‘It’s not a matter of like. You are beginning to scare me.’
The calmly delivered line was at complete odds with her words, but the thought that he might have been in any way making her afraid cut him like a knife. The excess adrenaline from his anger, from his need to fight for those he cared for crashed through him but he quickly got himself under control. He cast a hard glance back towards her, concerned that he had pushed her too far. As if sensing his need, Sia took off her sunglasses. The purity of her gaze, the honesty and concern—not fear—shining for him, for his sister struck him all over again.
‘Your sister, is she okay?’ Sia asked.
‘No. She’s eight months pregnant, alone and if anything happens to her—’ Residual waves of helpless anger still lapped over him.
‘Is she in danger?’
He forced himself to take a breath. ‘No.’
Sia leaned over to the driver’s seat and opened his door, inviting him back into the car. ‘What about Eduardo?’
‘What about him?’ Sebastian asked, utterly confused about what their father had to do with it.
‘Can he do anything?’
Sebastian sank into the seat of the sports car with a bitter laugh. ‘He’s been the dictionary definition of absent for Maria’s entire life. I doubt very much that he’s going to change now.’
Sia leaned back in the leather seat, tucking her feet beneath her, signalling her patience for an explanation. He nearly laughed. Somehow, the truest interactions they shared had become silent exchanges, no need for words or questions, their understanding of each other almost instinctive.
‘It was one of the conditions of the purchase of their estate in Rimini. That Maria come to live with me.’
‘How old was she?’
‘Eight.’
Sia nodded as if beginning to understand and perhaps, given her own parents, she might just be able to.
‘It was the only way to protect her. Even before our father lost everything in the deal with Abrani, he had removed himself from her, emotionally and physically. Maria is a study of my mother. Hair, eyes, nose, mouth, chin...an almost exact replica. And, much like everything else, Eduardo simply couldn’t bear to be reminded of his wife. Because my father, despite all that he became after her death, had loved her so completely in life.
‘So, even though it was unintentional, I had to stand by and watch while he broke my sister’s heart, knowing that I wasn’t enough to fix it and never would be. Because what she needed was her father.’
Sia’s heart broke, knowing just how much that would have hurt Maria. Knowing just how much it had hurt her to be separated from her own father. But it also ached for the boy who had become a parent at such a young age. Not just to Maria, but to himself. H
er heart melted for the man who would clearly do anything to protect those he loved, those within his purview. She’d seen that at the hotel. She saw it every day in the little things he did for her that she had almost stopped noticing. The way he would have spun the car round and driven back to Florence. The way he had arranged for her to see everything she could ever want in Siena and Florence, and further.
But Sia could see that he was still caught in the past, pulled by the negative tug beneath a tide of anger, and she hated the hold it had on him. And the only way he could move on was to change his thinking, to shift his focus. Torn for just a moment, she realised that the risk of hurting him was not enough to outweigh the gift of release if her plan worked.
‘I agree that Eduardo should have stepped up. I’m truly sorry that he wasn’t capable of it. You should never have had to do the things you did. But, because you did so, could it be that Eduardo didn’t need to?’ she asked gently, bracing herself for the reaction she knew would come.
‘So I should have let the whole thing crash down about our ears?’ he demanded hotly.
‘No. But Sebastian, it’s not about shoulds, coulds or might-have-beens. You did step up. And because of that Maria had a safe, loving, caring brother to look out for her. Which is exactly why she’s going to weather the storm she’s experiencing with her husband.
‘Your father had a very plush roof over his head with his wife, and you found the strength to build an international hotel conglomerate that is worth billions,’ she said, infusing her voice with all her awe and wonder that he had been able to do so. ‘Something that might not have happened had your father managed to resolve even half of the emotional baggage he needed in order to be there for his children. And perhaps, rather than focusing on whether that should have happened or not, you could focus on the amazing things that resulted because you did?’
Sebastian resisted the urge to shake off her words. For so long he’d been looking at what he’d missed, what it had cost him to compensate for Eduardo, to assume the position as head of his family. But Sia was right. When he considered what he had gained, not money or things but security, emotional and physical, for his sister and, as much as he could, for his father and Valeria and even himself, that was so much more than where they could have ended up. And the hard work that he put into his company, it had allowed him to invest in his friends, like Theo, and staff, the people who worked for him. In fact, all those early years of struggle and hardship, the impossibly long sleep-deprived hours, they had brought him here, to a moment in time where the world was his oyster—he could now do literally anything with his life. And the sense of accomplishment that spread through him, the pride in his own hard work and achievements began to smooth over the harsh hurts of the past. Not completely, but in its own way it began a healing that took him by surprise.
He cast a look at where Sia was sitting beside him and all he wanted to do was haul her into his lap. As if sensing the train of his thoughts, she smiled, pure wicked deliciousness.
‘I didn’t pick you as an optimist,’ he said, restraining that heat before he did something ludicrous that would have them arrested for public indecency.
‘Oh, I am—which is why I know I’m going to get my hands on the painting,’ she teased, and he wondered if she realised it was the first time that she’d made a joke, or even referenced the Durrántez since their first night in Siena.
Keeping his hands on the wheel of the car, and not all over her body where he wanted them, he pressed a kiss on her lips, a promise of more to come. He turned the key in the ignition and guided the car back onto the road that would see them home.
In that moment Sebastian realised that Sia hadn’t asked her question since that night either. Was it because she no longer wanted to prove that he’d stolen the painting? Was that a good or a bad thing? He couldn’t tell. But now he had a different perspective on his past, along with the realisation that it wasn’t that he didn’t want a family or commitment in his future—but that because of his past he didn’t trust that he could ever have such a thing. But Sia was making him want it. Want it with her.