Scandals Of The Ruthless: A Shadow of Guilt

‘Val? Are you OK?’

Valentina sucked in a big breath and forced a smile at Franco, who was looking at her intently across the island they were working at. She nodded abruptly. ‘Fine...I, ah, just remembered something I need to do.’

Thankfully he left her alone and that evening Valentina escaped to the clinic to see how her parents were settling in, rather than unpack in her new accommodation, telling herself it was more than just a ruse to avoid bumping into Gio again.

* * *

That evening Gio cursed volubly outside Valentina’s suite of rooms. There was no answer. She wasn’t there. Even though he knew logically she was most likely visiting her parents, he had to battle a spiking of something very proprietorial. And he didn’t like it.

Women had never been anything more than a diversion to him. His long childhood years of feeling less than, and inadequate, had left him with too many scars to trust anyone, apart from Mario. His subsequent successes had done much to chase away that sense of inadequacy, but since Mario’s death, the joy had been taken out of it to a large extent.

Gio’s mouth twisted wryly just remembering how Mario had been the one who’d fallen in and out of love like some besotted Romeo. Something within Gio had always remained aloof with a woman. They hadn’t ever touched some deep secret part of him. In the two years after Mario’s death there had been an endless parade of beautiful women but none he’d connected with, and more often than not Gio had found himself waking alone.

Valentina. She’d always been different. She’d snuck into a place that was locked away deep inside him. But he’d been acutely aware that his feelings and desires for her were strictly forbidden.

When he’d left Sicily first she’d been only ten or eleven. A gap-toothed child only on his radar as his best friend’s kid sister who had trailed them with almost religious devotion.

But when he’d returned years later—a millionaire, the new owner of the racetrack in Syracuse with plans to rebuild—she’d been fifteen. And Gio had found himself aware of her in a way that had made him ashamed. So he’d flung himself into socialising with Mario, pursuing the local beauties, anything to push dangerous thoughts and desires from his mind.

Over the next two years she’d only grown more and more beautiful and mature. She’d started to flirt with him, but with such sweet innocence that it had twisted his heart. One day he’d been weak. She’d arrived to look for Mario, who’d already left. A miscommunication. Gio had seen her get startled by Misfit and had acted on an impulse, lifting her onto the horse.

He’d swung up behind her, wrapping his arm around her taut young body. The weight of her firm breasts had been heavy on his arm. Those stolen indulgent minutes had been the most erotic in his life....

Gio grimaced now and turned away from Valentina’s door. What was he doing hanging around like some besotted fool? Yes, he still wanted her. More than ever. But that was all. The capacity to feel anything more had long ago withered to dust inside him, poisoned by grief and guilt.

And Valentina...? She hated him with every cell in her body and if she had ever felt anything for him, physical or otherwise, it had been destroyed that night in the hospital in Palermo when she’d seen her dead brother laid out on a slab in the morgue.

* * *

The Corretti Cup was fast approaching. Valentina and her staff were flat-out making sure they had everything ordered and organised. That evening as she hung up her apron, she had to concede reluctantly that Gio had done her a favour by insisting she stay on-site. She wasn’t half as exhausted as she had been. And the lines of worry and stress had disappeared from her parents’ faces.

She’d avoided him since their last cataclysmic meeting the day before and she didn’t like the way guilt pricked her conscience again. Driving down that disturbing feeling, Valentina walked around the front of the stadium to get back to her accommodation.

She had a suite of rooms to herself, complete with a kitchenette, living area and en suite bedroom. The understated opulence of the accommodation had blown her away. It was in an old reconverted stone stables. She had a private balcony which looked out over the back of the stadium where the gallops, stables and training ground was based.

But she loved this view over the racetrack. The sun was setting over the sea in the distance, turning everything golden and orange. She stood at the railing and sighed deeply, and then heard from not far away, ‘It’s beautiful when it’s like this, with no one around. That’ll all change in a few days though.’

Valentina had tensed at the first word. She turned her head and saw Gio sitting on one of the stand seats behind her—that’s how she’d missed him. The thought of him watching her for those few seconds made her feel warm. Instantly she doused it. ‘Yes,’ she said stiffly, ‘it’s lovely.’

She made to walk on but Gio lifted something out of an ice bucket beside him and she realised he was holding out a beer, and that he had his own one in his other hand. Ice cold water droplets ran down the side of the cold bottle and suddenly she was parched.

