A Vengeful Passion

CHAPTER NINE

'IF YOU were a feline, you'd purr like a motor, mia cara.' Planting a teasing kiss to her brow, Vito straightened from the bed. Fully dressed and emanating waves of disgusting energy, he smiled down at her. 'I suppose you won't consider stirring yourself and having breakfast with me for a change?'

'No.' Her answer was muffled by the sheet and she was holding herself still as a statue, too well aware that the moment she attempted to sit up would also be the moment when she was most likely to throw up.

He chuckled and strolled across the room with all the lean, lazy grace of a hunting animal, replete after a good meal. 'I'll see you later.'

The last time she hadn't been this sick. The doctor at the hospital had said that her lack of sickness might well have been a sign that her pregnancy was unstable. The assurance had been small comfort four years ago, and at that rate this dreadful nausea she was presently suffering ought to be an indication of the most stable pregnancy of all time!

Priya appeared with a dry biscuit and a cup of aromatic herb tea. It was very hard to eat lying flat but Ashley did her best. The older woman muttered worriedly about her needing to see a doctor and Ashley ignored the advice. This morning scene had become routine ever since Priya found her being violently ill in the bathroom, and with a little bit of quick thinking Ashley had turned her into a partner in collusion to conceal her condition from everyone else in the household. She had lost a baby before, she had forced herself to confide. This time she didn't want to raise Vito's hopes unnecessarily, she had said. Priya had understood such a motive. In her culture men were to be protected at all times from upsetting experiences. That was a woman's duty.

Oh, yes, no doubt at all, she was pregnant. She required neither test nor examination to confirm the fact. Already her breasts were swelling and incredibly sensitive, and if she hadn't been convinced that it was far too soon for her waist to start expanding she would have sworn her skirts were getting uncomfortably tight. Maybe she would blow up like a balloon by the third month, she reflected miserably. For how long could she hope to keep her secret?

Vito shared her bed every night. Vito made love to her every night. For that matter, Vito made love to her in the afternoons as well. In fact, this was just about the only time of day when he kept his hands off her. And she liked it that way, in fact she loved his constant hunger for her, revelled in this one hold she had over him, basic though it was.

Overflowing with self-pity, she blinked back tears and sniffed. She ought to be ashamed of herself. She should have told him a month ago that she might be pregnant, and then in all likelihood he would have left her alone. If she had any pride at all she would have long since grabbed at the first excuse she had to keep him at a distance. The trouble was… well, the trouble was that she might be living in a fool's paradise but she was so happy. She had never been this happy before, and she managed that feat entirely by blocking out the fact that this was not a normal marriage. She took each day as it came.

But tomorrow they were returning to London. The honeymoon would be over and all she had to look forward to was a miscarriage and the certainty that once that happened Vito would see the writing on the wall and let her go. Unless she could manage to hide that from him as well. Maybe it would happen when he was abroad… or maybe it wouldn't happen at all. She rested her palm protectively against her stomach. She wanted the baby so much that it hurt and no way could she have both Vito and the baby. She would have to go away and have it somewhere where not even all the Cavalieri wealth and influence could contrive to find her. Somewhere like the moon or Mars, she thought crazily.

Just before lunch she came downstairs, breathtakingly beautiful in an emerald dress as green as her eyes, an inner glow blazing from her lovely face so powerfully that Vito faltered in the conversation he was having on the phone. He caught her hand, planted a kiss in the centre of her palm and returned his attention with visible difficulty to the phone.

'It must be the air here,' he murmured, dark eyes almost dazedly pinned to her radiance. 'You get more gorgeous with every passing day.'

'You're just susceptible.' She looked like a cat contemplating a large, rich bowl of cream as she studied him, possessiveness surging through her veins in a heady surge. She couldn't take her eyes off him, either. There was a powerful electrical charge in the atmosphere. It lit her up like a high voltage shot of energy.

'Madre di Dio, you're going to kill me,' he whispered, mesmerised by her sensual smile. She bit into a luscious grape, headily conscious of the effect she was having on him. So, on his side it was only the best sex he'd ever had… so what? She loved him. She was willing to settle for second best, willing to live for today at the expense of bitter regret tomorrow. If this was the only happiness she was fated to have in her life, she was ready to grab it with two greedy hands.

'I want my lunch,' she said.

'And it's our last day,' he reminded her with obvious reluctance. 'You said you would like to see the elephants again.'

