A Scandal in the Headlines (11 page)

She was almost positive she’d seen pity on the mayor’s face before Alessandro had closed the door behind them.

“When do you think we should divorce?” she asked briskly when he ended his call, looking out through the small windows at the Sicilian countryside. Proud mountains with vineyards etched into the lower slopes. Red-roofed houses clinging to green hillsides. Olive groves and ancient ruins. All of it piercingly, hauntingly lovely. There was no reason at all it should have
made her chest ache. “Did you have a particular time frame in mind?”

When he didn’t respond, Elena turned away from the window—

And found him staring at her in amazement.

“We have been married for ten minutes, Elena,” he said in a voice that made her skin pull tight. “Possibly fifteen. This conversation seems a trifle premature.”

“This was the only reasonable choice I had, as you pointed out, and a convenient way to fix the Niccolo problem.” She was suddenly too aware of the rings he’d slid onto her finger—a trio of flawless diamonds set in platinum on the drive over, and a diamond-studded platinum band during the ceremony, such as it was. It occurred to her that she was, in fact, deeply furious with him. She’d wanted this to mean something. She’d wanted it to matter. She was an idiot. “Nothing more than that. What does it matter if we discuss it now?”

He went incandescent. She actually saw him catch fire. His dark eyes were ferocious, his mouth flattened, and she was certain she could hear his skin sizzle with the burn of his temper from across the tiny room.

And it didn’t scare her. She welcomed it. It was a happy alternative to the icy cold CEO who’d taken Alessandro’s place since they’d returned to Sicily. Since the paparazzi had found them and plastered
their faces across every gossip magazine and website in Europe. Since he’d shocked her with his proposal. He’d been distant. Controlled. He hadn’t laid a finger on her, and there’d been nothing but winter in his dark green eyes.

She preferred this Alessandro. She knew this Alessandro.

No matter how tight and close it felt suddenly, in such a small room, with him blocking the only exit.

“I suggest you drop this subject,” he advised her, hoarse with the force of his temper. There was that glitter of high passion, furious desire, in his too-dark eyes, and she exulted in it. She needed it.

“Oh,” she said brightly, unable to help herself. “Were you thinking an annulment would work better?”

He laughed. It was a hard, male sound, primitive and stirring. It coursed through her, made her shiver with the heat of it. Made her ache. And the look he turned on her then melted her bones.

“I did warn you,” he said.

He reached behind him and locked the door, and Elena felt it like a bullet. Hard and true, straight into her core. He crossed the room in a single stride, hauled her to him and then pulled her down with him as he sat on the sad, old sofa. Then he simply lifted her over his lap.

He hiked her dress up over her hips, ripped her
panties out of his way with a casual ferocity that made her deliciously weak, then stroked two long fingers into the melting furnace of her core. Elena gasped his name. He laughed again at the evidence of how much she wanted him, all of her molten desire in his hand. She braced her hands on the smooth lapels of his wedding suit, another stunning work of art in black, and not half as beautiful as that mad hunger that changed his face, made him that much starker. Fiercer.

Hers
.

Alessandro didn’t look away from her as he reached between them and freed himself. He didn’t look away as he ripped open a foil packet with his teeth and rolled protection on with one hand. And he didn’t look away as he thrust hard into her, pulling her knees astride him, gripping her bottom in his hard hands to move her as he liked.

“An annulment is out of the question,” he told her, his voice like fire, roaring through her. “And in case you’re confused, this is called consummation.”

Elena’s head fell back as she met his thrusts, rode him, met his passion with every roll of her hips. She felt taken and glorious and his.

Completely his.

He changed the angle of her hips, moving her against him in a wicked rhythm, and she felt herself start to slip toward that edge. That easily. That quickly.
Still fully dressed. Still wearing her wedding shoes and the pearls he’d presented her this morning. Still madly in love with this hard, dangerous man who was deep inside of her and knew exactly how to make her blind with desire. This man who was somehow her husband.

Whatever that meant. However long it lasted. Right then, she didn’t care.

“You are mine, Elena,” he whispered fiercely, his voice dark and sinful, lighting her up like a new blaze. “You are my wife.”

