Melanie Milburne - The Marciano Love-Child

She stood as frozen as the statue beside her. ‘Don’t say things like that, Alessandro,’ she said, her heart squeezing in pain. ‘You know I’m not like that.’

His bark of humourless laughter had an edge of cruelty to it. ‘You opened your legs for me within three days of meeting me, but now of course I know why. You were looking for a father for your illegitimate child. You backpackers are all the same, screwing whatever comes along just for the hell of it. You got caught out and had to find a substitute father in a hurry. Who better than me, a knight dressed in Armani?’

Scarlett could scarcely believe what she was hearing. The malevolence in his tone was so foreign to her. She had never seen him lose his temper. He had never spoken to her so coarsely; she wasn’t sure how to deal with it, or indeed how to defend herself. It seemed so out of character; it terrified her that the man she had given her heart and soul to had suddenly changed into someone else entirely.

‘Get your things and get out of my house,’ he bit out. ‘I will give you ten minutes to do so.’

The hammer blows of panic inside her head made her vision start to blur. Her mouth was dry, her heart feeling as if it had been backed over by a truck. Her stomach churned with the nausea that had plagued her for days on end, but she fought against it valiantly as she tried to come to grips with what was happening.

She took a couple of deep, calming breaths. ‘You don’t mean that, Alessandro,’ she said, keeping her voice soft and low. ‘You know you don’t. Darling, what’s come over you?’

His eyes blazed as they looked down at her, his lips pulled tight by a rage so intense she instinctively moved back a step.

‘You cannot possibly be carrying my child,’ he said, with a flinty glare.

She nervously moistened her mouth. ‘But of course it’s yours, Alessandro. I’ve only been with you.’

His lips curled back in a sneer. ‘ Itete trovando !’

Her chest tightened another painful notch. ‘Please speak to me in English, Alessandro. I don’t understand you.’

‘You are lying!’ He shouted the words so loudly they bounced off the walls, the echoes falling like slaps against her ears.

Scarlett was struggling not to cry. ‘I’m not lying. I’d only had one lover before you, and that had been over a year before we met. How can you possibly doubt me?’

‘You had been travelling for weeks with that Kirby man, but you tossed him aside as soon as you met me, no doubt because his wallet was running a little dry,’ he said.

‘That’s not true! I have never slept with Dylan. I told him and the others to leave without me, because I wanted to spend more time with you.’

His expression was cold with contempt. ‘That was just a very clever act to worm your way into my affections, was it not?’

Her face fell. ‘No… no . That’s not true. How can you say that?’

‘I can say it because it is true,’ he said. ‘You tried to set me up to pay for your bastard child, but there is one thing you miscalculated about me.’

She swallowed the thorny knot in her throat. ‘Alessandro, you’re not making sense. We’ve made love hundreds of times, a lot of times without protection. I went on the Pill too late. I thought it would be safe, but it obviously wasn’t.’

His sneer turned to a snarl. ‘I have heard of such ploys before. The unplanned pregnancy is a handy way of forcing a man into marriage, but these days it is all too easy to prove paternity.’

‘I’ll have a test done to prove it,’ she said with rising despair. ‘Then you’ll have to believe me.’

His eyes raked over her from head to foot. ‘I have all the proof I need. Now get out of my life.’

She looked up at him in stunned shock. ‘You surely don’t mean to throw me out on the streets at this time of night?’

His face was set in stone. ‘It is where you belong, is it not?’

Scarlett opened her mouth to protest, but he had already turned to call one of the household staff, issuing a short, sharp command to have Signorina Fitzgerald’s belongings packed immediately and brought to the front door.

Once the servant had scurried away, Alessandro turned back to Scarlett with another look of contempt. ‘I must congratulate you on your ingenuity,’ he said. ‘I have been pursued by many women, but no one has ever got close enough for me to invite them to live with me, albeit temporarily.’

A bubble of anger inside Scarlett finally found its way to the surface. ‘I was only ever a temporary diversion for you, wasn’t I?’ she said. ‘You were only interested in a summer fling, and for your own convenience asked me to move in with you. You were never going to make things permanent between us.’

‘Permanency is not something I have ever or will ever aim for in my relationships,’ he said. ‘I value my freedom too much.’

‘You’re going to end up a lonely old man with no one to love you,’ she said, her heart sinking as the servant came down the huge staircase, carrying her backpack.

Alessandro gave a scornful sneer and opened the front door as wide as it would go. ‘Goodbye, Scarlett.’

She picked up her backpack where the servant had placed it and slung it awkwardly over one shoulder, her eyes now streaming with tears. ‘You’re going to regret this one day,’ she said, her voice breaking over the words. ‘I know you will. You will hate yourself for not believing me.’

‘The only thing I will regret is allowing you to fool me into thinking you were not like other social-climbing women,’ he said. ‘Now, get out before I have you thrown out.’

Scarlett stepped down the stairs with only her pride to keep her upright. She walked stiffly towards the wrought-iron gates, her heart splintering into thousands of pieces as she heard the front door of his house click shut with ominous finality behind her.

CHAPTER THREE

SCARLETT HAD to pull herself away from the past when Alessandro came back towards her with his phone clicked shut. ‘I am sorry about that,’ he said. ‘One of my projects in Positano has been giving me some trouble. Now, let me show you around so you can get a feel for the place.’

She walked with him towards the staircase, her stomach feeling as if not only butterflies but bees and wasps were all vying for a landing space inside.

‘I would like the foyer and reception area to make a statement,’ he said as they climbed the stairs. ‘Lots of marble—Italian, of course.’

‘Of course,’ Scarlett said, and tried not to react as his arm brushed against hers as she stood beside him on the first floor and looked down.

She was shocked that such a simple touch could affect her so much. She had thought she was immune to him by now, after what he had done to her. She had hated him for so long, the heat of it smouldering deep inside her, stoked every now and again by another milestone in her little son’s life that Alessandro, out of arrogance, would never see. She had wanted to contact him so many times.

She had considered pursuing him legally, by insisting on a paternity test to clear her name, but she had been frightened of the consequences. What if Alessandro turned out to be like her father, who had always made it so callously clear he had never wanted a second child? Her father’s cruel words to her during her childhood had echoed well into her adulthood. She had lived with the stigma of being unwanted all of her life. She couldn’t bear for her little son to suffer the same.

Sunlight came in from the dome above their heads and shafted down in golden rays on the floor below. Alessandro’s arm brushed against hers again as he pointed to a shadowed area to the left of the reception desk. ‘See that corner over there?’ he said.