Page 1 of Marriage Made In Hate

B IANCA AWOKE , FISTS CLENCHED , seething with fury. Damn, she’d had that dream again—the one that came in several variations but always, always, always ended the same way. The slash of a hand through the air. Curt, impatient words reaching her.

‘It’s over, Bianca. Over! Accept it.’

And Luca walking away from her…

She lay there, heart rate still elevated, staring up at the ceiling, willing the dream, the memory, to ebb.

Accept it? Her mouth thinned bitterly in the dim early-morning light. She’d had to accept it. His rejection of her, finishing their affair, had been absolute. He’d left her, left London, left the UK. Gone back to his own life in Italy.

She felt it come again. Her anger at his brusque dismissal—the reason he’d given for it.

‘ We come from very different worlds,’ he’d said.

And he hadn’t just meant that she was English and he was Italian. Far more than nationality had divided them. Far more. He’d gone back to his oh-so-aristocratic life in Italy, done with amusing himself with the likes of her…

Bianca Mason, born in the East End, raised on a council estate, a barmaid pulling pints.

Not good enough for him.

Except for sex, of course…

The words and all the searing memories that came with them were in her head before she could stop them.

A single glance from his dark, gold-flecked eyes had been able to melt her like honey…

Oh, God, I wanted him so much—so much…

She’d been helpless to resist and hadn’t wanted to.

Had wanted only to grab hold of him, her own desire blazing from her, matching his, urgently, hungrily stripping the clothes from him, whipping off his silk tie, slipping the buttons on his pristine white shirt, shedding the jacket of his designer business suit.

Hooking one leg around his, hands roaming wildly over the smooth, hard wall of his chest as she pressed her hips against his, feeling and glorying in his blatant arousal for her.

They’d hardly made it to the bedroom in his swanky City apartment, with him peeling down her off-the-shoulder top, hitching up her micro skirt to divest her of her skimpy lacy underwear, pulling her down with him on the waiting bed, his mouth finding hers, her lush, long hair cascading over her shoulders as their hunger for each other mounted and mounted…

With a stifled cry, and a strength she’d had to learn to apply to herself, she forced her mind away.

She’d had six years to learn how to do it.

Six long years to not think about those searing three months with Luca, when she’d blown all her long-schooled caution about men to the winds and fallen totally, helplessly for him.

Weaving about him a longing that had possessed her, consumed her—until the brutal day when it had all come crashing down around her.

‘ It’s over, Bianca. Over! Accept it.’

And when she hadn’t—couldn’t—he’d spelt out brutally, callously, the reason why she had to.

In words she had never forgotten. Never could forget. Never would forget.

They’d changed her life.

Deliberately, she checked the time. Her alarm had not yet gone off, but she might as well get up anyway. Better than lying there remembering what it was so toxic to remember.

Remembering Luca.

She threw back her duvet, padded to the tiny bathroom opening off her narrow bedroom.

The whole flat was tiny—half the top floor of one of a terrace of Edwardian houses converted into flats—but it suited her, and she was grateful for it.

She could afford the rent—just—on her new salary, and it was only a short bus ride from work.

This outer suburb on the western fringes of London, pleasant and leafy, might only be less than twenty miles from the East End as the crow flew, but it was a world away from where she’d grown up.

But then, so was her life now.

I’ve left it behind—totally. And that includes everything that ever happened there. And that, above all, means the toxic poison that was my time with Luca.

She stepped into the shower cubicle, turning on the water. As it sluiced down over her head it washed away the last shards of the dream that had come unbidden, unwanted, and the memories it brought with it. Washed them away, down into the fetid sewers of the past.

* * *

Luca took the chair the hospital consultant was offering him across his desk. Tension was rigid in his spine.

‘What is the prognosis?’ he asked.

He knew he sounded curt, even though he did not wish to.

The consultant oncologist looked at him. He was used to giving bad news, but practice never made it easier.

‘The primary tumour has been surgically removed, but the cancer has spread to other organs. That means, unfortunately, that it is terminal. I am sorry to have to tell you this.’

His eyes rested on Luca.

Luca’s face and voice remained expressionless. ‘Is there any treatment possible?’

The consultant nodded. ‘Once he has recovered sufficiently from surgery there are drugs he can take which will, if effective, prolong his life.’

Luca’s hands clenched at his sides. ‘How long?’ he asked bluntly.

