The Proud Wife

She had told herself that she would be completely in control for this meeting. That she would be cool, calm and collected when she and Pietro came face to face again. She had done all her crying for the loss of her marriage, the destruction of her illusions in the past, and now she was going to put them all behind her. She had thought that she was prepared because, no matter what she had just said, she had known full well that she would have to come face to face with her estranged husband at some point during her return to Sicily. Pietro wouldn’t have ordered her back to the island if he hadn’t intended that to happen. He would have to oversee her final dismissal from his life in person, if only to make sure that he was rid of her once and for all. There would have been no point in the summons otherwise. So she had slapped her emotional armour into place, knowing that it made her look hard and distant as a result.

Deep inside, hard and distant was the very last thing she was feeling.

‘You don’t have a lawyer? You didn’t think that you would need someone to protect your interests?’

‘And will I?’

Marina made her words a deliberate challenge. She knew her own private reasons why she hadn’t felt the need to bring along any legal support, but suddenly she wasn’t prepared to reveal those right away.

‘You are my wife.’ Pietro’s shadowed eyes met hers head-on, no trace of doubt or hesitation in his confident stare, though the heavy lids did droop down, hiding their expression behind the long, thick lashes.

‘Soon to be ex,’ Marina reminded him, not allowing herself to be intimidated by his merciless scrutiny.

Oh, he hadn’t liked that; it was obvious from the sudden flare of something dangerous in the depths of his eyes. But he was no longer dealing with the amazed and overwhelmed girl he had married, the one who had been too naive to see him for what he really was. She’d done a lot of growing up in the past couple of years.

‘You are my wife,’ he repeated. ‘And as such you will be given what is due to you.’

Well, that was a double-edged comment, if ever there was one. But which way was she supposed to take it? Marina wondered. As a promise of fair play or a threat of retribution?

‘But first there are a couple of conditions.’

‘Of course.’

She should have expected that. She had expected it. From the moment the letter had arrived summoning her here to this office—Pietro’s lawyer’s office, on this island, Pietro’s home territory—she had known that he intended to show that he had the upper hand. And that he very definitely intended to use it. The sting she felt at the thought of that cold-blooded, ruthless determination turned on her made her flinch inwardly, cursing herself for still being weak enough to let him get under her guard at all. She knew what Pietro was like, didn’t she? She should do. She’d spent almost six months as his wife, had seen every side to his character. She knew how cold, hard, how totally pitiless he could be when he was crossed. The lines etched into his face, the burn of ice in those strangely pale eyes, told her that nothing had softened him in the time they had been apart. And the clipped, controlled tone of his voice warned her that he intended to make no compromises, would give no quarter.

‘Of course?’ Pietro questioned sharply.

‘I expected conditions, yes,’ Marina returned. ‘I’d be a fool not to. You aren’t going to just roll over and give in, are you? That’s hardly your way. Hardly the behaviour of Il Principe Pietro D’Inzeo.’

‘And yet you still came here without a lawyer?’

Just the tone of voice in which the question was asked made her stomach lurch uncomfortably, nerves tying themselves into knots deep inside. It didn’t matter that she told herself there was nothing he could do to harm her; somehow there was a tiny little seed of doubt that left her unable to convince her uncomfortable, jittery mind that it was actually true. She might have a secret card up her sleeve, but suddenly she was plagued by a nervous sense of apprehension at the thought of actually playing it.

Pietro D’Inzeo was a powerful man: a Sicilian prince. Head of the D’Inzeo Bank and all the other companies he’d bought since taking charge of the D’Inzeo business empire. A man with huge riches and influence. She knew from having seen him in action that he never suffered fools gladly, that he was a cold-blooded predator in the business world and that, when crossed, he made a very dangerous enemy. And she was planning to thwart whatever plans he had made for the way this meeting was to go. She was—hopefully—going to checkmate him here in front of his lawyer. A proud Sicilian like Pietro wouldn’t take that lying down.

But, even as the question slid into her thoughts, she instinctively pushed it right out again. If there was one thing she was sure of, it was that Pietro’s sense of honour, his proud Sicilian character, would always ensure he played fair. It had never been the thought of the financial implications of this meeting that had worried her.

The emotional repercussions were a very different matter.

‘I didn’t think I’d need one. After all, there are laws about this sort of thing.’

Seeing the way Pietro’s dark brows snapped together on hearing that, her nerves twisted once more deep in the pit of her stomach. For one desperate moment her heart ached with the memory of the way that hard, carved face used to change when he’d been with her. How those icy eyes had softened, the beautiful mouth curved into a smile. How she had once been able to kiss away that frown between his brows.

