Page 27 of Captive in His Castle (The Martinelli Wedding #1)

Chapter Thirteen

C allie handed over the second half of the money to the taxi driver. A thousand euros. Two thousand euros in total. Not her money. Dante’s money.

She didn’t even have a phone number for him.

Not that she could call him. The battery of her phone was dead, she’d forgotten to charge her portable battery before she’d left England so that was dead too, and the driver didn’t have a charger in his car.

She hadn’t been able to speak to Georgia for the same reason.

She didn’t even know why she wanted to speak to Dante.

More that knowing she’d left with no means to contact him again made her feel.

.. she didn’t know. Empty came close to describing it but not close enough.

Which was ridiculous as she never wanted to speak to the bastard again.

She’d been dropped at the edge of Accardiano at the bottom of a steep incline. Only seven a.m., and already the place was heaving with star-spotters eager to catch a glimpse of the bride and groom. An enormous television had been set up on the beach for the public to gather.

Dragging her heavy legs up the hill, she soon came across a café busy with eager patrons and spotted a couple of free tables inside. After buying herself a cornetti and a cappuccino, Callie settled herself at a table by a wall and nearly mustered a smile to see a charging socket.

Flat. That’s how she felt. Flat. Drained of her batteries.

While her phone took some much-needed power, she tried to power herself with her pastry. She was sure it tasted delicious, but her tongue registered it as cardboard. She washed it down with the cappuccino that didn’t seem to have any taste either.

Her phone now had enough charge to make a call.

It was answered on the second ring.

“Callie?”

She had to clear her throat to speak. “Hi, Georgia.”

There was a long passage of silence and then, to her complete horror, her sister burst into tears.

Between sobs, she said, “I’m so sorry, Cal.

I should have levelled with you from the start, but I’ve been so scared and I didn’t want to drag you into it, and I was scared that telling you would make you go into Protective Callie Mode and… .”

“I understand,” she whispered. And she did. The long overnight car journey had given her a lot of time to think. The truth, as people liked to say, hurt, and Callie was hurting. “If anyone should be sorry, it’s me. I am sorry. I should have trusted you to know what was best for you and your baby.”

“I know, but I should have handled it better. I’ve been such a bitch to you lately, and… please forgive me.”

“There is nothing to forgive.” She took a long breath. “You love him, don’t you.”

Of course she did. Callie had dyed her hair to make herself less recognisable because deep down, she’d known that if Georgia caught her fleeing to Naples, she would tell Niccolo of Callie’s plans.

Because Georgia loved him. Loved him enough to let him marry another woman because the consequences of him not marrying her were too much for her to endure.

There was a loud swallow. “I don’t know. I just know that it hurts. But he has to marry her, please, trust me on that.”

Callie closed her eyes and took a long breath. “I know he does.”

There had been no sudden realisation. No, at some point before she’d invited Dante into her bed, she’d accepted the truth about the Espositos and the danger of telling Niccolo before the wedding.

She must have done because she would never have invited Dante into her bed otherwise.

Would never have given the whole of herself to him the way she had.

Not quite the whole of herself. There had been a very significant part of herself she’d kept hidden from him out of fear. He’d touched it anyway. Dante had slipped his hand into her chest without her even noticing and claimed her heart for his own.

She jumped to her feet without any thought from her brain. “Georgia, I’m sorry, but I need to go.”

Something in her tone must have warned Georgia that something was off because alarm rang in her voice. “Are you okay?”

“No. No, I’m not. But I think…” Dante’s face floated into her mind, not the cold dismissal that had been on his features when she’d last gazed into his eyes but the hunger and passion and tenderness she saw whenever he made love to her.

“I think I know a way I can be. Do you have Dante’s phone number? ”

“Yes… Aren’t you with him?”

“No. Long story. But I need it. Please forward it to me. I need to speak to him.”

“Oh my God,” Georgia whispered. “Not you too?”

But she could barely comprehend it to herself. “I’ll call you later. I love you.”

“I love you too. ”

Callie rammed her phone into her bag and then lifted her case and carried it out of the heaving café.

The street was even busier than it had been barely thirty minutes earlier, but she was oblivious to the scores of people bustling around her. The only thing on her mind was Dante.

She’d fallen in love with him. As incredible and terrifying as it was to contemplate, she’d fallen in love with him.

Her phone buzzed in the bag slung over her shoulder, and she pressed herself against the café wall, dropped her case and pulled it out. Georgia had messaged Dante’s number. Callie pressed the number.

She could barely hear the rings through the blood whooshing in her head. Her heart seemed to physically drop when it cut off without even going to voicemail.

Her legs set off without any conscious thought from her brain, getting her in step with the hordes of people climbing upwards.

Oblivious to the excited chatter surrounding her, not a thought for the case she’d left by the café wall, Callie pressed the number a second time and prayed harder than she’d ever prayed before for him to answer.

She tried again a third time. Please, Dante. Answer. I need to hear your voice .

Something hard slammed into her thigh. A picnic hamper.

An apology lost in the noise of people, lost to Callie too as she pressed the number a fourth time.

This time, it was answered after one ring.

The voice of the man she’d fallen in love with spoke in terse but rapid Italian before disconnecting the call.

