The Moretti Heir (12 page)

Elena slipped her arm through Virginia’s. “I’m so happy for you and for Marco. He’s needed a good woman in his life for a long time.”

“Has he?” she asked. Though she knew it was silly, she was jealous of the women in Marco’s past.

“Yes, he has. He and his brothers made that silly vow, and I thought that Marco would never date a woman like you.”

“What vow?” she asked. She knew that no one, save for the Moretti brothers, knew about her contract with Marco.

“The one they took never to fall in love.”

Virginia swallowed hard. She told herself that the vow Marco had made long ago had nothing to do with her. She was here to break the curse anyway, even if he had made a deal with his brothers.

There was a loud screeching sound of wheels on asphalt, and then a boom that shook the ground around them. Since her back was to the track, Virginia had no idea who had crashed. Elena’s face went deathly pale as she stood next to Virginia. She gripped the other woman’s hand as she turned toward the track.

Flames and smoke engulfed the car and she couldn’t make out anything other than the sight of fire trucks rushing to the scene. Everyone went still. The only sounds were those coming from the emergency vehicles. No one spoke in the pit area until, finally, a man that Virginia didn’t recognize came over to them.

“Keke isn’t responding on the radio. They are cutting him out of the car now.”

Elena started sobbing and Virginia saw her own fears realized in Elena’s eyes. “Is he alive?” Elena cried.

“Yes. I will take you to the hospital where he will be airlifted.”

“Yes. That will be fine. But I can’t leave here until Keke does.”

“Do you want me to come with you?” Virginia asked. She wrapped her arm around the other woman. She had no idea what to say, how to offer comfort. Part of her was still afraid that Marco wasn’t all right, though he hadn’t been near Keke.

Her heart was racing. The acrid smell of smoke filled the air and the JumboTron screen rebroadcast the crash in slow motion. Virginia knew that if it were Marco’s crash, she wouldn’t be able to watch it, so she drew Elena away from the pit area and to Keke’s trailer.

“How are you feeling?”

Elena said nothing, but silent tears ran down her face. Virginia hugged the other woman close. This was horrible. They knew nothing, and Virginia realized that the officials mustn’t have heard anything yet. Elena needed someone to tell her something.

She saw a race official and waved him over. She used her rudimentary knowledge of French to try to communicate with him. “Have you had any word on Keke’s status? His fiancée is beside herself.”

“Nothing yet. Ms. Hamilton is welcome to go to the official trailer and wait there for word.”

The official moved on.

“Do you want to do that?” she asked Elena.

“Yes. I think that would be good. Oh, God, Virginia, I’m so scared.”

“Don’t worry. Everything will be okay,” Virginia said, then realized that she had no idea if everything was going to be okay. But she refused to think negatively. She offered a quick prayer that Keke would survive his crash.

“Let’s go,” she said to Elena.

When they got to the trailer, the officials were immediately very helpful in getting Elena a comfortable seat and a drink, but they had no information. After ten minutes, Elena turned to her.

“I can’t take this. I just need to know that he’s alive.”

“Okay. I will go find out what I can. You wait here, so the officials can find you.”

“Thanks.”

Virginia raced back to the viewing area. She saw Dominic Moretti walking through the pit and ran over to him. If there was any man who could get answers for her, it was a Moretti.

“Dominic, do you know what’s happening?”

“I’m not sure. How’s Elena?”

“Beside herself. We can’t get any information from anyone. I’m not even sure who to ask. But she needs something—to know Keke’s status.”

“I will see what I can find out.”

“Grazie,”
she said, but didn’t let go of his arm.

“Was there something else?”

“Um…have you heard from Marco?”

Dom grasped her shoulder in a very reassuring way. “He’s fine. Still out on the track. They won’t let him close to Keke’s car, either. I’ll tell him that Elena is anxious to hear from her man, in case he gets to talk to Keke.”

“That would be great. Would you tell Marco…just that I’m glad he’s okay.”

“I will relay your message to him. Keep close to Elena. Here is my mobile number so we can keep in touch.”

She programmed Dom’s cell number into her phone so that she’d have it.

Almost forty minutes after the crash, they were all back in the garage. Still wearing his jumpsuit and sitting on a chair drinking a bottle of water, Marco waited for the officials to reopen the track. Virginia had phoned to say that she was going to accompany Elena to the hospital. There had been fear and worry in her voice, and he hadn’t had the words to soothe those fears.