‘It is impossible to say with certainty. The drugs are not successful with all patients.’ He paused. ‘We are talking months of holding the cancer at bay. Perhaps six. More should not be hoped for. After that, it will be a question of palliative care to make him comfortable.’

‘I see.’ It was Luca who paused now. Then, ‘Thank you for telling me. I needed to understand the situation. When will he be fit enough to leave hospital?’

‘He will need nursing care at home,’ the oncologist warned him.

Luca nodded. ‘That will be taken care of. He will be well looked after. He will be glad to be home again,’ he said, finding it suddenly difficult to speak. He got to his feet. ‘Thank you for all you are doing for him. It is appreciated.’

He turned, taking his leave. He felt cold in the pit of his stomach. Facing the grim, unwelcome truth.

Matteo was dying.

* * *

With relief, Bianca sank back into the taxi taking them to the station.

‘There,’ said Andrew, her boss, getting in beside her. ‘That wasn’t too bad, was it?’ He smiled at her. ‘You handled it fine—well done. It’s never easy giving your first presentation.’

‘I hope I didn’t sound too nervous.’

‘You settled into it,’ Andrew said reassuringly. ‘You’re doing well, Bianca.’

He bestowed an approving smile upon her.

She answered it with a grateful one. She’d worked hard—only she knew how hard it had been—but she’d achieved what once she would have thought impossible…out of the question for someone like her.

But I’m not that person any longer.

She’d left that person behind—and everything else that she had once wanted so, so much.

This was her life now, made out of the ashes of her old one, and Luca D’Alabruschi, with all his fancy ancestry and oh-so-aristocratic blue blood, who’d once amused himself by slumming it with her, could go screw himself…

Her old crudity went with the thought. Giving her a stab of satisfaction. Casting Luca into the oblivion he deserved. Where he could stay and rot.

* * *

Luca’s sleek, low-slung supercar crunched over the gravelled carriage sweep, coming to a halt outside the Villa Fiarante.

The house was surrounded by pointed cedars, with sunlight glancing off the rows of pedimented windows all along its imposing frontage.

It was a familiar sight to him—almost a second home.

His father had been in the Diplomatic Service, mostly posted abroad, and in his parents’ absence their good friend and Luca’s godfather, Matteo, and his late wife, Luisa, had been their surrogates—a relationship that had intensified when Luca’s parents had been tragically killed in an air crash three years ago.

Now Matteo Fiarante was the closest person in the world to him. Luca would do anything for him—anything and everything—out of long, long loyalty. Today was the first time he had visited since Matteo had been discharged after his surgery ten days ago. How would he find him?

He felt concern bite—a concern he expressed to Matteo’s long-serving butler, Giuseppe, who opened the door to him.

‘How is he?’ Luca asked, without preamble.

‘Bearing up, I would venture to say,’ replied Giuseppe carefully. ‘He will be cheered by your visit, if you will permit me to say so.’

‘Thank you—that is encouraging.’ Luca paused. Then, ‘We must take care of him—all of us,’ he said.

Giuseppe nodded. ‘Indeed.’ He inclined his head.

Luca smiled with the familiarity of one who had run tame here all his life. Giuseppe was dedicated to Matteo, and Luca knew he could trust him implicitly.

‘Don’t announce me,’ he said. ‘I’ll go straight in.’

He did, seeing immediately that Matteo was seated in his familiar place in the library, in a leather armchair, with a rug over his knees and a marquetry table at his side bearing a newspaper, a number of books and a jug of water and a glass.

Luca let his eyes sweep over him. Illness was visible in the lines around his mouth, in his thin cheeks, but Matteo’s expression lightened immediately.

‘Luca, my boy! I thought I heard that monstrous car of yours!’

Luca laughed. ‘A dead giveaway, I know,’ he said, coming forward, taking the outstretched hand, then settling himself down in the armchair facing Matteo’s.

Giuseppe entered with a tray of coffee, and when he had departed Luca poured Matteo and himself a cup. Then he looked at Matteo.

‘Now,’ he said, striving to keep his voice light, ‘tell me how you are.’

Matteo met his eyes full on. ‘You know how I am, Luca. As do I. I am dying. But as the poet says…’ his eyes rested on the younger man ‘…I am dying “with a little patience”. Enough patience,’ he said, ‘to put my affairs in order. It is time that happened—more than time.’

He glanced at the clock on the mantel, a gilded and ornate nineteenth-century antique. Ticking the seconds away. The hours. The remainder of Matteo’s life.

‘More than time,’ he said again.

* * *