‘And besides,’ she added hastily, ‘you said I’d get what was due to me.’

‘I did say that,’ Pietro acceded, his tone not helping things very much.

‘So perhaps you should let me know about these conditions.’

‘Of course.’

It was Matteo, Pietro’s lawyer, who spoke. After a swift glance at his employer’s stony face, earning himself a brief nod of agreement, he now came to sit down opposite Marina, opening a file of papers he had placed on the table between them.

‘It is time we got down to business.’

Marina tried to turn her attention to the lawyer and what he was saying, but it was difficult when the stinging awareness of Pietro and everything he did, every movement he made, was rushing through her like a charge of burning electricity. She was conscious of the way he seemed to have backed down, conceding the central role to his lawyer, but she knew that any such concession was deceptive, totally misleading. He poured himself a drink of water and curled long, tanned fingers around the glass but never lifted it to his lips. He even leaned back in his chair, apparently at his ease—but out of the corner of her eye she could sense the tension that held his long body stiff, watchful and alert.

He was observing everything that was happening, watching her so closely that she almost felt her skin singe under the heat of his gaze. She knew that, although Matteo was speaking, it was Pietro who was in control, his lawyer only the mouthpiece for what he wanted to say.

‘The conditions …?’ she prompted hoarsely, wincing at the way her voice cracked on the words. Struggling for control, she focused every last bit of her attention on the older man opposite her, trying to blot out the fact that Pietro was even there.

‘I don’t think that you will find them too difficult,’ Matteo assured her, tapping the sheaf of documents with an elegant silver pen. It was the same file that had been delivered to her on the plane, the one she hadn’t even opened, never mind read. Because the one thing she had ever wanted from this man was his love and, when she’d realised he had none to give her, there was nothing else that could fill its place.

‘Firstly,’ Matteo said, drawing her attention away from that thought, ‘you must agree to give up the name D’Inzeo and revert to your maiden name.’

‘Willingly.’

The condition had been one she was expecting so she felt a rush of relief that this was all it was.

She meant it, she tried to tell herself. She really did. Bitter memories of the past put a depth of feeling into her response that must surely convince Pietro, even if she couldn’t convince herself. Once she had been so very happy to have Pietro’s name as her own. It was a name with a long-lived Sicilian history, the name of centuries of princes and princesses, hugely wealthy bankers who had a much more prestigious place in the world than her own ordinary middle-class family. She had been proud to have it as her surname, amazed at the deference and response that it brought with it, the speedy effect just mentioning it would create—an effect that Pietro treated with casual disdain.

But most important to her had been that it was the name of the man she adored. And it should have been the name of her baby too. The cruel slash of pain that thought brought with it pushed her into unguarded speech.

‘Why would I want to keep the name of the man whose marriage to me meant nothing to him?’

To his lawyer’s right, she heard Pietro snatch in a sharp, angry-sounding breath from between clenched teeth. Her throat tightened, knotting itself against the lurching beat of her heart as she tensed, waiting for his furious response. But it never came. The look that Matteo flashed towards Pietro silenced whatever outburst had been about to escape his ruthless control and he subsided into silence again, merely indicating with a swift, impatient flick of his free hand that the lawyer should continue.

But Marina couldn’t be unaware of the way that the other hand, the one still wrapped around his water glass, tightened against the hard surface until his knuckles showed white, revealing the fierce struggle he was having with himself to hold back the angry words that had almost escaped him.

‘I will have no trouble with that particular condition,’ she managed stiffly, still keeping her eyes on Matteo’s calm, controlled face.

‘Buon.’

The silver pen made a small check-mark against the relevant paragraph in the document.

‘Next, you will sign a confidentiality agreement, promising never to speak of your marriage, never to reveal anything of your life with Principe D’Inzeo, either during the time you were together or of the reasons why you split up.’

‘I … What?’

Now she had to turn to Pietro; she couldn’t stop herself. She knew that her eyes were wide with anger and disbelief—and, yes, a savage degree of pain—when she turned them on the man who sat silent and immobile as a rock.

‘You want me to sign …?’ she managed, but then the hurt got the better of her.

How could he think that she would ever want the world to know the truth about their life together? That would mean letting everyone know about the way she had been so bitterly disillusioned. The baby …

From nowhere came the thought that, if their baby had been born, it might have had the same pale, devastating eyes as its father and suddenly it felt as if the sides of the room were closing in on her, taking all the daylight with them, making it difficult to breathe.

‘How dare you?’