A Legacy of Secrets

Except right now she was doing exactly that.

Remembering every horrible moment, every terrible feeling, crying and sobbing for the first time since it happened, reliving the nightmare when she didn’t want to...

...and in a hotel room alone.

CHAPTER SEVEN

FOR THE FIRST time since she had started working for him, Ella wondered if she could face breakfast with Santo and going through his diary. They always started the week like that, and as she’d had yesterday off, it would be assumed she would meet him in the hotel restaurant at 6:00 a.m., as they did when on location.

Ella stood in front of the mirror after a very sleepless night. A cool shower had done little to reduce her swollen eyelids and the tip of her nose was bright red.

She looked like a woman who had spent the night crying.

Except she hadn’t, as Santo would no doubt assume, been crying over him—it was the issues that he had alluded to that had finally made her break down.

It had been six months without tears.

Six months of telling herself that she was strong, that she would not let what her father had done affect her, would not let his fists bruise her soul.

But they had.

It wasn’t just the beating that had left its mark.

It was the years that had.

Years of watching her mother suffer, years of walking on eggshells so as not to upset him, years of scrimping and saving to afford a home where she could take her mother away from him.

Ella was in danger of crying again, so she chose not to think about that awful day. Instead she attempted magic with a make-up brush, but nothing was really going to work. So, once dressed, it was Ella who donned huge sunglasses this morning and took the elevator down, fervently hoping that Santo would be polite and pretend not to notice the state of her face.

‘Jesus!’ He stood up as she approached the table. Of course he looked immaculate and well rested. Because it was Santo he promptly took her glasses off—he was just so bloody Italian—and wrapped her in his arms. ‘Sorry, baby...’

‘Stop it.’

‘I went too far.’ He was talking into her ear, slowing her heart that had been beating frantically all night. ‘Hire someone ugly—’ she felt tears fill her eyes at his attempt to help ‘—a man, I don’t care.’

‘Santo.’ She pushed him off a little, took a seat. ‘I wasn’t crying about that.’ A waiter poured her coffee and Santo sweetened it for her. She took a drink of it and wished he wasn’t being so nice, because it would be so easy to again break down. ‘I’ve got stuff going on. You were right.’

‘Of course I was right,’ Santo said. ‘About what?’

‘You know...’ God, but she hated the word. ‘Issues...’

And where most men would run Santo was over in a flash. He moved his chair right beside her and wrapped an arm around. ‘Tell me.’

‘No!’ She did not want his arm, did not want a man who was so comfortable in his own skin that he could sit in a restaurant and not care who saw, nor one who thought she could discuss such things.

‘I’ll tell you mine.’

‘No.’ She was not going to let him make her smile.

‘I’ve got hundreds of them,’ Santo said, and yes, he made her smile. Then he was terribly kind. ‘But right now, my main issue is you.’

‘We’ve got to head over to the set.’

‘I’ll say when we go.’

‘I can’t talk about it.’

‘You could.’

‘No.’ Ella shook her head. She didn’t have to explain her choices to him, except she found herself trying to. ‘You don’t talk about things you don’t want to, you don’t discuss your family.’

‘You know my family are...’ He didn’t finish and she looked over, watched his hand move to the collar of his shirt as he struggled to come up with a suitable answer, but Ella found it for him.

‘You’re a Corretti,’ Ella said. ‘So your troubles are far darker and far more serious than mine could ever be.’

‘Yes.’

‘I was being sarcastic, Santo.’

‘I know,’ he said. ‘And so was I, but what I’m trying to tell you is that there is little that hasn’t happened in my family. My nonno, Salvatore, started with nothing and died one of Sicily’s most powerful men, so yes, there are things that I cannot talk about. His sons—my father, Carlo, and his brother, Benito...’ Santo stopped then. ‘You know what they say about loose lips...’

‘Speaking of ships...’ She went to tell him about an arrangement for the film but he stopped her.

