An Inheritance of Shame

chapter FOUR



LUCIA’S LEGS TREMBLED and she sagged against the side of the lift as it plunged downwards, away from Angelo. She could still feel the taste of him on her lips, the strong press of his hard body against hers. Even now desire flowed through her in a molten river, making her sag even more against the wall. Making her even weaker.

For she was weak, so pathetically weak, to still respond to him. To still want him, even though she knew he would never think of her as anything more than—what?

Why had he kissed her? The answer, the only possible answer, was glaringly apparent. Because he knew he could have her—and then walk away. Because he knew that just as before she would take him in her arms, into her body, and then he could leave without so much as an explanation. She was the easy option, just as her mother had been, accepting a man who treated her like dirt. Wanting him, even begging him, back.

She had never wanted to be like that. She still didn’t. She wouldn’t.

Lucia closed her eyes, forced back the sting of tears. Forced back all the emotion, all the useless regret and anger and hurt. At least she’d shown him she was different now…if only just. At least this time she’d been the one to walk away. If only just.

Two hours later, her heart and body aching, she climbed the steps to the tiny apartment she rented over a bar in Caltarione, the small village near the Correttis’ palazzo. She’s grown up in a tiny, terraced house farther down the main street, next to Angelo and his grandparents. She’d thought of leaving the village after Angelo had gone, after she’d endured the bold stares and muttered curses that had accompanied her wherever she went for months after his departure, but she hadn’t.

Perhaps it was stubbornness or maybe just sentimentality, but she wasn’t willing to leave the only place she’d considered home. She wouldn’t be driven out, even if the busy streets of Palermo might offer more anonymity and acceptance.

In any case, the whispers and rumours and sneers had died down in the years since Angelo had left. They’d returned, a little, with him; she recognised the speculative looks Emilia and some of the other housekeeping staff who knew her history had given her in the past week. But she ignored it all, with a determination that had sapped all of her strength.

She certainly didn’t feel like she had any left now. Resisting Angelo had taken everything.

Kicking open the door to her apartment Lucia discarded her sensible shoes and stripped the soiled maid’s uniform from her body. She headed towards the tiny bathroom in the back of the flat and turned the taps on the small, rather dingy tub. She sank onto the edge of the bath and dropped her head in her hands. She felt so unbearably, achingly tired, tired of pretending all the time that she was strong, that she barely cared or remembered about what happened seven years ago. Why had she insisted on this ridiculous charade of indifference? Was it simply out of pride?

But no, she knew it was not as simple a matter as that. She knew this charade was as much for her own benefit as Angelo’s. Some absurd part of her believed, or at least hoped, that if she acted like she didn’t care, she wouldn’t. If she told him it didn’t matter, it wouldn’t.

And yet it did matter. So very much. It had mattered then, and it mattered now. And while she’d convinced herself that he didn’t need to know the truth, maybe she needed him to.

The thought was both novel and frightening. She didn’t want to tell Angelo the truth of their night together, and yet as long as she kept it a secret it festered unhealed inside her soul. What if she lanced that wound, drained it of its poison and power? What if she told Angelo, not for his sake, but for her own?

Would she finally be able to put the whole episode behind her, put Angelo behind her?

If only.

She stayed in the tub until the water had grown cold and then she slipped on a pair of worn trackie bottoms and a T-shirt. After a second’s pause she took an old cardboard box from the dusty top shelf of her wardrobe, brought it out to the sofa in the living room. She didn’t take this box out very often; it felt like picking off the scab of her barely healed soul. She knew it was dangerous weakness to take it out now, when she already felt so raw, yet still she did it, unable to resist remembering.

Carefully she eased the lid off the box and looked at the few treasures inside: a scrapbook of old travel postcards she’d been given from the people whose houses she and her mother had cleaned. She and Angelo had used to make up stories about all the different places they’d travel to one day, the amazing things they would do. A single letter Angelo had written her from New York, when he’d left at eighteen years old. She’d practically memorised its few lines. A lock of hair.

She took the last out now, fingering its silky softness, a tiny curl tied with a bit of thread. She closed her eyes and a single tear tracked down her cheek. It hurt so much to remember, to access that hidden grief she knew she would always carry with her, a leaden weight inside her that never lightened; she had simply learned to limp along under its heaviness.

A sudden, hard rapping on the front door made her still, tense. The only person who ever knocked on her door was the owner of the bar downstairs, an oily man with a sagging paunch who was always making veiled—and not-so-veiled—references to what he thought he knew of her past. She really didn’t feel like dealing with him now.

Another knock sounded, this one even more sharp and insistent.

Drawing a deep breath, Lucia put the box and its contents aside. She wiped the tear from her face and looked through the fogged eyehole in the door, shock slicing straight through her when she saw who it was. No oily landlord, and definitely no paunch.

Angelo raised his hand to knock again and, her own hands shaking, she unlocked the door and opened it.

‘What are you doing here, Angelo?’

His hair was rumpled like he’d driven his fingers carelessly through it, his expression as grim as ever. ‘May I come in?’