He had no idea what was going to happen with Keke. He’d lost only one other friend to racing, but they all knew that it was a risk, driving at superfast speeds in cars designed more for speed than safety.

“Do you have a minute for us?” Dom asked as he and Antonio came into the garage area. His brothers looked tired and worried.

“Yes. What’s up?”

“Are you okay?”

“Sure. Crashes happen. Remember the twenty-four hours at Le Mans, when we were kids? Everyone thought Nonno wouldn’t walk away from that…but he did.”

Dom and Antonio both looked at him and Marco knew they were two of the few people in the world he couldn’t fool with his glib tongue.

“It really does not matter how many crashes we’ve seen. Keke is your best friend.”

“I know, Dom. I keep seeing it replaying in my head. Keke—is better than he drove today.”

Dom pulled a chair up next to him and sat down. “What do you mean? You think he deliberately crashed?”

“No. Not at all. He is too professional to do something like that. I think that he has something to lose now, and that made him second-guess his instincts.”

Marco didn’t say it out loud, but he was thinking that he had something to lose now, too. The new life that he was starting to carve with Virginia. He hadn’t said anything to her, but he’d been thinking that once the racing season ended he’d go back to the States with her for a few weeks. Maybe convince her to move to Europe permanently.

“How do you know this? Did Keke say something that made you think that Elena was a liability?” Antonio asked, as he leaned his hip against one of the big toolboxes in the area.

Marco shook his head. “Nothing like that, Dom. It’s just that you get to know a man after spending so much time together.”

“The same way that brothers know each other,” Antonio said. “We look at the world the same way because we have a shared past and dreams of a successful future.”

“Exactly,” Marco said. He knew his brother was trying to allude to the fact that Marco had let Virginia grow too close.

“Let’s discuss something else. Elena went to the hospital and will let us know once Keke is out of surgery.”

“That is good. I’ll head over there when you go out to take your qualifying laps,” Dom said. “We need someone from Moretti there.”

“Yes, we do. Is there any chance that the wreck could have been caused by sabotage?” Antonio asked.

Marco hadn’t even thought of that. Had he used his perception of how Keke felt about Elena to color his version of what had happened on the track? “Why do you ask?”

“Because someone is out to ruin us. The corporate spying is one thing, but now that we are on to them, maybe they’ve changed tactics,” Antonio said.

“It could be, but security here is very tight. Pedro would be the one to ask, but I have to warn you, he’ll be offended that you are asking. He prides himself on being the best in the business.”

“If he’s the best then he won’t mind a few questions,” Dom said. “I’ll talk to him.”

“We need to be very careful for the rest of the season,” Antonio said. “Marco, have you noticed anyone around here who shouldn’t be?”

“Just a reporter who was sniffing around for information on Virginia.”

“Are you sure he was a reporter?” Dom asked.

Marco rolled his eyes at his brother. “I’m not an idiot. Of course I’m sure he was a reporter.”

“It never hurts to double-check. Speaking of which, we want to ask you something that is probably not any of our business.”

Antonio, who always looked vaguely bored by the goings-on at the track, suddenly seemed very serious. They leaned forward in his chair.

“What is it?” he asked, alarmed by the way his brothers were acting.

“Do you remember the vow we took as boys?” Dom said.

“Yes, I do,” Marco said. He thought of little else lately, with Virginia coming to mean more to him. He wondered if he was fooling himself when he thought that he could easily control his emotions toward her.

“Well, we are concerned,” Antonio said. “I know that Virginia believes having your child will break the Moretti curse, but we’re not so sure. And you are getting very serious about her.”

“Since when does my love life concern either of you?”

“Since you are looking at her the way that Papa looks at Mamma. You know what that means as well as we do.”

“She means nothing to me.”

“Yeah, right. You are living with her beyond the original terms of the contract. You are warning paparazzi away from her and making sure that she’s cosseted everywhere you travel.”

“She’s my mistress, Antonio. I think it’s okay to treat her well.”

Antonio and Dom both stood up. “Make sure that’s all she is. We have all worked too hard to rebuild Moretti Motors to see it all fall apart because you fell for some skirt.”