The elephant orphanage at Pinawella had entranced her the previous week. He had remembered. The perfect companion and lover, entertaining, thoughtful and intelligent enough to be a constant challenge. Yet this same male had abandoned her, thought the very worst of her, married another woman, whom he still never mentioned though Ashley had given him several encouraging openings to do so. Sometimes, like now, these two opposing views of Vito's character tortured her, and yet she was afraid to get too close to the past lest it divide them again.

'I could always look at the photos I took instead.' 'And perhaps we could stay out of bed long enough to talk,' Vito tacked on tautly. 'I have things I need to say to you.'

He looked serious, and these days the minute he got serious she got nervous. Her appetite for lunch all but vanished. She pushed her food round the plate.

'Why is talking so threatening to you?'

'We fight.'

'We don't need to fight,' he drawled levelly.

'You make me feel like a child waiting outside the headmaster's study.'

'I don't want to make you feel like that, but we do have to learn to practise greater honesty with each other.'

'Why bother?' she demanded brittly. 'I'll be gone in another few months… won't I?'

He tensed. Dense ebony lashes briefly fanned down to meet his hard cheekbones. 'Yes, of course, but surely that does not negate the point of establishing better communication now?'

Equally tense, she snapped shakily, 'You're never satisfied, are you? You want to scour the fine print for a flaw to dwell on. I try to give you what you want and it's still not enough! I know it's only an illusion, what we have right now, but-'

'Is it?' Grim dark eyes rested on her.

She reddened. 'Of course it is.' Proudly she thrust up her chin, fearful that he was already suspicious of her motives and determined to conserve her own pride. 'I'm just giving you good value for your money!' she told him. He went white beneath his dark tan. Desperately she wanted to reclaim the lie but it was too late. He rose from the table with a searing look of distaste that she was certain would live with her to her dying day. 'When I need a whore, I'll go to one, but you certainly deserve a bonus for your enthusiasm!' With a derisive hand he tossed a tiny soft leather bag on the table in front of her. 'For services rendered above and beyond the call of duty.'

He vaulted into the four-wheel-drive in front of the house and raked down the driveway out of sight. Trembling, she opened the bag. A flawless cornflower-blue sapphire set into a ring tumbled out on to her palm. The stone was quite exquisite; she knew that it was a gem of the highest quality, worth thousands and thousands of pounds, and the knowledge made her feel worse. It was a personal gift, unlike the engagement and wedding-rings demanded merely for the sake of appearances. She burst into floods of tears.

It was after nine when he returned. She was waiting for him in the drawing-room. When he appeared in the doorway, she shot to her feet. 'I didn't mean it. I'm sorry!' She hadn't intended to sound quite that pleading, but one glance at his dark, unsmiling profile was sufficient to panic her. What they had, she cherished. She could not face losing it.

'Forget it,' he advised chillingly. 'You get what you pay for. And since I did pay for you, I can hardly object to your candour.'

'Where have you been all day?'

'You actually sound like a real wife.'

Vito, I love you, please don't do this to me. She almost said those words out loud. She wasn't prepared for it to end yet. She wasn't ready. Maybe she would never be ready, she registered fearfully, if the second he walked out of the door in a temper she turned to a jelly. That was the extent of his power in the cruellest and most refined form, and she was in torment. He poured himself a drink, offered her one, and when she uttered a negative said flatly, 'Why don't you go to bed? We're leaving early in the morning.'

'I didn't mean what I said.'

'Relax, your little brother was off the hook weeks ago.'

'That isn't why I'm trying to reason with you.'

'No? Well, there's only one other option, isn't there? The threat of a night without a sexual orgy thrown in appals you? Tell me,' he demanded raggedly, belatedly making her suspect that he was not enjoying his first drink of the evening, 'from the depths of your endless experience of my sex, am I really so good that you're prepared to crawl and beg?'

Every scrap of colour fled her face, leaving her bone white. 'I…I don't really know. I've never had anyone else,' she whispered strickenly, shattered by his cruelty.

'The odds aren't in your favour, cara. Four years ago, I saw you in that bastard's arms in the street. Saw with my own eyes,' he stressed savagely. 'If I'd got out of my car, I'd have murdered you!'

'F-four years ago?' she stammered. 'You saw me with Steve… in the street?'

'Do you need to see it in writing?' he derided. 'B-but that means you must have-'

'Come back after you said no to the proposal?' he incised with icy bite. 'I did. I was a real sucker for punishment in those days. No more.'