It was that word that hurled her over, sent her flying apart in his arms, forced to muffle her cries with her own hand as he muttered something hot and dark and then followed right behind her.

When she came back to herself, he was watching her face, and she wondered in a surge of panic what he might have seen there. What she might have revealed.

“Don’t talk to me about divorce,” he said in a low voice, his dark green eyes hot. “Not today.”

He shifted forward, setting her on her feet before him. She felt unsteady. Utterly wrecked, yet a glance in the mirror showed he hadn’t disturbed a single hair on her perfectly coiffed head. She smoothed her dress back down into place, her hands trembling slightly. Alessandro tucked himself back into his trousers and
then reached down to scoop up the lace panties he’d torn off her.

Because he’d been too desperate, too determined to get inside her, to wait another instant. She didn’t know why that should make her feel more cherished, more precious to him, than all twenty strange minutes of their wedding ceremony.

She held out her hand to take the panties back. His hard mouth curved, his dark eyes a sensual challenge and something far more intense, and then he tucked them in his pocket.

“A memento of our wedding day,” he said, mocking her, she was sure. “I’ll treasure it.”

She smiled back at him, cool and sharp.

“An annulment it is, then,” she said. “This has been such a useful, rational discussion, Alessandro. Thank you.”

He laughed again then, almost beneath his breath, and then he was on his feet and striding for the door, as if he didn’t trust himself to stay locked in this room with her a moment longer. She allowed herself a small, satisfied smile.

“We can argue about this in the car,” he said over his shoulder. “I have a one o’clock meeting I can’t miss.”

Because, of course, the CEO of Corretti Media didn’t stop doing business on his wedding day, not when the wedding meant so little to him. Her smile
vanished. It was a brutal reminder of reality. Of her place. It didn’t matter how hot they burned. It didn’t matter how desperate he’d been. Elena clenched her hands into fists and felt the bite of the unfamiliar bands around her finger like one more slap.

And then followed him, anyway.

His mobile beeped again as they walked. He answered it, slowing down as he talked. Elena heard the words
docklands, cousin
and
Battaglia
. Alessandro pushed open the glass doors at the entrance of the village hall, and nodded her through, almost as if he had a chivalrous bone in that powerful body of his.

“Wait for me in the car,” he said, and then turned back toward the interior of the hall. Dismissing her.

The door swished shut behind her as she stepped through it, and Elena pulled in a long, deep breath. The morning was still as bright and cheerful as it had been when she’d walked inside. A lovely July day in the rolling hills of Sicily. The perfect day for a wedding.

She had to figure out how to handle this, to enjoy it while it lasted, or she’d never survive it. And she had to do it fast.

Elena kept her eyes on the stairs below her as she climbed down the hall’s steps, her legs still so shaky and the heels she wore no help at all, so she had to hold tight to the bannister as she went. Cracking her head open on the pavement would hardly improve matters.

She made it to the bottom step in one piece, and started to walk around the man who stood there, his back to the hall. Alessandro’s sleek black sports car was parked near the fountain in the center of the pretty village square, the convertible top pulled back, reminding her of how silly she’d been on the drive over—glancing at the way the ring sparkled on her hand, allowing herself to yearn for impossibilities.

“Excuse me,” she murmured absently as she navigated her way around the man, glancing at him to smile politely—

But it was Niccolo.

All of the blood drained out of her head. Her stomach contracted in a sickening lurch, and she was sure her heart dropped out of her body and lay at her feet on the pavement.

“Niccolo …” she whispered in disbelief.

Niccolo, like all of the nightmares that had kept her awake these past months. Niccolo, his arms folded over his chest and his black eyes burning mean and cold as he soaked in her reaction.

Niccolo, who she’d thought she loved until Alessandro had walked into her life and showed her how pale that love was, how small. Niccolo, who she’d trusted. Who she’d laughed with, thinking they were laughing together. Who she’d dreamed with, thinking they were planning a shared future. Niccolo, who had hunted
her across all these months and the span of Italy, and was looking at her now as if that slap in his villa was only the very beginning of what he’d like to do to her.

