The Unwanted Conti Bride (The Legendary Conti Brothers) (14 page)

For there was no light in her world without him. No laughter, no joy, no color. She was nothing but the drab, colorless, staid Sophia.

His poisonous hatred about his genius, his self-loathing, it all stood there like a dark, forbidding stone wall that she couldn’t climb, much less conquer. An almost tangible thing rushing him away from her, blocking her. “You live this life you’ve been given, Luca. I can’t help but admire that.”

Something flashed in his face then—relief or peace—and she thought it might be a small chink in his armor. A tiny crack in that impenetrable wall. “Then we are in agreement,
si
? Because I thought we could make this a more permanent arrangement. With some ground conditions.”

The offer was made with a tease, a lighthearted tone. But it was full of wretchedness, too. For he also knew what it meant if she hated the other part of him. If she agreed it was a shame to be hidden away because now she knew where it came from.

She could see it all in his face, she understood his complex mind so well. Not now, but eventually, he would hate her a little for what he was already doing, too.

She was damned if she did and damned if she didn’t. Despair gave way to anger. How dare he decide their fate like this? Who had given him this right to govern her joy? “No, we’re not in agreement. I will not hate, I
can’t
hate something that is part of you. Like you do. I won’t pretend. I can’t look at you and not see all of you. The masks have come off—there’s no going back, Luca.”

“I didn’t realize you have a love for such melodrama.”

“Drama? You think I choose this any more than you choose to be what you are? I accept the part of you that flitted from woman to woman all these years because you thought that was the only kind of connection you could have. So I must accept this, too. Please, Luca.” She reached for him then. “Don’t you see I understand?”

He stiffened, his features haunted. Pain was a live thing in his eyes then. “You see me as broken now, and I can’t stand it. I have never pitied myself and neither will you.”

Her own fury rose, fueled by fear. Why wasn’t he seeing what he meant to her? She wasn’t the sentimental sort; she didn’t know how to make big declarations. She didn’t even understand half of the riotous emotions coursing through her right then. All she knew was this: they could not end that night, not over this. “Do not presume to tell me what I feel about you, then.”

“I have given you everything I’m capable of, everything I have, Sophia.”

“I have found that place, Luca, the place where I want to dwell. By your side. Just don’t ask me to pretend like I don’t know the true you now. I can’t unsee you. I can’t unhear that music...” But even as she said it, she knew nothing would change his mind.

His beliefs about himself were bone-deep, a disease that would steal him away from her. He would never accept himself. And he would never accept what she felt for him.

He had not left her with an illusion of her strength, either; he’d left her nowhere to hide. Reckless, he’d ripped it all from her and now she had nothing to fight him with.

Such powerlessness flew through Sophia’s veins that she wanted to throw something at the wall. She wanted to beat her fists into something and feel the crunch of bones.

But she did nothing like that. Sensible as always, she realized the futility of a violent tantrum. There was nothing to do but wait and hope that he would let her in again. That years of deeply held self-belief might shift.

She reached him and laid her hands on his shoulders. Her fingers moved over the slopes of his neck, the jut of his collarbone, the warm, taut stretch of skin over muscle.

He didn’t reject her touch. He didn’t return it, either. The man who always,
always
, touched her as if he couldn’t bear it otherwise, who had taught her what it was to touch and kiss and learn another, didn’t touch her now.

Head bowed, he stood there like a statue, a warm, wonderful man who’d all but ripped a vital part of himself and kept it away.

She kissed first one cheek and then the other. Masculine and sweaty, the scent of him made her blood sing. The clench of his muscles as she wrapped her arms around his naked back... She was aware of every breath in him as if it were her own. Finally, she clasped his cheek and kissed his mouth. Poured every bit of her into that kiss. “If only you would give me one chance—yourself, one chance—Luca. Give this thing between us one chance...”

Sophia turned and left his studio. His world. And a huge part of herself with him.

* * *

It took Sophia three weeks and a clip of Luca dancing with a seminaked burlesque dancer in a night club in Paris—circulated by Marco Sorcelini—to realize Luca wasn’t coming back.

When she’d discovered from Leandro that Luca had left not just Milan, but Italy, the morning after that painful night, something inside her had frozen. She had packed it all away, told herself that he needed time to figure it out, to stop running. After all, the fear that he could be like his father, the ugly truth that he should have never had to face, that isolated lifestyle he’d made into an art form, had a decades-deep grip on him.

