Page 45 of ‘I Do’ for Revenge
Vito said quite seriously, ‘Do you want it, Flora? I can buy it for you.’
A half-strangled laugh came out and she put her hand to her mouth before lowering it. She shook her head. ‘No, I don’t want the house. To be honest, I don’t even remember all that much. A lot of my life here... I think I blanked it out afterwards. It was too painful to remember. We were so happy here. Me, and my parents and my little brother. But sometimes I think it can’t possibly have been that perfect.’
She saw something beyond Vito and she grabbed his hand. ‘I need to check something.’
She brought him down the garden to a tree at the end. Old and gnarly. She let his hand go and crouched down and pushed some leaves aside. When she saw what she was looking for on the trunk she felt a moment of pure happiness. She said, ‘Look, it’s still here.’
Vito bent down beside her. ‘What am I looking at?’
Flora traced her finger over the etched words and spoke them out loud. ‘“Flora and Charlie and Truffles.”I carved this not long before the accident.’
‘Who was Truffles?’ he asked.
‘Our dog, a big shaggy golden retriever. I had to leave him in London. My uncle wouldn’t let me take him to Rome.’
Vito stood up from his crouched position. Flora sensed his bristling energy. When she stood up his face was thunderous. She said, ‘What’s wrong?’
His eyes were obsidian. Flora shivered a little. It reminded her of how he’d looked in his office when she’d confronted him after the wedding debacle. He said, ‘What your uncle did to you—it makes me want to go after him all over again and pound him to dust, make sure that he will never—’
Flora put her hand on Vito’s arm. ‘He doesn’t deserve your anger or any more of your energy.’
Vito shook his head. ‘Why are younotangry?’
‘Because I didn’t have that luxury for a long time. I depended on him solely. And it wasn’t his fault that my parents and brother died, that was a freak accident on a rainy night after they’d left me at a friend’s house. If anything, it was more my fault than his.’ Flora admitted the thing she’d tortured herself with for years—if she hadn’t wanted to go to her friend’s house that night then maybe...
Vito was shaking his head. ‘Not your fault. And it certainly wasn’t your fault that your uncle then stole your inheritance.’
Flora shrugged. ‘Money hasn’t ever been that important to me.’
‘Maybe because you felt you didn’t deserve it? For living when they didn’t?’
Vito’s words stabbed Flora right in the heart. How could this man, who so coldly and cruelly handed her a public humiliation of the worst kind—standing her up on their wedding day—also be able to intuit one of her deepest and most shameful fears?
‘Maybe,’ she had to concede sadly. ‘Why should I have benefited from an inheritance that my brother would never see because he was dead?’
‘Why shouldn’t you? I didn’t know them but I’m fairly certain they wouldn’t have wanted you deprived of it.’
Flora wanted to get Vito’s suddenly far too perceptive focus off her. She walked away from the tree, leaving it behind. She asked, ‘If your parents hadn’t died...would you be different, do you think? Would you have achieved so much?’
‘Who knows? Circumstances shape us into what we are, what we want. Maybe if my father hadn’t been ruined I wouldn’t have had the same hunger to succeed.’
Flora wrinkled her nose. ‘You’re ambitious... I think you would have still ended up where you are.’
‘Maybe you’re right, but I think I would have come up against your uncle sooner or later. He couldn’t handle any competition. He would have come after me.’
She sneaked a look at Vito. He still looked ridiculously sexy even against this very domestic backdrop. Curious, she asked, ‘Are you happy now that you’ve got your revenge?’
He stopped walking, as if her question had surprised him. ‘I can’t say it feels all that different apart from the fact that I’m not so consumed with one thing. If anything...it’s been a bit of an anticlimax.’
‘That’s probably delayed grief. I can’t imagine you took much time after your parents’ deaths to grieve?’
He started walking again. ‘Did you?’
‘I was eight. I didn’t know which way the world was up. I know that I didn’t cry. Not for a long time.’
‘But you did cry?’
Flora’s chest squeezed. She nodded. ‘Eventually, in quiet moments.’ Wanting to move away from the painful subject of grief, Flora asked, ‘Would you have had a family by now if you hadn’t lost everything? If you hadn’t been so intent on seeking justice?’