She shrugged and moved aside. Angelo stepped across the threshold, his narrowed gaze quickly taking in the small, shabby apartment with her mother’s old three-piece suite and a few framed posters for decoration. It wasn’t much, Lucia certainly knew that, but it was hers and she’d earned it. She didn’t like the way Angelo seemed to sum it up and dismiss it in one judgemental second.

‘What do you want?’ she asked, and heard how ragged her voice sounded. ‘Or do you not even know? Because you keep trying to find me, but God only knows why.’

He turned slowly to face her. ‘God only knows,’ he agreed quietly. ‘Because I don’t.’

‘Then maybe you should just stop.’

‘I can’t.’

She shook her head helplessly, every emotion far too close to the surface, to his scrutiny. ‘Why not?’

‘I…’ He stared at her, his eyes glittering, wild. His lips parted, but no sound came out. Lucia folded her arms, conscious now that she was wearing a thin T-shirt and no bra.

‘Well?’ she managed.

‘Back in my hotel suite,’ Angelo said slowly. ‘At the lift.’ His gaze roved over her, searching. ‘Why did you look at me like that?’

‘Like what?’

‘As if…as if you were sad.’ Lucia swallowed. ‘Don’t, Angelo,’ she said, her voice no more than a rasp. ‘Please, just leave it.’

‘I can’t.’

‘You can. You’re like a dog with a bone.’ She shook her head, anger warring with the agony as well as the deep-seated desire she had to hide it. ‘Just leave me alone.’

‘You think I don’t want to?’ Angelo asked quietly, and she let out a sudden, wild laugh, the unfettered sound surprising them both.

‘Oh, I know you want to. You’ve always wanted to. Everything you’ve taken from me has been against your better judgement, even your will. You think I don’t know that?’

Angelo was silent for a long moment. ‘Why do you offer it, then?’ he finally asked. ‘All the kindnesses when we were children—and before…that night—’

That night. She did not want to remember the hope, the joy, that had coursed through her when Angelo had kissed her. When she thought he’d felt just as she did, had built a castle in the air of her dreams, as insubstantial as the mist on the sea, gone by morning, as she’d surely known he would be.

‘Because we were friends, Angelo,’ she forced out. ‘Because, when we were children, I saw the sadness in your eyes and I wanted to wipe it away. I wanted to help you—’ I wanted to love you. She swallowed down the words.

‘I’ve never wanted help.’

‘I know that. How could I not know that, when you constantly pushed me away? And yet I kept trying.’ She shook her head, forced herself to laugh, as if it was all in the distant, unimportant past. ‘I was foolish, as a kid.’ And as a woman.

‘And that night?’ Angelo asked in a low voice. ‘Why did you sleep with me?’

‘Isn’t it obvious?’ She turned around with a shrug, every atom of her being focused on appearing hard, strong. ‘I wanted you. I’ve always been attracted to you.’

‘And that was it? A one-night stand, pleasurable for both of us?’

She jerked her head in the semblance of a nod. She couldn’t manage anything more.

Angelo shook his head. ‘There’s more.’ He took a step towards her, his mouth a hard line, his gaze seeming to bore right into her. ‘If that’s the truth, Lucia, you wouldn’t have looked like you did back there, by the lift. You wouldn’t have looked like I’d broken your heart—’

‘You did break my heart.’ The words exploded from her like a gunshot, a crack in the taut silence of the room. She saw shock flash in Angelo’s eyes and she turned away quickly.

‘Then—’

‘It’s not what you think.’ She drew in a ragged breath. Now was the time for truth, or at least part of it. She still couldn’t tell him how much she’d loved him, admit all that weakness, but she could tell him about the consequences of their one night. Perhaps he’d already guessed it; perhaps that was why he kept at her, asking questions, demanding answers. He knew she was hiding something.

‘What do I think, Lucia?’ Angelo asked quietly.

She shook her head, her back still to him. ‘It doesn’t matter what you think.’

‘No?’

‘You don’t know, Angelo.’ She dragged in a breath, the very air hard to breathe, heavy inside her. ‘You don’t understand—’

‘Then tell me.’ He came to stand behind her, one hand hard on her shoulder. ‘Tell me what I don’t know.’

Lucia closed her eyes, tried to find the words. She hadn’t been able to find them in all the letters she’d written and never sent, and she searched uselessly for them now. She licked her lips. ‘That night…’

‘Yes?’ Angelo prompted, impatient now, his fingers digging into her shoulder.

‘There were…consequences.…’

‘Consequences?’ Angelo’s voice sharpened and she couldn’t answer. ‘Look at me, damn it.’ With his hand on her shoulder he turned her around, forced her to face him. ‘What have you been keeping from me?’ he demanded, and she saw the anger in his eyes, but worse, far worse, she saw the fear. She felt it.

He knew. Maybe he didn’t realise he knew, but he knew.

‘I was pregnant, Angelo,’ she whispered. ‘I had a baby.’