It had been his shield against more rejection, against pain.

How could he let go of those beliefs just for her? How could she expect him to, after knowing her for only a few months?

Interestingly, it was a discussion prompted by her stepfather that had torn the blinders from her eyes.

Sophia had returned from work at almost eleven when she’d seen Salvatore waiting for her in the study. Knowing that she couldn’t indefinitely avoid her parents’ concern, she’d joined him. She was exhausted, sleep-deprived and she’d caught the first hint of the rumors about her record short marriage.

No one woman could keep the Conti Devil...

Conti Devil seeking new distractions...

Conti Devil flees Italy and his marriage...

Her cheeks hurt from the number of times she’d tried to keep her expression calm.

Salvatore offered her a glass of water and peered at her patiently while she finished it off. “Sophia, have you decided what you’re going to do?”

“About what, Sal?”

His dark brows had gathered into a frown. “About your marriage. I think it is better for you and Rossi’s if we see a lawyer immediately. Now, I have—”

Wretched fury burst out of Sophia. Her whole adult life, it was all she’d heard about—the Rossi Glory, the Rossi Legacy. “Is Rossi’s all you care about?”

Salvatore blanched. “
Non.
I worry about you, too, Sophia. But after years, Rossi’s is benefitting from the Conti family’s influence and it is better to separate your marriage from the business as—”

“Christ, Sal! Rossi’s is not thriving because of Leandro or Luca or the great CLG. But because of me! I’m the one who turned the company around. I’m the one who...” Shameful tears blocked her throat; Sophia looked away from him. But the tears had also released her fear.

She had had enough of lying down and taking what she was given. Tired of fighting for a place without actually demanding her due. Like a faithful dog happy with scraps.

That infuriatingly slick charmer had been right in this, too.

Looking thoroughly befuddled, Salvatore took her hand in his. “I have loved you like you were my own—”

The dam broken, Sophia snatched her hand away. Words were so easy. Staying behind lines, worrying about Sal’s fears, justifying Luca’s past as reason enough for his current cowardice... It was all so easy. “Do you truly, Sal? Then why not trust me with your great Rossi legacy? Why have you never considered me to be your successor? After all, I’ve worked damned hard to be here. I’m the best thing that’s happened to the company in years.”

And just like that, Sophia fought her own insecurities, ripped away the cocoon of self-delusion she’d built for herself. Even then, guilt about her family and her love for this abrasive but inherently kind man almost took her out at the knees. “I have only ever worked to make Rossi’s whole again. It is my company as much as it is yours. But unless you see that, unless you give me the role I deserve, I quit, Sal. Tonight, now. Consider this my official resignation.”

Sophia had barely turned around when Sal stopped her. Her tears ran down her cheeks, a testament to what the cruel Luca Conti had done to her again.

Hands on her shoulders, Sal lifted her chin, quite like he had done when she had been thirteen. Black eyes filled with regret and concern and a gruff sort of tenderness. “You will forgive an old man his old prejudices,
si
, Sophia? You are right. You are and have always been stronger than any son I hoped for. Rossi Leather and its future, they are all tied to you. You are its future,
bella
. Forgive me,
si
?”

When he pulled her into his warm embrace, Sophia broke down into shuddering sobs. She cried for herself and for Luca, wondered if he would ever come back.

That night, desperate for a little connection to him, Sophia packed a bag and went back to Villa de Conti at the stroke of midnight. If Leandro and Tina thought her a little mad, they didn’t betray it by word or look. Her throat had filled with tears when they had silently stood in support while she wandered through Luca’s room like a wraith.

He’d given her everything—a chance to save Rossi’s, an opportunity to explore her potential, a new family that somehow seemed to love wholeheartedly despite their differences, and more important than anything else, her belief in herself.

What was she supposed to do with all the riches in the world when he wasn’t there? What was pride when her heart itself was broken?

She lay awake in the bed she’d shared with Luca countless times and cried again. It was time to face another truth.

Her foolish belief to wait and hope that Luca would let her in again was nothing but sheer cowardice. The deep freeze that seemed to have settled around her heart ever since that night, her self-possession, her brittle calmness in the face of the rumors flying about Luca dumping her after three months of marriage was nothing but docile acceptance of his decision. A habit that was as embedded in her, it seemed, just as Luca’s fear was.