Her legs weakened and lost all connection with her brain, refusing to take another step. As people jostled into her and around her, and muttered and shouted Italian oaths at her, a tear rolled down her cheek. Dante had just given her the Italian equivalent of ‘fuck off.’

She was shaking so hard she could hardly get her fingers to write two little words in a message to him.

It’s Callie .

Somehow, she managed to force her legs to start working again and join back in with the throng making their way to the church.

She would place herself strategically outside the church, the part of her brain capable of coherent thought decided even as a different part of her brain willed Dante to read the message and not discard it out of hand.

But what if he did read it, she thought in a sudden burst of panic. What if he read it and discarded it? Worse, what if he’d known all along that she’d been the person calling him?

Her legs still keeping pace with the throng, she composed another message.

I’m so sorry. I’m not going to tell Niccolo. You …

Her phone rang in her hand before she could finish her message.

It was his number.

She nearly dropped the phone in her desperation to answer it. “Dante?” she whispered.

“Callie?” He sounded strained. “Is that you?”

“Yes. Dante, I –”

His loud exhale and muttered curse cut her off. “Where are you?”

“In Accardiano.”

The strain in his voice deepened. She could hear a buzz of noise surrounding him. “Where in Accardiano?”

“On a street somewhere.”

“Don’t move. I’ll find you.”

“You’re here?”

“Yes. I’ve been looking for you… Hold on, I think I see you. Look up.”

She lifted her head. The crowd of people was too thick to see past.

“Stay there, carina . I’m coming. ”

A moment later, she saw him in the distance, at the crest of the hill, a head taller than anyone else.

Her heart a heavy thud in her chest and throat and a roar in her ears, Callie walked towards him, winding and elbowing her way through the crowd, not taking her gaze off the figure closing in on her, the crowd parting around him as if he were a deity.

And then the crowd seemed to part for her too, nothing but concrete between them, and she pounded it at a run, uncaring about anything but reaching him.

It was when Dante saw Callie break into a run to reach him that the painful tightness in his chest finally loosened, and then he was catching her as she threw herself into his arms and holding her tightly, her face buried in his chest, his face nestled in her hair, embracing as if they were the other’s life support.

He had no idea how long they stood there, embracing in the middle of a bustling street filled with Italians determined to stake their place for a view of the biggest wedding to hit their country since an American music mogul had married his supermodel wife there.

Finally, Dante loosened his hold around Callie enough to cup her face in his hands and gaze down into the large eyes glistening with tears. “I’m sorry, carina ,” he said fervently. “I have behaved abominably. Everything you said was true.”

She shook her head and opened her mouth.

He brushed her lips with his thumb. “Please, let me say my peace because I need to say it and you need to hear it. I can use every excuse in the book, but it doesn’t change the truth, which is that I abducted you and held you captive against your will, and all I can do is beg you to forgive me, and forgive me too, for making assumptions about your relationship with your sister and using it as a weapon against you, and all because my pride couldn’t take your rejection. ”

“I’ve already forgiven you,” she said shakily. “And as for my sister… Everything you said about us was right. I’ve been smothering her.”

He groaned at the pain in his guts for the hurt he’d caused her. “No, you were just trying to protect her.”

“But you were right – she doesn’t want my protection anymore.

I just refused to see it.” A tear spilt down her cheek.

“I couldn’t . I could never stop seeing Georgia as a six-year-old child crying on the school stage because our mother hadn’t turned up to watch us perform.

I think…” She swallowed. “I think I became so protective of her and so controlling of everything as a way of deflecting my own pain from it all.”

Dante breathed deeply to stymie the burst of fury at her parents’ callous emotional neglect.

She gave a wobbly smile. “I deflected my pain so well and focused so hard on Georgia that I hid my own nature from myself – you brought it out in me. You. It was like you undid all the buttons that were holding me together and brought out the lighter, freer Callie who had been hiding in the shadows, and now I don’t want to lose her.

I don’t want to go home being the Callie I was before you. ”

“So what do you want?” he asked gently. He hardly dared to hope.

Callie gazed into the warm brown eyes alive with such wholehearted emotion, and didn’t have to think twice about her answer.

“You,” she said simply. “Being with you makes me happy. Happier than I’ve ever been.

You didn’t take me to hell, Dante, you took me to paradise.

You’re a kidnapping bastard, but you set me free, and if you still want me to stay… ”

His mouth closed on hers in a long, unmoving, breathless kiss.

“You sing to something in me,” he said quietly when he finally pulled away.

“What I feel for you…” He closed his eyes a long moment before capturing her in his stare again.

“It is what I have spent my life hoping to one day feel. I cannot foretell the future, but when I think of tomorrow and all the tomorrows th at follow, I see only you. What I’m trying to say is…

” He took a deep breath. “I don’t think a week will be enough for me. ”

“Good,” she whispered. “Because I don’t think a week will be enough for me either.”

His mouth stretched into a disbelieving grin before it faltered. “What do you want to do about the wedding? Whatever you choose, know I will support you.”

Callie sighed and attempted a smile. “We both know the wedding needs to go ahead, and you need to be by Niccolo’s side for it.

I’ll wait wherever you think best, and we’ll deal with whatever tomorrow brings together.

” Then she rose to the tips of her toes and wrapped her arms even tighter around his neck before fusing her mouth to his in a kiss so tender and passionate that when they finally broke apart, it was to cheers and whoops and catcalls from the people still streaming past them.