Ciro cut her off. ‘Dio, Lara. The man would have raped you if he could. It wasn’t your fault.’
Lara felt a flutter in her chest. Dangerous. She looked at Ciro. ‘Why are you here?’
‘You don’t want anything? From the divorce?’
She shook her head, stifling the disappointment. He’d only tracked her down because he needed to discuss this. He probably didn’t believe her.
‘It was never about money for me. Ever. Not the first time around. Not now.’
Ciro pulled out a tabloid newspaper and handed it to Lara. He said, ‘I presume you haven’t seen this?’
She looked down and gasped. On the front page there was a picture of Ciro in handcuffs, being put into a police car. His knuckles were bleeding and he looked grimmer than she’d ever seen him. The headline read: Sant’Angelo Brawls in Palace Amongst Royalty!
She took in the few words underneath.
You can take the man out of the Mafia...
Lara looked at him, shocked. ‘What happened?’
Ciro said, ‘I met a man. He was one of the men at the select little auction run by your uncle. One of the men who—’ He stopped.
Lara finished for him, feeling sick. ‘One of the men who might have become my husband?’
Ciro nodded.
He flexed his hand and Lara reached for it, turning it over to see his bruised knuckles. She said quietly, ‘Thank you, but you didn’t have to do that. You must hate the press attention.’
Ciro flipped his hand so he held hers. ‘I don’t care about any of that. Finally I’ve got it through my thick skull that it doesn’t matter. Respect and acceptance come from living with integrity and honesty. I can’t do more than that and I’m done trying.’
Lara was almost too scared to breathe for a moment. She looked at Ciro and saw a blazing light in his eyes. Something she’d never seen before. A different kind of pride. It made her emotions bubble up again.
‘You’ve never needed to. You tower above men like my uncle and Henry Winterborne. You always have. But I can understand your father and his father’s desire for acceptance. They deserved better.’
Ciro huffed a laugh. He still held Lara’s hand. ‘Did they? They had blood on their hands, Lara. We all did, by association—although we’ve come a long way since those times. I’ll never be fully accepted into that world, but what I’ve realised is that money and commerce talk more than social acceptance. That’s all that matters in growing a business and a reputation.’
His scar stood out against his olive skin and Lara’s emotions finally got the better of her. Ciro would never have had to come to this painful realisation if not for her.
‘I’m so sorry, Ciro. If we hadn’t met...if I hadn’t fallen in love with you...my uncle never would have—’ She stopped, biting her lip to stem the tears threatening to flow down her cheeks.
His grip on her hand tightened. ‘You have nothing to be sorry for, Lara. Nothing. From the moment we met again you confounded me. I expected the woman who had appeared in my hospital room that day, but I got you. The Lara I remembered. Except I couldn’t trust it. You. I was afraid to after you hurt me so badly.’
Lara chest seized. ‘Hurt...? But you didn’t have any feelings for me.’
Ciro huffed out a sound halfway between a laugh and a groan, his hand still tight on hers. ‘I didn’t know what I was feeling. All I knew was that when you asked me if I loved you I panicked. All I could think of was my father, and his toxic obsessive love of my mother. I knew it wasn’t that I felt. But I couldn’t deny that I felt obsessive about you, and suddenly I was terrified that I was just like my father—that I would lose myself over a woman and make a fool of myself like he had.’
Before Lara could fully absorb this, or what it meant, Ciro asked her a question.
‘Why did you agree to marry me this time?’
She swallowed her emotions. ‘I felt so guilty for what had happened to you. I owed you. After everything that had happened...’
Ciro took his hand from hers, his expression changing. ‘You felt obliged...’ He grimaced. ‘And why wouldn’t you? I told you that you owed me.’
He looked at her and she saw pain in his eyes. The pride was gone.
‘You had nowhere to go. No money. You felt guilty already. I left you no choice.’
Lara shook her head. ‘Of course I had a choice. I could have walked away... I could have told you everything that day and let the chips fall where they may. But I didn’t.’