She was trembling all over. 'But you couldn't have seen anything happen between Steve and me!'

'You were in his arms and you were bedding down in his flat.' '

And abruptly it came to her when he must have seen her. The day she had discovered she was pregnant. She had started to cry in the students' union bar and Steve had flushed her out at speed. On the way back to his flat, she had told him what was wrong and he had put his arms around her. 'For goodness' sake, all he did was hug me… try to comfort me because I was so upset about the baby and you!'

'In that order, I notice. The horror of the baby, then me.'

Something snapped inside Ashley. That crack was the last straw in the state she was in. She stalked across the room and clutched him by the lapels of his Armani jacket. All of a sudden, she was a raging fever of emotion.

'That was the day I found out that I was pregnant and I was climbing the wall!' she lashed out. 'And you dare to tell me that you were sitting somewhere close by in a car, letting him do what you should have been there to do? Instead you were spying on me, dreaming up filthy suspicions on non-existent evidence? How dare you tell me that now? How dare you? You should be too ashamed to admit that you came that close and wimped out last minute!'

Her vehemence clearly astounded him. 'I didn't wimp out!' he raked back between gritted teeth.

'Oh, didn't you?' Although he was a foot taller, Ashley glowered wrathfully up at him as though she was the one with all the physical advantages and not he. She had such a fierce hold on his jacket that he would have had to break her fingers to shake her off. 'You wimped out, all right. You didn't love me enough, Vito. You didn't trust me enough. You put your rotten stinking pride first!'

'That's a-'

'And then, to crown it all, you went and married another woman when you still belonged to me! Do you think that I am ever going to forget or forgive that? You owe me, Vito… you owe me for every morning you wake up without a knife stuck between your ribs!'

Still in a tempest of unrestrained emotion, she jerked her hands away from him. Her frustration and her pain were so great that she literally didn't trust herself not actually to strike him now that she finally knew what had kept him from her four years ago. A silly, trivial misinterpretation of events, an almost laughable misunderstanding that had none the less blown her life and her hope of happiness right out of the water. But Vito had still been cool-headed enough to carry out a damage limitation exercise on his own life-that was what hurt her so much. In her imagination she could think of a lot of things that Vito might reasonably have done or felt then, but not one of them covered barely catching his breath and turning round immediately to ask another woman to marry him!

'I didn't love her.' The confession was reluctant, low-pitched as if only the silence dredged it from him.

And at last her bitterness was vindicated but most ironically it didn't make her feel any better. He had loved her but he had still married Carina. He just hadn't loved her enough, and that knowledge couldn't even begin to cauterise her wounds. Another revivifying surge of fury came to her rescue. She had suffered so much for so little.

'Want to talk some more, Vito? Want to continue establishing better communication?' she demanded tremulously. 'You didn't love her but you married her-'

'You didn't want me,' he reminded her harshly. 'Oh, you fool!' Ashley gave a stark laugh of rampant disbelief. 'Don't you know when a woman loves you? I said no to marriage and six children before I was twenty-five… I did not say no to you!'

Vito looked dazed. That aspect of that final hostile confrontation had evidently never occurred to him. 'Dio,' he said thickly.

The artificial stimulus of rage suddenly ebbed, the tears threatening. 'I'm going to bed,' she told him shakily.

'Ashley.' As he spoke, she reluctantly turned her head back from the door. His grim smile was edged by the darkness and the shadows of the too recent past. 'Does it ever occur to you that we were both guilty of making remarkably hasty and stupid decisions?'

'You had more choices than I had.'

'I asked you to marry me because that was the only choice I had,' he countered levelly. 'I could not stay in London and I could not take you back to Italy as anything other than my wife.'

She shot him a scornful look. 'You didn't ask me to marry you; you told me that we would have to get married.'

'I told it as it was.'

'Your whole attitude…it was an ultimatum, a list of what you wanted and what I was expected to accept.'

He emitted a laugh, devoid of humour. 'Was that how you saw it? I knew that you didn't want marriage but it was all I had to offer. Hearts and flowers would have made the proposal even more ludicrous in your eyes. Nor was I in the mood-our entire relationship had followed lines outside my experience. I had just learnt that my father had only months to live-'

'You said he was ill… you didn't tell me he was dying!' she condemned.

