One Night In…. Оливия Гейтс

looked, Meghan thought with a sinking feeling, like someone she never wanted to know.

      Emilia smiled and said sweetly, ‘Look at this one.’ She took the clippings, sifting through them until she came to the one she wanted and handed it back to Meghan, tapping the photo with one scarlet nail.

      Meghan glanced down, recoiled slightly from the photograph of a smoking ruin of a car left on the side of the motorway. The one word in big block letters stood out in bold relief: OMICIDIO?

      Murder.

      She stared unseeingly, unthinkingly, down at the newspaper. She heard Emilia purr, ‘Now do you want to know?’

      ‘I think,’ Meghan replied, barely keeping her voice above a whisper, ‘that you’re going to tell me.’ She looked up, her eyes still dry, her heart weighing heavy like a stone. ‘And then you’re going to leave.’

      ‘You know Alessandro was a bit of a playboy?’ Emilia began, clearly relishing the telling.

      ‘More than a bit, I believe,’ Meghan replied, and Emilia looked slightly discomfited that she took this news so calmly.

      ‘Did you know, then,’ she continued in a harder voice, ‘that he and his brother were involved in a car accident? A highly suspicious one, with Alessandro as the driver.’

      ‘Suspicious?’ Meghan repeated, trying to sound scornful and not quite succeeding. ‘What’s suspicious about a car accident?’

      ‘A lot of things. They’d just had a very public argument—at one of Milan’s fashionable parties. Alessandro was angry, and accused Roberto of something—no one heard exactly what this was, and no one would have believed him anyway, of course. Roberto was loved by everyone—kind, gentle, always turning a blind eye to Alessandro’s antics. But this time he got upset. I was there and I saw it.’ She leaned forward, eyes glittering, involved now in the story, the drama. Meghan, afraid now, could only watch and listen.

      ‘Roberto looked terrible,’ Emilia recalled. ‘Pale, shaken, like he was going to be sick. Alessandro kept on at him, accusing him, so Roberto tried to leave. Alessandro wouldn’t let him, though— he grabbed his arm and started shouting. They ended up leaving the party together—Alessandro threatening, Roberto looking terrified. The next thing we knew Alessandro had crashed the car, killing his brother while he walked away with barely a scratch.’

      Meghan’s mind and heart reeled from this information. It could explain so much … if she were able to understand it. Still she shook her head, managed to give a disdainful little laugh. ‘Do you honestly expect me to believe that he engineered an accident where his brother was killed and he remained uninjured? That’s ludicrous.’

      Emilia inclined her head in acknowledgement. ‘Perhaps. But the accident was on a stretch of smooth road—not a car in sight, no twists or turns. According to police reports, the car just veered off the road into a tree.’

      ‘It’s been known to happen before,’ Meghan said.

      The bands around her chest, her heart, eased—if only a little. An accident couldn’t assign blame, no matter what the newspapers said.

      ‘What did Alessandro say about it?’ she asked now. ‘He must have given some explanation.’

      Emilia shrugged. ‘Of course he was driving recklessly. But with the di Agnio name … The car had to have been going seventy miles an hour. It’s a miracle he wasn’t killed.’

      ‘And the press twisted this into a case of murder?’ Meghan shook her head.

      ‘You have to admit it makes a certain amount of sense,’ Emilia persisted in a silky purr. ‘Think what Alessandro stood to gain from his brother’s death—CEO of one of Italy’s most important companies, prestige, respect …’

      ‘Oh, has he got those?’ Meghan queried sharply. ‘Because it doesn’t seem to me he has.’

      Emilia was silent for a moment, watching Meghan with a sneering pity. ‘You have no idea what he was like, do you? He may seem like a handsome knight in shining armour now, all set to rescue you, but in this country he was reviled. Pictures of him have been smeared across the tabloids for years, and I know from experience that rumours about him tend to be true.’ Her mouth curved in a lasciviously knowing smile that made Meghan bite down on her lip, taste the metallic tang of blood. ‘The public turned a blind eye to all his playboy antics, his women, but they couldn’t stand what he did to his brother. They blamed him. They wanted to blame him. He destroyed the beloved Roberto di Agnio, Italy’s golden boy.’

      ‘I’m sure the press had a field-day with it,’ Meghan said tightly, her control beginning to splinter. ‘It still doesn’t make it his fault.’

      ‘Unless,’ Emilia said, her voice little more than a whisper, a hiss, ‘he did mean to crash the car …’

      Meghan felt the blood drain from her face, her body turning icy and numb. Lifeless.

      ‘He had nothing to lose,’ Emilia continued with dangerous softness. ‘He was a rake, a reprobate, his family had practically disowned him for the things he’d done, the shame he’d brought to them. In a moment of violent jealousy …’ She shrugged delicately. ‘Who knows what could have happened?’

      Meghan sank unsteadily into a chair. Could Alessandro have been so desperate, so unhappy, so murderous, he’d tried to kill both himself and his brother?

      Could he have been so vile?

      ‘I want you to go,’ she said in a thin voice. ‘Now.’

      Emilia chuckled softly. ‘I’ve given you enough to think about, have I? Good. At least now you know what he’s capable of. Alessandro was a desperate, dangerous man, Meghan. He still is. I’ll leave the clippings here … just in case you want to look through them again. Ciao.’

      The front door clicked softly shut behind her.

      Meghan let out a shuddering breath and glanced down at the newspaper photograph of the smoking ruin of a convertible. He didn’t drive those any more. Now she knew why.

      She picked up the sheaf of clippings with numb fingers, a numb heart. She sifted through them, steeled herself against the images, glaring, garish, painful.

      Alessandro with his arms wrapped around a blonde who was poured into a dress. Alessandro kissing another woman, one eye on the camera, giving a lascivious wink. Alessandro with a woman on each arm and a sardonic smile twisting his features, making him someone she could hate.

      It was horrible.

      It was wrong.

      It was the truth.

      She stared at the photographs until her eyes were gritty, forcing herself not to close them against the onslaught of images, realisations, shattered dreams.

      This was Alessandro. This was the man he had been, the man he insisted he still was. As much as she’d suspected and feared what he’d done, this was worse. This was so much worse.

      She believed he’d changed, but could a man actually change that much?

      Was Alessandro even trying to change?

      Her heart cried yes, he was; her mind ruthlessly reminded her of every cruel thing he’d said, every harsh warning he’d given.

      He’d told her not to trust him, not to love him. He’d told her not to try to understand, to know.

      Now she knew, and her ignorance—and innocence—were gone for ever.

      How could he be at times so tender, so kind, so understanding, so loving? her heart cried out, and her mind replied dispassionately, You always knew men abused power.

      Meghan stared at the photograph of the car, half-wrapped around a tree on a deserted road. It was charred, a wreck of a car, wrecking a life.

      Two lives.