‘Don’t change the subject.’

‘I am changing it, Santo, because in being so open about your family and issues, you’ve told me precisely nothing.’

‘I’m trying to let you know that you can tell me if you want to,’ he said. ‘And if you can’t, that is fine, but you are never to spend a night like that alone again when I am a short elevator ride away.’

‘Santo...’ Someone was calling out to him, telling him it was time to head off, but he called over his shoulder that he would catch up with them there.

‘Do you understand me?’

‘Sometimes it’s better to be on your own.’

‘You prefer what you went through last night to making love with me?’ He kissed her temple. ‘Then you are mad.’

‘Sex isn’t the answer to everything.’

‘It’s a good one though,’ he said. ‘It works very well for me. But if you want to continue with your sex strike, still we can talk.’ He stood, offered his hand. ‘Come on, we can walk to the set.’

‘It will take too long.’

‘They can wait for me,’ Santo said with all the arrogance of someone who knew that the world would. He handed her back her sunglasses as they stepped outside and he was the nicest company, pointed out villages as they walked down the hillside.

‘My mum’s from there,’ Ella said, wondering if it was being here that had upset her and perhaps brought it all to a head. ‘I’ve got aunts there.’

‘Are you going to visit?’

‘Maybe after we finish shooting.’

‘Don’t tell them you work for me then,’ he nudged. ‘They will warn you.’

‘I already know your reputation.’

‘Not me,’ Santo said, ‘my family.’ He pointed yonder. ‘My nonna lives over there. There is a lot of history, a lot of enemies have been made. Ours is not always a good name.’ He gave her another nudge. ‘Issues.’ But this time it didn’t make her smile and for the first time Santo knew he couldn’t just joke his way out of things, that her silence was perhaps a demand for something more, something he had never given. Except he looked at her swollen lips and thought of her eyes puffy behind the glasses. If he wanted more, then Santo realised he had first to give.

‘My father and his brother were killed in a warehouse fire.’ He wasn’t telling her any great secret. It had been the talk of Sicily then and still was at times. ‘That is when my grandfather divided everything up.’

‘When the warring started?’

‘Oh, it started long before that,’ Santo admitted. ‘My father and Benito were always rivals, Salvatore saw to that.’

‘You call him Salvatore?’

‘I call him both,’ Santo said. ‘You don’t really sit through business meetings saying Papà and Nonno.’

‘I guess.’

‘It’s got worse since he divided things up. Once a year we put on an act and are civil.’ He saw her frown, explained just a little bit more. ‘The family gets together at my nonna’s each year for her birthday—the only thing we all agree on is that we adore her, and we call a truce for one day, but after that, it’s gloves off again. These next few weeks...’

Santo shook his head. He simply never went there, not even with himself, and really, there wasn’t time to now. There was a movie to be made after all. Except Santo found himself standing on a hillside and looking out to the docklands and the sea beyond, thinking how black it had all seemed on Sunday, the hell he had felt in a hotel room, except Ella had been there for him, had turned that day around. He wished last night she had let him do the same, wanted her to open up to him, so for her he broke his unspoken rule.

‘My grandfather played his sons off against the other. He taught them from the start that to get on you had to be ruthless.’ He looked at Ella. ‘So they were. When his health got worse he divided things up. Benito he put in charge of the hotel empire, and my father, Carlo, media. Now though, if we want the proposal to redevelop the docklands to go through, we need to pull together.’ He gave a wry grin. ‘I can’t see it happening. Angelo is—’

‘Angelo?’

‘My half-brother.’

‘You never said.’

‘I never do.’ He looked down the hill. ‘He has bought some of the houses here. This is supposed to be our development, but now Battaglia is throwing his weight behind Angelo.’

‘Because the marriage didn’t go ahead?’

‘Because of so many things.’

‘Does it matter?’ Ella ventured. ‘I mean, it’s just one project.’