She looked at Gio and all she could see were those broad shoulders and his messy hair, flopping over one eye. She felt weak. He said easily, ‘I bring out some beers for the racetrack workers most evenings. It’s a tough few weeks getting ready for the cup.’

Torn between wanting to run and wanting to stay, which was very disturbing, Valentina remembered what she’d said the previous day and then stepped forward and took the bottle. Her fingers brushed off Gio’s, sending a spark of awareness jumping between them. ‘Thanks.’

She stepped over the bottom seat and sat down near him, and then looked at the view again as if it was the most absorbing thing she’d ever seen. She took a gulp of cold beer, not really tasting it. Silence grew and lengthened between them and she fiddled with the label on her bottle. Unable to stand it any more she turned to face him. Awkwardly she started, ‘I...I’ve said things to you...’

She stopped, cursing her inability to be articulate and tried again. ‘I owe you an apology. What I said yesterday...’ She shrugged one shoulder minutely. ‘You seem to bring out the worst in me.’

Gio shook his head, his eyes unreadable in the growing gloom. ‘Valentina, what happened in the past—’

She cut him off with an urgent appeal, suddenly terrified he’d mention Mario. ‘Let’s not talk about it, OK?’

Gio closed his mouth. She could see his jaw clench, but then he just said, ‘OK, fine.’

Valentina turned back to the view, an altogether edgier tension in the air now. Desperate to find something, anything innocuous, to talk about she seized on something she’d overheard earlier. ‘Some of the staff were talking about the regeneration project for the docklands. It sounds interesting.’

Gio looked at Valentina’s profile. The straight nose, determined chin. Long dark lashes. The graceful curve of her cheekbone. She was trying to make small talk. The moment felt very fragile, a tentative cessation of hostilities. Gio’s mouth tightened. ‘It’s a project put in place primarily by my grandfather, Salvatore, in some kind of effort to bring everyone together. Hence the grand wedding that never happened.’

Valentina looked at Gio. ‘Isn’t that a good thing—I mean, not the wedding failing but bringing everyone together?’

He smiled tightly. ‘It would be if everyone’s interests were altruistic.’

Valentina frowned. ‘Are your interests different to the others?’

Gio shifted; they were straying into an area he wasn’t entirely comfortable with now. Reluctantly he said, ‘I’ve been interested in the docklands area for some time. I think it could be a very useful space for youth projects.’

‘What kind of youth projects?’

Gio shrugged, tense. ‘The kind of projects that brings kids together, teaches them things, lets them explore their limits in a safe environment. Gets them off the streets basically.’

Brings them together so they don’t feel so isolated, like I always did even with Mario...

Gio clamped his jaw shut as if those rogue words might spill out. He wasn’t sure why he felt so vulnerable telling her about something that was so close to his heart. Was he afraid she’d laugh at him? Accuse him again of trying to atone?

Valentina seemed to absorb this information in silence and then she asked, ‘Your brothers were mentioned too. Do you see them much?’

Gio’s mouth tightened. Little did she realise that any question about his family was akin to walking blindfolded into a minefield. He dragged his gaze away from the provocative curves of her body beside him in simple jeans and T-shirt and looked out to the falling night. ‘No...is the simple answer.’

‘They weren’t at the wedding?’

Gio shrugged. ‘Not that I saw. They should have been.’ He took a gulp of beer, suddenly wondering if he’d been wise to alert Valentina to his presence here.

He felt her turn to look at him. ‘You didn’t spend much time with them growing up, did you?’

He glanced at her then and took another gulp of beer and swallowed. ‘You know I didn’t.’ Because he spent all his time with Mario. He didn’t have to say it.

‘Were they mean to you?’

Gio looked away again. What was this? Twenty questions? But he unclenched his jaw. ‘No, they were never mean to me. They had their own battles to fight. They both took more after my father than I did. I never had that drive or ambition, that sense of competition to be the dominant Corretti. They just...they were preoccupied with their own stuff.’

Gio glanced at Valentina again and she was looking down into her beer bottle, swirling the liquid. Her hands were small and graceful. Capable. He had a sudden memory of being much smaller, when Valentina had been sitting on the sidelines of some game he and Mario had been playing.

At one point he’d gone up to her and asked if she wanted to join in, stuttering over the words. Instinctively he’d been tensed for her reaction, to laugh at him or mimic him, but she’d just stood up and put her hand in his.

Sounding as if it was almost half to herself Valentina said now, ‘You’ve been very successful.’

Gio smiled minutely, brought back to the present, and the reality of a very adult Valentina. ‘The horse-racing business is very lucrative and I had a good horse.’