She couldn’t believe this was happening. Today. Here. Now.

“Elena,” he said, his voice almost friendly, but she could see that nasty gleam in his eyes. She could see exactly who he was. “At last.”

E
LENA NEEDED TO
say something,
do
something.

Scream for help, at the very least. Kick off her shoes and run. She needed to get as far away from Niccolo as possible, to distance herself from that vicious retribution she saw shining in his black eyes and all across his boyishly handsome face.

But she couldn’t seem to move a single muscle.

His lip curled. “Did you really think you could outrun me forever?”

She threw a panicked glance back up the stairs. Alessandro was still there, on the far side of the glass door, but he had his back turned to the square. To what was happening. To her.

Elena didn’t know why she’d believed he could save her from this, even for an instant. Hadn’t she always known she would have to handle it herself?

Niccolo looked up at Alessandro, then back at her, and his expression grew uglier.

“You’ve never been anything but a useless little whore, Elena,” he said, his black eyes bright with malevolence. “I took you out of that fishing boat you grew up in. I made something out of you. And this is how you repay me?”

Elena straightened. Pulled in a breath. He was shorter than she remembered. Thicker and more florid. The observation gave her a burst of strength, because it meant things had changed—
she
had changed.

“You didn’t do any of that for my benefit,” she said, finding steel inside her, somewhere. “You did it because you wanted the land. And then you hit me.”

“You owed me that land,” he snarled at her. “I dressed you up, took the stink of fish out of your skin. And then you let a Corretti steal it.”

“He didn’t steal anything,” she told him, keeping her gaze steady on his. “And he hasn’t hit me, either.”

“Just how long were you sleeping with him?” Niccolo demanded. “I know you lied to me. There’s no way that night was the first time you met him. How long were you stringing me along?”

“You
hit
me, Niccolo,” she said fiercely. “You threatened me. You lied to my family. You—”

“I let you off easy,” he interrupted her, and the names he called her then, one after the next, were
vile. They made her feel sick—and sicker still that she had ever loved this man, that she’d touched him, that she’d failed to see what he really was. “What I want to know is how Corretti feels every time he takes a piece of my leavings.”

His hand flashed out and he grabbed her arm in a painful grip, but she didn’t make a sound. She didn’t even flinch. She refused to give him the satisfaction of thinking he’d hurt her again.

“Does he know, Elena?” he snarled. “Does he know I’ve already been there?” He smirked, smug and mean. “He’s not the kind of man who likes to share.”

Something in her changed then. She felt it shift. Elena didn’t care that his fingers around her arm hurt. She didn’t care that the look on his face would have frightened her once.

She didn’t have to be afraid of him any longer. She didn’t have to run. Alessandro had given her that much. As she looked up at Niccolo now, Elena finally accepted that even if Niccolo had been who he’d pretended to be, it still would have been over between them.

It had been over the moment she’d met Alessandro.

Even if she’d never seen him again after that night in Rome, she would have known the truth: that she’d loved a stranger for the duration of a dance far more than she’d loved her fiancé. It would have ended her
engagement one way or another. Maybe, she thought then, she’d actually been lucky that dance had forced Niccolo to reveal himself. It would have been much, much harder to leave the man she’d thought he was.

“But then,” Niccolo was saying, “he doesn’t care about you, does he? He wants the land. Do you think he would trouble himself to marry you otherwise?”

He shook her, and that hurt, too, but she didn’t try to pull away. She didn’t defend Alessandro’s motives or worry that she didn’t know what they were. She didn’t cry or protest. She stared at him, memorizing this, so she would never forget what it felt like the moment she’d not only stopped being afraid of Niccolo Falco, but stopped feeling guilty about how this had all happened in the first place.

Inevitable
, something whispered inside of her.
This was all inevitable
.

“I never would have married you,” she said then, her voice smooth and strong. “Alessandro only expedited things. You would have shown your true face sooner or later. And I would have left you the moment I saw it.”

