The Italian Billionaire's Betrayal: What if you fell in love with the one person you couldn't have? A story of forbidden love and overpowering need. by Clare Connelly

Author:Clare Connelly [Connelly, Clare]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2014-05-16T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHT

A small drive from the Villa, at the foot of a rocky escarpment, bounded by lush green grass that seemed to stretch for miles, was the Maratelli family church.

Like the villa, it was built from locally quarried stone. Unlike the villa, its design was simple; austere. A rectangular shaped building but for the turret in front, with red terracotta roof tiles and an old brass bell that glowed a little as the early afternoon sun hit its tarnished surface.

She stood at a distance from the family as they formed a line to meet mourners, and behind her dark tinted sunglasses, she watched them.

Pietro, her friend, who she knew so well, was outwardly coping well with the day, though of course she knew he was incredibly upset. To him, Tony’s death had been sudden. He’d had none of the prior knowledge that Matteo had possessed. Pietro, in what he deemed to be further proof of his exile, and the low regard with which his family held him, had not been brought into the inner sanctum and confided in over matters such as health. His bitterness ran deep, and Meghan thought she knew now that much of it must have its basis in the business with Sofia.

It was one thing to believe your own brother had acted against you and sabotaged your relationship. But to believe that you had a personal stake was much harder. Seeing Sofia, Meghan didn’t think she would bother to hide a decision like abortion. She was a confident, straight-forward woman, who, Meghan thought, would have had no qualms in simply presenting her reasons for making such a decision. Besides which, it was something that she and Pete had both agreed on in the past, discussed at lengths, and so why should he have been so furious when she had simply carried out what was almost a pre-arranged plan.

Oh, she wasn’t stupid. She knew that a hypothetical baby was very different to an actual pregnancy, but something about the situation didn’t add up. She was the last person in the world to judge anyone, and least of all her friends, but she rather suspected Pete had shot himself in the foot there, and then been too proud to realise, and certainly too proud to make amends.

Nina and Giovanni stood beside Pete, their faces ashen, Nina’s usual poise and grace only slightly derailed by her sense of deep loss and sadness at the passing of a father-in-law she loved as a father. Giovanni, so different to Tony, and so different again to his own boys, had his shoulders hunched forward, and his eyes were bleary, most likely from having been up much of the night giving reign to his emotions. They were emotional, and Meghan valued that quality deeply.

Her own parents were emotionally distant to the point of neglect. Her father had been in his sixties when her mother – his third wife – had fallen pregnant, completely by accident. Like Pete and Sofia, neither of them had

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.