'You didn't seem very interested either way.' Guiltily, she flushed, recalling her hurt, defensive state of mind the day after his mother's visit. Where his family was concerned, she had not been in a charitable mood.

'I was already angry and bitter,' Vito confessed tautly. 'My father had asked me to marry Carina – in spite of the fact that I had already told him about you! It was very much in the line of a last request from a dying man. We had an extremely violent disagreement on the subject. It was the only thing he could have asked of me that I could not do-'

'I didn't know.' She was shocked, realising that in wishing to marry her Vito had withstood far more than mere family opposition. His elderly father had made a most unreasonable demand and Vito had stood his ground and refused, but the distressing background to that refusal must have cost him dear. Vito came from a close and loving family. Conservative as he was, he had probably until that moment been a most loyal and dutiful son, who had never caused them an ounce of concern. Now she understood the strongest motive behind Elena di Cavalieri's interference. Her husband had been dying. She had fully believed that Ashley could not make her son happy. Those two hard facts had driven her into an attempt to break them up.

'What difference would it have made to you? You say that you loved me,' Vito drawled with derision, 'but you must have known how impossible it would have been for us to try and conduct a long-distance relationship-'

'Maybe I would have liked the option!' Ashley snapped back.

Vito elevated a satiric dark brow. 'Maybe I might have given you that option had you not made it so insultingly obvious that you did not see our affair in a permanent light. Always you were saying to me…if I were to meet someone else…if you were to meet someone else!'.

Ashley lifted her chin, temper igniting afresh. 'I thought I was too young to make any promises. I didn't want to feel tied down-'

'So you made me feel like a regular one-night stand instead!' he slated savagely.

'I thought that was my line!'

'You were scared a better prospect might be waiting round the next comer.' Vito cast her an outrageously offensive smile. 'Seemingly, there wasn't.'

'A man came low down on my list of priorities, and when I listen to you now I know exactly why!' she scorned furiously. 'I offered you an open, adult relationship and you couldn't handle it!'

'And how well would you have handled it if I'd walked in the door one night and casually dropped that I'd met someone else?'

Her expressive face dropped a mile at the prospect. 'You didn't know the first thing about being an adult,' Vito slanted back at her with cutting emphasis. 'You wanted me, but you didn't want the commitment that came with me. All you ever gave me was sex, bloody stupid arguments and hassle!'

'Th-thank you very much!' Her voice throbbed, her eyes wide to stem the scorching tears behind her lids. 'I know where to come for a reference, don't I?'

'And the only reason I'm getting more this time around is that-'

'-you're a lousy domineering bully, who never ever thinks about my feelings!' she spat, and hared out of the room, taking the stairs two at a time.

Vito strolled out into the hall and angled his dark head back. 'By the way, there won't be any locks on the bathroom doors in our house in London. What are you going to do?' he mocked. 'Do you think you might actually find yourself in the frightful position of having to share those feelings with me?'

A slammed door was his answer. Ashley flung herself on the bed. The fire of her emotions was exhausting her now. She glanced up, ready to unleash another barrage, when a soft knock preceded the opening of the door. When Priya appeared, she scolded herself for imagining that Vito might knock on his own bedroom door.

'I hope I will not offend,' Priya began anxiously, the door still ajar behind her. 'But you might have fallen on the stairs and hurt the baby-'

Ashley groaned. 'You're right… but just for a minute I forgot about the baby-'

'It is not wise for a woman to forget when she is carrying a child,' Priya persisted. 'Calm and care at all times are most advisable. When I saw you, I was so afraid you would fall.'

'I won't do it again.' Ashley was annoyed with herself for having let temper take over again. But even as she thought that, she stiffened and tensed in dismay as Vito filled the doorway. Priya bowed out at speed.

'What do you want?' she demanded, wondering in horror if he could have overheard them discussing her pregnancy, but there was no shade of any sudden comprehension in his dark features although his appraisal was intense. 'To say goodnight?' he queried teasingly. 'Goodnight!'

'Interesting as your mother's gynaecological history no doubt is, Mrs di Cavalieri-' Mr Beckett began. 'Brown!' Ashley reminded him again, feeling foolish when he raised his eyes heavenward in silent suffering. 'I require complete confidentiality. I don't want anyone to know that I'm pregnant,' she added shakily, emerging from the room where she had been dressing. Mr Beckett abandoned names altogether. 'As I was saying, your mother's misfortunes have far too great a hold on your imagination. Frankly, I'm more concerned about your state of mind than your health. Your pregnancy checks out exactly as it should for the first trimester and as I've already told you taking the Pill for a couple of weeks won't have done the slightest harm to your baby. But you're a tiny bit underweight. Hopefully that problem will take care of itself as the sickness recedes. Would you like to sit down?'