“Look at where you are,” Niccolo ground out, his fingers digging into her arm. “This tiny town, all alone. Have you really convinced yourself that a man like Alessandro Corretti, who invited half of Europe to his last wedding, cares about a nobody like you?” He laughed. “Wake up, Elena. The only difference
between Alessandro Corretti and me is that he has enough money to be a better liar.”

Elena would have to think about that, she knew. She would have to investigate the damage he’d caused with that hard, low blow. But not now. Not here.

“You don’t need to concern yourself with that land,” she said, ignoring the rest of it. She let him see how little she feared him, let him see she wasn’t shaking or cowering. “It will never be yours. You lost it the moment you thought you could hit me.”

His face flushed even redder, even angrier than before. He yanked her closer to him, shoving his face into hers, trying to intimidate her with his size and strength. He was a petty man, a vicious one. But she still wasn’t afraid.

“I’m not scared of you anymore, Niccolo,” she said very distinctly, tilting her head back to look him full in the face. Not hiding. Not running. Not afraid. “And that means you need to let go of my arm. Now.”

Whatever he saw in her face then made him drop her arm as if she’d turned into a demon right there in front of him. And Elena smiled, a real and genuine smile, because she was free of him.

After all this time, she was finally free of him.

“Step away from my wife, Falco.”

Alessandro’s icily furious voice cracked like a whip, startling Elena. Better, it made Niccolo move back.
Alessandro was beside her then, his hand stroking down her back, as if he was reassuring himself that she still stood in one piece.

Or
, the cynical part of her whispered,
marking his territory
.

“Give us a minute.”

It took Elena a moment to realize that Alessandro was speaking to her as he stared at Niccolo, murder in his dark green gaze. She frowned up at him.

But the Alessandro she knew was gone. There was nothing but darkness and vengeance on his fierce face. The promise of violence, of blood. Like a black hole where the man she loved should have been. It made every hair on the back of her neck prickle in warning. It made her pulse pick up speed.

It made her want to cry, as if they’d lost something.

“Alessandro, please,” she said softly. “He’s not worth it.”

Niccolo sneered. Alessandro only seemed to grow bigger, taller. Darker. More terrifying. And she’d never seen his face so cold, those dark green eyes so remote.

“Alessandro,” she said again.

But he still didn’t look at her.

“Get in the car,” he ordered her in a voice she’d never heard before. As if the man she knew was gone and in his place was this frigid and furious stranger, capable of anything. As if Niccolo was right, and she
didn’t know him at all. As if she never had. “Do it now.”

And she didn’t know how to reach him, or if she could. She didn’t understand what was happening here, only that she shouldn’t let him do the things she saw promised on his hard face, in those deadly eyes….

But he didn’t love her. She was a temporary wife, at best.

And for all she knew, he’d married her for the land and this was simply another truth she’d been too blind to see. His true face, after all.

It ripped her up inside, but she obeyed him.

Alessandro wanted to kill Niccolo Falco. Very, very slowly.

“My congratulations,” the little pissant sneered, puffing out his chest and stepping suicidally close. “You keep her on a tight leash.”

His father would have simply kicked in one of Niccolo’s kneecaps, the better to drag him off and beat the life out of him in a more private place. Alessandro had seen Carlo do exactly that when he was fourteen.

“Men deal with problems like men, boy,” Carlo had told him, clearly disappointed that Alessandro hadn’t reacted better. “Take that scared look off your face. You’re a Corretti. Act like one.”

And Alessandro had never felt more like a Corretti,
with all of the blood and graft and misery that implied, than he did right now.

Retribution. Revenge. Finally, he understood both.

“Be very careful,” Alessandro said through his teeth, trying to push back the red haze that obscured his vision. “You’re talking about my wife.”

Niccolo’s neck was flushed. His black eyes were slits of rage, and his thick hands were in fists. Alessandro knew he’d used one of those meaty hands on Elena, once before and once today, and had to battle back the urge to break the both of them.

He had no doubt at all that he could. He hadn’t fought in over forty days now—but he wasn’t drunk this time.

“I had her first,” Niccolo threw at him, a sly look in his eyes. “In every possible—”

“I won’t warn you again.”