“I’m very aware of what Virginia means to me, and I’m not about to let either of you down,” Marco said. He stood up and turned to go to his car, and saw Virginia standing in the shadows.

Seeing Marco had made her feel better, until she’d realized that he and his brothers were discussing her. And that he had just said she meant nothing to him. She was no different from the other women he’d been with in the past, according to what he’d just told his brothers.

She wanted to get angry, but she couldn’t. She was still too happy to see him alive.

“I am sorry you had to walk in on this conversation,” Dominic said. “How is Keke?”

“He’s stable. Elena will be able to see him when he comes out of surgery. She’s still at the hospital.”

“
Grazie,
Virginia,” Antonio said. “You are a good friend to Elena.”

“I know it wasn’t in the normal mistress arrangement for me to be nice to the fiancée of the second Moretti driver, but I figured I’d make the effort.”

Antonio gave her a strained smile and said goodbye to his brothers before leaving. Dominic said nothing, and Marco had a tight, angry look on his face.

“Do you have a minute to talk?” she asked Marco.

“A few moments. Dom, will you leave us?”

“Ciao,”
Dominic said as he left.

Marco turned and walked to his private trailer. A couple of his crew members were inside, but they left as soon as Marco entered with Virginia in tow.

He stopped in the middle of the trailer and turned to face her once they were alone. “I am sorry you had to hear that.”

“I’m not. It’s better for me to hear the truth. I had been fooling myself that even though you couldn’t say the words, you still loved me.”

“
Dio mio,
Virginia—”

“I know. You never said anything that would lead me to believe you cared for me. It was my own delusion. I think, once I realized the man you are…well, the man I thought you were…” She couldn’t go on. She was going to start crying and that was the absolute last thing she wanted to do right now. “It doesn’t matter,” she said at last.

“Virginia,
mi’ angela,
please don’t let my words wound you. I meant nothing by them.”

He came to her and tried to draw her into his arms, and she was tempted to go because he’d hurt her deeply and she wanted to be soothed by him. But at the same time she heard his voice in her mind. Heard him say that she was nothing more than a mistress, and she knew that if she had any chance of coming out of this relationship with her pride intact she needed to stand on her own.

She stepped back from him and he dropped his arms. “I do not know what to say,” he told her.

“You didn’t have that problem earlier when you were with your brothers,” she said.

“That wasn’t a conversation you were meant to hear,” he said.

“I know. Believe me, you’ve done a great job of acting like you really care about me…but I guess that’s what you usually do with your mistresses.

“I have no idea why this behavior surprises me. I knew that you were like this when I picked you as the Moretti brother I would seduce.”

Marco put his hands on his hips. She saw the lines of stress on his face and also the flash of anger. “I’m not some kind of cad when it comes to women, Virginia. The women I am involved with—you included—have always come to me wanting something in exchange.”

“How nice of you to point that out,” she said sarcastically. She knew she should leave before she said something stupid, but she was too angry and too hurt to just walk away. She wanted Marco to feel the same pain she felt. That emotional pain that she honestly didn’t know if she’d ever recover from.

“I’m not the one who slept with you and walked away,” he said.

“No, you’re not,” she said quietly. “You also aren’t the one who fell in love. Maybe this is the way it’s supposed to be,” she said. “I mean, I’ll have a child and you’ll have your life, which will continue on as usual. The curse probably demands that I shouldn’t fall in love with you.”

Marco remained quiet, and she knew she had to leave before she broke down and started crying. She had no idea that silence could hurt her this deeply.

“I guess I’ll be on the next plane back to the States,” she said.

“Virginia…I never meant for you to get hurt. I only wanted to keep you safe and happy.”

“Well, you did a good job of that.”

“Did I?”

“Yes.”

“Then what has changed? Why are you leaving me?”

Virginia looked at him. He was a smart man, and she knew he had enjoyed the fact that she did love him. But there was no way she could continue to live with him when their versions of reality were so markedly different.

“I guess, now that I know how you see me…I can’t keep telling myself that someday you’re going to realize that the only way to truly break this curse is to fall in love and live your life in a fully realized manner.”

Marco reached for her, and she felt his hand on her face. She knew this was the last time he’d touch her, and she leaned into that touch for a minute. “I’m sorry for making this goodbye so messy. And for not staying until the end of the season.”

She kissed him on the lips and walked away while she still had the strength to do it.