Instead of fighting and scratching and kicking her way into his life, she hid beneath her fake strength. She had even started withdrawing from society, afraid of facing their pity, or scorn or both.

She’d done this the last time, too. Instead of confronting him, she’d quietly slipped back to her life, accepting his decision. Not this time.

Not when she knew that the kind of intimacy and connection and laughter that she and Luca had shared came once in a lifetime. Not when she knew they were made for each other. Not when there was so much love to be filled in both their lives if only...

If she had to break Luca to make him face himself, face Sophia and her love, she’d do it. If it was destruction he wanted, she would hand it to him. She would shatter every pretense he’d carried out, rip apart every lie he’d weaved around himself.

And maybe when there was an end to all the things he clung to, an end to the farce, an end to life as he knew it, maybe then they could have a new beginning.

But one thing was sure: she wasn’t giving up without a fight.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Two months later

L
UCA
WALKED
INTO
the high-ceilinged breakfast room of Villa de Conti and stilled. Shock rippled through the room, a tangible tension in the air. His family looked up at him—relief the more prevalent of emotions flitting across their faces.

“Where the hell were you?” Leandro shouted across the vast room, his legendary self-control absent. “
Dio
, Luca! You could’ve been be lying dead in some part of the world for all we knew.”

“
Papa
, you’re shouting and swearing,” Luca’s seven-year-old niece, Izzie, piped up.

Luca raised a brow at his brother. “If I die, you would hear.”

“We know you’re not dead.” This was Tina. “You made sure we all knew what you were up to.”

Something in her gaze caught Luca and for once in his life, he shied away from his little sister. Had he changed or she?

Izzie lifted her arms to him. “I missed you,
Zio
.”

Here was another one of the female variety from whom he’d never been able to hide. He lifted her from the breakfast chair and buried his face in her sweet, strawberry-scented hair. Something loosened in his gut.

Small arms clutched his neck tightly. He pulled her tiny hands from around his neck, kissed her cheek and put her back in her chair.

His sister-in-law, Alex, was next. Usually, Alex, who was slender and willowy, coming at him was like holding a bouquet of dainty summer flowers. Pleasant and leaving him with an utter sense of well-being, of deep, unwavering affection. Of the innate goodness of life.

Heavy with pregnancy, when she threw herself at him today, though, Luca wavered on his feet and smiled. Her grip was just as tight as her daughter’s around his neck. “You worried the hell out of all of us. Are you well, Luca?”

A lump lodged in his throat and he nodded.

What a fool he’d been... He’d denied a part of himself for so many years. And in the process, denied himself so many good things, too. He kissed Alex’s cheek soundly, knowing it irritated Leandro. “You still won’t run away and marry me,
cara
?” He said it loudly and saw the scowl on his brother’s face.

Alex pulled back from his arms, ran a shaking hand over his cheek and laughed. “Bigamy, I believe, is a crime in Italy, too, isn’t it?”

And just like that, the pressure on his chest returned.

Dio
, he felt like he walked around with a permanent boulder on his chest. Or he was developing some serious heart trouble. Personally, he preferred the second. At least he could get it treated.

But no such luck.

He was in the peak of his prime, a physically perfect specimen of mankind. Although, lately, he’d begun to loathe himself less for what was inside, too.

He kissed Tina’s cheeks, leveled a cursory nod at Antonio and sat down.

The scent of coffee and pastries filled the air, the tinkle of coffee cups and cutlery discordant in the awkward silence. Izzie finished her milk and toast, hugged him again, sought reassurance that he wouldn’t disappear again and left the room.

Luca waited, his breath pent up in his chest, his fingers not quite steady.

They were looking at him, and then shying away. He put his coffee cup down so hard that half the coffee sloshed over his fingers. “I haven’t gone mad, so everybody can breathe easier.” Only the frown on Antonio’s face relaxed.

He had to give his dear old
Nonno
some points for constancy—always a little afraid for Luca.

Leandro shrugged. “I never thought you would.”

All his brother had ever done was tell Luca that he had a choice to be like their father or not. But Sophia had showed him that the choice was not just to be different from his father. But he had the choice of accepting himself, too. Of being happy in his own skin.