It would be so easy. To simply end this man, as he richly deserved. He was nothing but a parasite, a lowlife. Alessandro didn’t even have to get his hands dirty, the way his father had so enjoyed. He knew which former associates of his father’s he could call to “handle” this. It was part and parcel of his blackened family legacy. It would take a single phone call.

This was who he was. Just as his mother had told him. Just as Elena had accused him. Just as he had always feared.

But this would be justice
, that seductive darkness whispered.
Simple. Earned
.

Alessandro had to force air into his lungs. All the choices his father and uncle and grandfather had made, all the blood that stained their hands as they’d built this family up from nothing and punished whoever dared stand in their way—he’d always looked down on them for it.

He’d never understood how easy it might be to step across that line. He’d never understood the temptation. Or that it could seem not only right to exterminate a cockroach like Niccolo Falco, but inarguably just.

Necessary
.

That darkness in him didn’t even seem particularly dark to him today as he stared at the bastard who’d terrorized Elena. It seemed like a choice. The right choice.

But.

But Elena had cried in his arms, and then she’d trusted him when he didn’t deserve it at all. When he’d given her no reason to trust him. She’d married him. He couldn’t understand why she’d done it. He wasn’t sure he ever would.

But it burned in him. It lived in him, bright like hope.

“Be the man who does the right thing,” she’d said once. And her eyes were the perfect blue of all his favorite
summers, and she’d looked at him as if he could never be a man like his father.

As if she had some kind of faith in him, after all.

“Why take her at all?” Niccolo demanded, stepping even closer, tempting fate. “Because she was mine?”

Alessandro smiled at him, cold and vicious. “Because I can.”

Niccolo snorted. “You’re nothing but a thug in fancy clothes, aren’t you?”

Alessandro was done then. With Niccolo, with all of this. With who he’d nearly become. With that dark spiral he’d almost lost himself in today, that he could still feel inside of him.

But Elena was like light, and he wanted her more.

“Don’t let me see you again, Falco. Don’t even cross into my line of sight. You won’t like what happens.” He leaned closer then, pleased in a purely primitive way that he was bigger. Taller. That there was that flicker of fear in the other man’s eyes. “And stay the hell away from my wife. That goes for you and your entire pathetic family. You do not want to go to war with me, I promise you.”

Niccolo recoiled, the angry flush on his face and neck bleeding into something darker. Nastier.

“Don’t worry,” he said, ugly and flat. “Once I’m finished with a whore—”

Alessandro shut him up. With his fist.

He felt the crunch of bone that told him he’d broken Niccolo’s nose, heard the other man’s bellow of pain as he crumpled to the ground. Where he lay in a cowardly heap, clutching at his face.

And Alessandro wasn’t his father, he would never be his father, but he was still Corretti enough to enjoy it.

“Next time,” he promised, “I won’t be so kind.”

And then he walked away and left Niccolo Falco bleeding into the ground.

But alive.

“I’m sorry I let him touch you,” Alessandro said gruffly when he swung into the car. Elena sat there so primly in the passenger seat, looking perfect. Untouchable. Her face smooth and her eyes hidden away behind dark glasses. “It won’t happen again.”

“He didn’t hurt me,” she said. Far too politely. When he only frowned at her, searching her face for some sign, she shifted slightly in her seat. “Don’t you have a meeting?”

He reminded himself that he had her torn panties in his pocket. That if he reached over and touched her, he could have her moaning out his name in moments. But he started the car instead, and pulled out onto the small country road that led away from the village and back toward Palermo.

He’d told her Niccolo wouldn’t come for her, and
he had. She had every right to be afraid, even angry. To blame him.

He could handle that. He could handle anything—because she’d married him, and they had nothing now but time. The rest of their lives, rolling out before them. There was nowhere to hide. Not for long.

They drove in silence, the warm summer day rushing all around them, sunshine and wind dancing in and around the car. The hills were green and pretty and off in the distance the sea beckoned. She was his wife, and he wasn’t his father.

It might not be perfect, Alessandro thought. It might take some work yet. But it was good.

“Why did you hit him?” she asked as they started to make their way into the city sprawl, and the wind no longer prohibited conversation.