bank. She had spent it all.”
His stomach lurched. “On what? What could she have spent that much money on?”
She yanked the other shoe on. “An apartment, a car, trips to visit her friends in the south of France. I was so busy working I had no idea.”
“And you trusted her,” he concluded grimly.
“Who would you trust more with your life than your mother?”
Or your father. The uneasy feeling in his stomach intensified. The way he had read this woman wrong from the very beginning on every point shamed him to his core. She hadn’t been out partying away her money. She had been attempting to support her family, just as he had had to.
“Mi dispiace,” he said quietly as she stood there, a vulnerability emanating from her he now knew to be utterly authentic. “I have judged you completely wrong from the beginning, Olivia. I owe you an apology.”
She stared back at him for a long moment, surprise etching its way across her face. Self-disgust kicked in his gut. He had really been a first-class ass this entire time.
Her gaze fell away from his. “We should go. I need to be backstage in half an hour.”