Emma nodded. “I know you are,” she assured, understanding that Cristina wasn’t apologizing for anything she’d done to Emma. She was trying to do what she’d hinted she wanted to do; she was repenting in the bright sunlight. For what, Emma didn’t know. It was enough that she unburdened herself and Emma was there to bear witness.

“Tell him . . . I’m sorry . . . for not wanting them. For hating . . . them, at times,” Cristina pleaded with great effort, every word appearing to take gargantuan effort.

“Tell who?” Emma asked. “Your stepson?”

“Vanni . . . I couldn’t share the spotlight . . . Michael’s love. Any of it. I was better suited to be a plaything. A mistress, not a wife. Not a mother.”

Emma nodded, tears filling her eyes when she sensed the deep well of the older woman’s regret. Her desperation. The resentment she had spoken of just now had blocked her from speaking until she was at the threshold, and knew there was no going back.

“I’ll tell him,” Emma assured.

“And . . . tell Vanni . . . to forgive himself. I know he thinks it’s his fault. Maybe because I refused to—”

Cristina wretched. Emma sprung up to alter her position, but before she could assist, Cristina caught her breath and continued, and squeezed Emma’s hand hard enough to make her wince.

“. . . to accept the blame. No child should have been left to feel so much. No man forced to feel so little. But I couldn’t help him. Not me.” She met Emma’s stare, her eyes wild. “I am what I am, and nothing more.”

“Try to relax, Cristina. It’s going to be okay. Please rest easy,” Emma implored, sitting again so that Cristina could more easily see her face. “I’ll tell him.”

Cristina’s gaze shifted over Emma’s shoulder, her stricken expression making Emma’s throat tighten painfully.

“Don’t be afraid, Cristina. It’s going to be all right. You’ll see,” Emma assured.

But Cristina was clearly lost in her painful memories, her focus elsewhere. “I never . . . meant to harm Adrian,” she gasped, her blue eyes now haunted. “I was selfish . . . neglectful, but not malicious. Forgive me, Vanni . . . please.”

Emma opened her mouth to assure her that her last words were being heard, but someone else spoke.

“Ask for my mother’s forgiveness. Ask for Adrian’s.”

Emma blinked in shock upon hearing the male voice behind her. She turned around and saw to whom Cristina spoke. He stood just behind Emma’s chair, his face as hard and beautiful as sculpted marble.

“Your mother and Adrian would forgive me, Vanni. It’s you who won’t.”

“Ask it,” he bit out harshly.

“I do . . . ask it,” Cristina sputtered, fighting for breath.

“If you ask for theirs, there’s no need for mine. I survived,” Montand said quietly, something indefinable leaping into his blue-green eyes.

“Did you?”

He pinned the dying woman with his stare. Emma turned back when Cristina inhaled with great effort, seemingly clawing for air. Emma was reminded again of a drowning person flailing for one last breath, one last chance.

It wasn’t granted to Cristina. The hand that clutched Emma’s went lax.

“Cristina,” Emma cried out shakily, but Cristina never exhaled. She had died on an unfinished breath.

Emma went into automatic mode, standing and checking for a pulse. When she found none, she noted the time on her watch, then checked for a pulse a second time. Then a third.

After a stretched moment, she gently closed Cristina’s eyes and drew the sheet over her rigid face.

“She’s gone?” he asked.

“Yes,” Emma replied woodenly.

She faced him.

Vanni.

He wore a simple white T-shirt and jeans. The brilliant sunshine flooding the room made his short-sleeved T-shirt look superwhite against his tanned skin. It brought out golden streaks in his brown hair. She realized numbly that every time she’d seen him before, it had been in the subdued light of the enormous garage or beneath a night sky. She had seen those golden highlights in his hair, though—in the lamplight of his bedroom suite. The shirt was short-sleeved, allowing Emma to see the Asian-looking tattoo symbols on his muscular biceps.

A strange, unpleasant tingling sensation started at the base of her spine and ran the length of her backbone.

“Emma?” he asked, his gaze narrowed on her face. He reached out to touch her—steady her, perhaps, because dizziness had assailed her—but Emma backed away, clumsily running into the chair and tripping. She caught herself on the back of the chair.

“You’re him? Vanni? That’s you?” she asked in a strangled voice. Blood started to pound in her ears as she stared at the tattoo, unable to deny the truth with the evidence right there in front of her. He’d cut his hair since that night. Most of the sun-lightened streaks had been sheared away, leaving it much darker looking. When she’d been trapped in the armoire, it draped his face. She hadn’t recognized him sitting there like an aloof, lonely prince at the end of that grand dining room table or when he’d tapped on her window and offered his assistance. She hadn’t recognized him, as he’d made love so fiercely—so perfectly—to her in the darkness.

Had she?

His expression flattened. “I go by Vanni. Giovanni is my middle name. My father’s name was Michael, too, so—”

It was as if her brain overloaded. She began to shake. She didn’t know him. The thought kept thundering in her brain, the pounding force of it threatening to burst something vital.

He reached for her again, but his hand fell slowly when he saw her flinch back. The cold, detached expression she’d seen on his face as he spoke to Cristina settled on his features once again, the same expression he’d worn when Cristina had begged him for his forgiveness just now.

Forgiveness that he’d refused to grant.

A wave of nausea hit her as she recalled what she’d witnessed when she’d been trapped in that armoire, and then what had happened on that beach last night.

“You need to contact the funeral home,” she told him as she hastened past him.

“Emma, what is it?”

She made a beeline to the bathroom. She shut the door and turned on the tap with trembling fingers, not wanting him to hear her being sick.

Week

THREE

Chapter 11

Emma had been fooling herself. It shocked her beyond words that she had the ability to blind her own judgment, to delude herself into not seeing the obvious, like a magician with a sleight of hand.

When she exited the bathroom a few minutes later, she found Mrs. Shaw and Montand—Vanni—in the living room of the suite. His gaze landed on her when she entered the room, but he continued talking with subdued authority to someone on the phone. Ignoring Mrs. Shaw, she found Cristina’s chart and began to make an entry in regard to the death.

“When are they coming to get the body?” Emma asked quietly when Vanni hung up the phone. Just thinking his name in her head caused a bitter taste at the back of her mouth. She continued staring at the page as she wrote methodically in the chart.

“They’ll be here within the hour,” he said. “Vera? Leave us, please.”

Emma blinked in confusion. Who was Vera? Her question was answered when she glanced around and saw Mrs. Shaw hastening out of the room, even if her disapproval seemed to linger.

Her gaze leapt over to him, anxiety rising in her when she recognized they were alone. He stood next to a coffee table, his expression rigid. In his jeans, simple white T-shirt, and with the shadow of dark whiskers, he really might have been the familiar man she had begun to know . . . care about, even. She thought she’d begun to know him. It’d been an illusion—a spell—one she’d cast herself. She’d already thought him way out of her league. Her certainty was greater now that she knew he was that man who liked to tie up and whip women whom he cared nothing about.