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She’d known her father wasn’t guilty, but she’d been too scared to risk being wrong about it. They’d manipulated her perfectly—playing on her love for her father who, they’d told her, was dying. They knew that Claudia would never willingly let anything bad happen to her father. The whole situation had horrified her so much that she’d simply agreed to their demands.
‘Oh, my God!’ she said, covering her face with her hands. She’d let herself be used—had agreed to marry Vasile—and now Marco despised her for her weakness. ‘I’ve been such a fool!’
Marco looked at Claudia, watching her realisation that she had been duped. The change that came over her was so profound that he had no doubt that it was genuine.
A brief, ironic smile flashed across his face as he thought about Vasile’s desperate attempt to save himself from financial ruin. It amused Marco that Vasile clearly had no idea that money would not be anywhere near enough to save him.
But that moment of satisfaction was short-lived. As he stared at Claudia—face buried in her hands and shoulders huddled forward in misery—an unexpected surge of a different emotion churned in the pit of his stomach. He forced it down angrily—he would not let himself feel sorry for her. She deserved whatever she got.
He’d already suspected that she’d been the victim of Vasile and Francesca, but he’d felt no pity for her then. After all, she’d been the one doing their dirty work in the past, and it stood to reason that she knew how they operated. It was her own fault if she was foolish enough to be taken in by them. There was even a certain poetic justice to it. After all, she should pay for her part in what had happened to Bianca.
So why did her obvious distress affect him now?
He realised that she was shaking, despite the heat of the tropical sun. Was she crying? He didn’t think so, but she was obviously experiencing a powerful reaction to the discovery that her stepmother and Vasile had played her for a fool.
Suddenly she dropped her hands and lifted her face to look at him. Her face was startlingly pale and her golden-brown eyes seemed huge.
‘Is it true?’ she asked urgently. ‘Is it true that my father is safe? That Francesca and Primo can’t hurt him?’
‘Yes,’ Marco answered flatly, forcing down his automatic response to the appeal in those wide, innocent looking eyes.
‘Oh, thank God!’ she said. A spark of relief lit her face and a spot of colour returned to her cheeks. ‘I’ve been so desperately worried about him.’
‘You were very quick to believe him guilty,’ Marco said, wondering how they had convinced her. As far as he was aware, Hector had led a spotless business life.
Claudia pressed her lips together, looking perplexed.
‘I didn’t believe it, not at first,’ she said. ‘But I just couldn’t take the risk. Primo said he’d go straight to the police if I didn’t do want he wanted. And Francesca backed him up.’
‘Well, you’ll be free of her soon,’ Marco said dispassionately. ‘She’ll be going to jail too, for her part in Vasile’s schemes.’
‘Oh, my poor father,’ Claudia gasped. ‘How awful to have his wife arrested and sent to prison.’
‘He should thank me,’ Marco said. ‘For freeing him of that bloodsucking leech. Marrying her was the worst mistake he ever made.’
‘You heartless pig!’ Claudia exclaimed, looking at his cold, hard face.
‘Don’t you wish he’d never replaced your mother with that witch?’ Marco asked.
Claudia stared at Marco in shock. She’d wished a million times that she still had her mother—but as far as she was concerned, Francesca wasn’t a replacement for her. And she knew her father didn’t view her like that either. Until her grandma had died he had taken her to Wales as often as he could, keeping up her only connection with her real mother.
‘Francesca wasn’t a replacement,’ she said. ‘My father never tried to make her that—and, goodness knows, Francesca didn’t try to act like a mother.’
‘Just think how much better your life would have been without her,’ Marco pressed. ‘And, more importantly, Primo Vasile would never have been part of it.’
‘I never liked Primo. And I always had the feeling my father didn’t either. Although he’d be shocked to discover just how evil Primo has been.’ she said. ‘But when he married Francesca she was already his business partner, so my father chose to let that be.’
‘Another almost fatal mistake,’ Marco said. ‘He will be pleased to see Vasile rot in prison.’
‘Not everyone is as cold and brutal as you,’ she said. ‘Just because Primo makes my skin crawl, doesn’t mean I want to see him suffer.’
‘Even after what he’s done to you?’
She looked at him, startled by how fierce he seemed, but then there was always a look of barely restrained fury in his eyes when he mentioned Primo Vasile.
‘I don’t know—it will take a while to get used to,’ she said. ‘He does deserve to be punished, but you seem to take such unholy pleasure in bringing him down. And anyone associated with him.’
‘Not everyone associated with him,’ Marco said, his eyes boring into her, dark and unrelenting in their scrutiny. ‘Just anyone who hurt my family.’