Stiff-backed and tense, she took a seat. 'What's wrong?'

He sighed heavily. 'Nothing is wrong. If you'd looked at the scan as I suggested-'

'I don't want to get too attached to the baby.'

'If you intend to be my patient, I absolutely refuse to listen to any more pessimistic remarks,' he delivered. 'As for not wanting anyone to know that you're pregnant – I'm afraid that will be rather difficult in a shorter time than you expect. You see, you are expecting not one baby but two- Nurse!'

Ashley had almost fallen off the chair, faint with shock, and had to endure having her head pushed down between her knees. Twins – she couldn't believe it! Twins! As she started to tabulate all the extra risks involved in carrying twins, she felt even more giddy.

Josh was waiting outside on the street for her. She tottered down the steps, as pale and drawn as an accident victim. 'What are you doing here?'

'Is that any way to greet an old friend?' He pressed her into the taxi he had waiting. 'You were so secretive on the phone when you asked me to recommend someone, I was concerned.'

'I'm pregnant!' she gasped. 'Congratulations, luv!' the cab driver said.

'Twins,' she hissed tragically at Josh. 'And there's none in my family!' 'They run in Vito's.'

'They won't run with me for long.'

'You really are upset,' he finally registered.

He took her to a fashionable restaurant and she poured out her heart, a handkerchief in one hand, a glass of unadulterated spring water in the other. 'Why aren't you sharing these terrors with Vito?'

It was a reasonable question. But how could she be honest with a man who was planning to take her baby away from her? On all sides she felt constrained by secrecy, and the awareness that she would not be able to conceal her condition for much longer tortured her. She would have to leave Vito far sooner than she had planned. 'I can't tell you.'

'Is he treating you badly?' Josh breathed furiously, and clasped her hand.

She gulped bravely behind her handkerchief. Actually he was treating her very well, but not like a wife, more like a maiden aunt. Any sex appeal she had ever had had clearly vanished virtually overnight in Sri Lanka. They had been back in London for ten days and she had her own bedroom all to herself. He had flown to Milan five days ago and he hadn't even suggested that she might go with him. Sex, bloody stupid arguments and hassle,… evidently his intelligence had prevailed over his animal instincts, for the best he could seem to offer her now was amazingly polite conversation and horrifically considerate behaviour. Yes, on her terms, he was treating her very badly.

'No, he's very kind.' Her mouth wobbled again. 'He's killing me with kindness. We haven't had one argument, not even a teeny weeny disagreement. He agrees with everything I say. All the passion has died.'

'Some men find pregnancy a little hard to adjust to-' 'My, my, my, what have we here?'

Josh removed his hand from Ashley's with complete cool and glanced up at the smirking youth standing by their table. 'Hello, Pietro,' he said drily.

'Tell me, Auntie, do I mention this to my uncle or do we keep it our little secret?' Pietro sneered.

'Go away, you little creep,' Ashley snapped in a raw undertone. 'Or I'll knock your teeth down your throat.' Taken by surprise, Pietro's cool front was cracked. With burning cheeks, he threw her a look of hatred and said, 'You haven't heard the last of this.'

'And every word a cliché, too,' she murmured with contempt.

'Was that wise? This situation could be misunderstood,' Josh pointed out uneasily.

Ashley had only met Pietro briefly at the wedding. The only child of Vito's elder sister, who was a widow, he bore all the marks of a self-indulgent, adoring mother and too much money. She had known that her marriage to Vito had shattered him. When he had taunted Tim, he had certainly not envisaged Tim's sister becoming his uncle's wife, and he disliked her thoroughly for that piece of apparent one-upmanship.

'Looking scared would only encourage him.' She glanced anxiously at her watch. 'I should be going.' Vito was striding through the hall when she returned home. She paled like a thief caught with her hand trapped in the till. 'You weren't due back until tomorrow'

'Should I look under the bed? Search the cupboards?' he teased.

Huddled inside her coat with her stomach sucked in, she looked at him blankly. 'For your lover,' he supplied rather drily. 'It was supposed to be a joke.'