“Destroy every chance at any happiness you could have, like I almost did?
Si
,”
Leandro continued
. “
Fall into some kind of mad abyss and froth at the mouth?
Non.

“What Enzo did or was, what resides in you, that is not our legacy, Luca. What we do with our lives, is. Aren’t you the one who told me that?”

His throat full of unshed tears, Luca nodded. And then he asked the question that had been tormenting him all the way through his trek through the markets in Marrakesh. Through the deserts of the Middle East and the cold winter of Prague
.

Through endless parties and long lonely nights even in the midst of crowds. Because Sophia was right. His mask was off and he was tired of pretending that he was worthless. He was tired of acting as if what he had was enough.

For years he’d made an art form of running away from himself. But he couldn’t run away from Sophia and his thoughts of her. He couldn’t run away from the man she made him to be, the man she thought him to be.

“How is she?”

There, he was bare naked again. With no place to hide, no mask in place to retreat behind if it hurt. No shallow facade to reject before being rejected. It was not a feeling he was going to get used to anytime soon.

“Ask her when you see her.”

“Why am I seeing her?” He wanted to, desperately. But for once in his life, he didn’t know what he was going to say. All his charm, his quicksilver mind, nothing really helped when he lay awake for long hours wondering what he would say to her.

How he would beg.

“She’s taking you to the cleaners,” Leandro added with quite a relish.

It would serve you right if I took you to the cleaners.

The shock on Luca’s face deepened his brother’s smile. “Her exact words. She wants a huge divorce settlement.”

Divorce? She was talking divorce?
Had she decided he wasn’t worth it, after all?

Luca’s heart sank like a stone, leaving a gaping void in his chest. Had he self-destructed, then? Had he become that self-fulfilling prophecy? Had he lost the one woman who’d loved him despite the fact that he hadn’t deserved it? And he couldn’t blame it on what Enzo had passed on to him. No, this was all his doing.

Merda
, was it all over already?

“I told you to give her my share of the Conti stock,” he offered numbly. Suddenly, his world felt emptier than it had ever been before.

This blackness, this yawning stretch in front of him, this was what would break him. His love for Sophia, that was the only thing that would knock him out at the knees, he realized now. Not some pre-decided genetic sequence. Not a lack of control.

Living without Sophia’s love, returning to the meaningless, empty tomb of his life, would send him to madness.

“To quote, ‘It costs him nothing to give it away, that bloody stock.’ She doesn’t want it, Luca.” When Luca glared at him, Leandro shrugged again. “Don’t shoot the messenger. You left me here to deal with her and she is on a warpath. She wants your personal fortune, your studio, even your countless pianos. Apparently, everything you have ever hidden, everything you have ever made through your
genius
, she wants it. And your antics all over Europe with all those women, you have given her lawyers enough rope to hang you with.”

Why say no to CLG stock when it would give her a seat on the most powerful board in Milan? When it would mean the culmination of all her dreams?

She had him utterly baffled, more than a little disconcerted, and he was supposed to be the genius.
Did she hate him so much, then?

He hadn’t left her any other choice when he had left Milan in the dark of night, when he’d made sure tales of his escapades had reached every big media outlet that had chased him. His cruelty haunted him now.

Dio, what had he done?

Leandro wasn’t quite finished.

“She has discovered,
to her delight
, her words again, that you’re a millionaire a hundred times over. ‘Your dear brother is full of little secrets, isn’t he?’ Her lawyers are quoting ‘emotional distress, spousal abuse and abandonment of marriage’ as grounds for divorce. Even society’s sympathy lies with her. Sophia Rossi is not only clever, she’s extremely resourceful.”

“What the hell do you mean
society
? This is between me and her.”

“No, it’s not. It is a scandal now, another Conti spectacle like the last one...like Enzo started. Alex and I can’t step out without being hunted by the media. Sophia and Salvatore are talking about
your separation
to everyone who will listen. There was a featured article last week that hinted you were the mastermind behind the innovative waterproof sole technology we use in Conti pumps and those gravity-defying metallic stilettos that made us big globally.”

“Huang?” Luca said. “She spoke to Huang.”

Leandro nodded. “They are all speculating what you’ve been up to all these years to have made so much money. They are all questioning your behavior all these years, wondering if you’re like Enzo. She made you a person of interest to every rabid newspaper, every network station. I... I can’t control what they get their hands on, Luca.”

