Italian Prince, Wedlocked Wife
Callie?
Maximo had been right all along, down to the last detail. Lucy closed her eyes, feeling like she was going to faint. “Get me out of here,” she whispered.
Her husband held her close. For a moment, Lucy leaned against him, accepting his comfort, grateful beyond measure for his protection.
“What do you mean, you love her?” Violetta screeched at Alex. “You have a baby? You said you’d been celibate the year we were apart—you swore you loved only me!”
“Shut up!” Alex thundered. “I’m not talking to you!” He turned back to Lucy with pleading brown eyes. “Forgive me. Please, Luce. Take me back. I love you!”
“You’re a pathetic excuse for a father, Wentworth,” Maximo bit out. “A pathetic excuse for a man.” Taking the paper from the bartender, he tucked it beneath his coat. “Come, cara,” he said, looking down at her. “We have an appointment with the lawyers.”
“No!” Alex’s voice hit a higher, more furious pitch with every word. “No! Damn it—where’s that paper? Callie is my daughter—I deserve half—that document won’t hold up in court. It wasn’t witnessed!”
His voice ended in a gurgle as Violetta threw his drink into his face.
“Sì, it was.” Maximo gave a pleasant nod to the enraged fashion designer. “Signora, enjoy your evening.”
And gathering up Lucy, who was still numb with shock and grief, he led her away from Alex’s furious screams and out into the endless rain of the Eternal City.
Two hours later, as she left the judge’s office in Rome, the screams of Alex’s lawyers were still ringing in her ears. They’d been at first suspicious, then furious, to find their attempt to declare her dead a failure at the very moment they’d expected victory. Unable to buy her trust fund shares from Giuseppe Ferrazzi, they were forced to accept that Maximo now owned seventy percent of the company, making their own thirty percent a useless afterthought.
“It’s done, cara,” Maximo said as they went downstairs to the waiting limo. “We’ve won. Wentworth has lost his lover—and his job. Ferrazzi is mine.”
Yes, she thought numbly. They’d won. Her grandfather was dying alone in a dark, ruined villa. Her precious baby had just lost her only father. Some victory!
But Maximo didn’t seem to feel that way. The expression on his face was triumphant. His smile was glinty and cruel.
He was reveling in his revenge.
It made her suck in her breath. How could he be so good to her—and so vicious to a poor old man?
Who was Prince Maximo d’Aquilla? Did she really know him at all—any more than she’d truly known Connie Abbott, or Alex?
Nothing made sense anymore. Her body felt numb, and her mind still didn’t seem to be working properly. At the hotel bar, facing Alex, she’d clung to Maximo. For one moment, she’d felt like she could trust him, felt it down to her bones. She’d believed her husband was an oasis of honor and strength in the cold, selfish world.
But it had only been an illusion. Again.
She kept trying to see good in him—good that wasn’t there. She stumbled. What was wrong with her?
Catching her, Maximo took her by the elbow, escorting her into the wait
ing Rolls-Royce. “Are you all right, cara?”
She didn’t answer.
“Lucia?” Maximo said, sitting next to her in the back seat as the car sped away from the curb. “It is better that Wentworth no longer has a claim on your daughter. Surely you are glad to know the truth?”
“I don’t know anymore,” she muttered, crossing her arms tightly over her chest. She turned her head toward the windows, staring out at the rain.
“Once their DNA test is completed, they will have no choice but to accept your identity, and the Ferrazzi company will be ours.”
“You mean yours.”
“Sì.” His voice was matter-of-fact. “Is that why you are upset? You do not wish me to control it?”
“I wish you to forgive my grandfather,” she said, her voice breaking. “He’s my family.”
His jaw hardened. “Chloe is your only real family.”