Amusement failed her. As he searched her face, his dark features set hard, making him look tired, irritable. '''Welcome home, caro. I've missed you so much,'" he breathed with glancing satire in a high-pitched treble.

She flushed, her shoulders drooping under the weight of her depression. 'I'm sorry.'

'The last thing I need right now is an apology. Dio, what am I? Your gaoler, that you need to cringe when you see me?' he murmured in a fierce undertone.

The burden of her own secrecy constrained her. And what would he have done had she thrown herself into his arms? Such a demonstration would scarcely have been welcome when he no longer found her desirable. The passion had burnt out just as she had known it would, and when he wouldn't even argue with her she knew their relationship was on the rocks. Either that or he was sickening for something, she reflected morosely as she sat down in the palatial drawing-room.

'Mr Angeli, madam.'

Ashley glanced up from her magazine with a frown.

Who? Their staff didn't normally show a visitor in until they had established that the visitor was welcome…with one notable exception. Family members. And there, smirking like a cartoon baddie in a comic strip stood Pietro.

'Vito's upstairs if you want him.' She decided to call his bluff, every muscle in her slight body drawn unnaturally tense.

Pietro strolled over to her. 'You must think I'm stupid. He's in Milan.'

Ashley edged upright uneasily. 'He's upstairs.' He laughed. 'You wish!'

'Are you threatening me?' she enquired in disbelief. He drew out a cigarette and lit it with a flourish.

'What do you think?'

'I'd prefer you not to smoke,' she said quietly.

His dark eyes rested on her flatly. He was a very handsome boy, but there was something frighteningly unboyish about the cool way in which he looked her over, as if she was a piece of female flesh on a slab. 'If you think I'm about to listen to some cheap little tart telling me what I can and can't do in my uncle's house, you're even dumber than you look.'

'I'd like you to leave, Pietro.' She drew in a deep, shaky breath.

'I don't think so. You've got it made here, haven't you? I'd hate to rock the newly married boat,' he mocked. 'And I could, believe me. Giulia tells me he's very jealous… nearly made a scene at the engagement party. I can't imagine it myself. I always saw my uncle as a very astute guy, more into banking than bonking-'

'Get out!' she demanded unsteadily.

'You're as over-sensitive as your little twerp of a brother. I did for him nicely, didn't I?' He gave her a self-satisfied smile. 'My friends gave him a right going over, taught him quite a lesson. You should learn from his mistakes. I think you're going to be very nice to me indeed in the near future.'

Ashley was feeling physically sick. Pietro was a teenager like Tim, just a kid, she had to keep on telling herself. But that he should crow about having had her brother beaten up really shook her.

'So do I tell Uncle Vito that I saw you holding hands and weeping over the good doctor this lunchtime or do I keep quiet?' he taunted.

'You tell him whatever you see fit,' she dared. Pietro grimaced. 'But you see, once I start talking, I might get carried away. I might tell him about the money you took to dump him the last time-'

'What?' she interrupted hoarsely, unable to believe her ears.

'My mother told me about it. It's an open secret in the family,' he shared, enjoying her shock. 'You got a big fat cheque and he got Carina as a consolation prize.' 'I never cashed that cheque!' Ashley gasped, her head reeling.

'Uncle Vito's got a lot of pride… I don't think he's going to be too happy to find out he was dumped for a price-'

'You repulsive little swine!' Ashley suddenly erupted, shuddering with the force of her distaste. 'Have you any idea of how much you could hurt your own grandmother? The damage you could do to her relationship with Vito?'

He called her something foul. What happened next was a blur. Sick and dizzy, Ashley staggered, feeling the darkness threaten to fold in. She made it back down on to the sofa just as Pietro let out a strangled yell. When she raised her swimming head, she couldn't believe what she was seeing. Vito had his nephew pinned up against the wall with one powerful hand and he was spitting at him in staccato Italian. Uncontrollable rage was the only possible description for the mood her husband was in. He was shaking Pietro as a terrier shook a rat before it went for the jugular.

In sudden alarm, Ashley leapt upright. 'You're hurting him, Vito!'

Her use of English caused Vito to switch to the same language. 'You dare to enter my home and threaten my pregnant wife?' he was roaring. 'When I am finished with you, you will wish you were dead!'

Ashley rather thought he might be, but on the brink of interference she fell back, the paralysis of deeper shock sinking in. Vito had said 'my pregnant wife'. A humming noise interfered with her eardrums. Without the smallest of warnings, she keeled over in a dead faint.