Wave after wave of shock barreled at Luca. Now he understood the gravity in his brother’s voice, the concern in those gray eyes.

If someone found out about his birth, if they knew that the same hungry cavern dwelled in his mind, too, the same fear and distaste he saw in Antonio’s face would appear in everyone’s...

He put his head in his hands, his breath sawing through his throat. Was this all just to hurt him as he had hurt her? Would she reveal the circumstances of his birth, too? Would she make the world think him a shame, as he’d thought of himself for so long? Would she—

“
She is outing me.
She’s telling the world who I am,” he said, his stomach clenched so hard he couldn’t breathe.

Leandro finally leaned back in his chair. “I believe so. Nothing I could say would convince her otherwise.”

Luca groaned, the sound coming from the depths of his soul. The groan morphed into laughter that made his lungs burn. He felt like he was caught by an eddy, tossed around this way and that. He laughed until there were tears in his eyes and he was shaking, shivering with relief, with the release of fear and so much love that he couldn’t even breathe.

Hands on his temples, he ducked his head, waiting for the dizziness to abate. Tears poured down his cheeks, and he wiped them with shaking fingers.

With his breath returned the image of Sophia that had tormented him for months.

Sophia with her heart in her eyes, her body shaking violently as she kissed him and told him that she accepted all of him. That all he needed to do was give them a chance, a real one.

Sophia, who would not take defeat lying down. Sophia, who fought to the last breath for the people she loved. “Please tell me you did not threaten or manipulate my wife in any way?”

Something flashed in Leandro’s gaze. Leandro seemed to have frozen as if he could not believe it. As if it was impossible that Luca had finally, irrevocably fallen in love. “She has also already turned around Rossi’s stock. According to some of my sources—”

“Your sources?” Luca demanded. “You are having her watched? Guarding your company?”

“I was worried about her, Luca. So is Salvatore. She works like a demon, she... The news about you that has reached us, she...she has not been the same. Salvatore appointed her CEO of Rossi Leather.

“Her idea for a flagship design store in the midst of Milan’s fashion district made the CLG board salivate. The store will display every new product line weeks before they actually hit the market. It will become the center of every designer event in the city. But she fought for her stepfather like a lioness, said it was her family’s legacy and they finally voted to call it
Casa Rossi
. Ten designer brands, including Maserati, are going to be part of her inaugural event tomorrow night.”

Despite fear beating a tattoo in his blood, Luca nodded. He had no idea if Sophia would take him back, but he meant to spend the rest of his life begging, hounding her, chasing her, generally turning her life upside down. Like she had done with him. If he had to spend the rest of it on his knees, naked and shivering, he would do it.

If he had to spend the next hundred years waiting for her forgiveness and her love, he’d do it happily.

“I have never met a woman quite so ferocious,” Tina added with no little pride in her voice.

Ferocious and funny and far too softhearted, the woman he’d fallen in love with was too good for him. “You take her side over your gorgeous brother’s?” Luca threw at Tina.

“Since I have discovered that my brother is a donkey’s behind,
si
.” Tina waited for Leandro to stop laughing, a serious light in her eyes. “Since she has done me the favor of telling me the truth. Since she’s the only one who treats me as a grown-up woman and not a commodity to be protected or controlled. Or used as a bargaining chip in blackmail.”

Instantly, all humor evaporated from the air. Tension rippled across his shoulders and he saw the same in Leandro’s face. Anguish danced in his brother’s face and for his sake, Luca hoped Tina would forgive Leandro.

She threw the last words viciously at Antonio, her voice breaking. Antonio, whom Tina had loved so unconditionally, had the grace to look ashamed.

“What truth?” Luca finally managed to say. It seemed Sophia had left no stone unturned in opening their family’s vault of secrets.

“That I am not a Conti. That my father was a poor chauffeur
Mama
fell in love with after she left you and Leandro. That my older brother, the Conti Saint, set up my marriage to Kairos because he thought I would fall apart if the truth ever came out and a powerful, handsome husband could make up for it. That my second brother, the Conti Devil, married her to keep my power-hungry husband from breaking my heart. I think I prefer your way, Luca. If I had to choose between one of you manipulating my life as if it were a chess board.”

“Tina,
tesoro
, I’m so—”