.

about that, mi amore?’

      Mi amore. My love. But Marco Ferranti didn’t love her. He’d never said he did, and she didn’t even want him to. Looking back, she could see how expedient their relationship had been. A family dinner that led to a walk in the gardens that led to a proper date that led to a proposal. It had been a systematic procedure orchestrated by this man—and her father. And she hadn’t realised, not completely. She’d thought she’d had some say in the proceedings, but now she wondered at how well she’d been manipulated. Used.

      ‘I’m all right, Marco.’ Her voice came out in a breathy whisper, and it took all the strength she possessed to step away from him so his hand dropped from her cheek. He frowned, and she wondered if he didn’t like her taking even that paltry amount of control. She’d let him dictate everything in the three months of their courtship, she realised now. When and where they went, what they talked about—everything had been decided by him. She’d been so desperate to get away, and she’d convinced herself he was a kind man.

      ‘One last kiss,’ Marco murmured and before Sierra could think to step farther away he was pulling her towards him, his hands sliding up to cup her face as his lips came down on hers. Hard and soft. Hot and cold. A thousand sensations shivered through her as her lips parted helplessly. Longing and joy. Fear and desire. All of the emotions tangled up together so she couldn’t tell them apart. Her hands fisted in his shirt and she stood on her tiptoes to bring his body closer to hers, unable to keep herself from it, not realising how revealing her response was until Marco chuckled and eased her away from him.

      ‘There will be plenty of time later,’ he promised her. ‘Tomorrow night.’

      When they were wed. Sierra pressed her fingers to her lips and Marco smiled, satisfied by her obvious response.

      ‘Goodnight, Sierra,’ he said softly, and Sierra managed to choke out a response.

      ‘Goodnight.’ She turned and hurried up the stairs, not daring to look back, knowing Marco was watching her.

      In the quiet darkness of the upstairs hallway she pressed a hand to her thundering heart. Hated herself, hated Marco, for they were both to blame. She never should have let this happen. She should have never thought she could escape.

      Sierra hurried down the hallway to the far wing of the house, knocking softly on the door of her mother’s bedroom.

      Violet Rocci opened the door a crack, her eyes wide with apprehension. She relaxed visibly when she saw it was Sierra, and opened the door wider to let her daughter in.

      ‘You shouldn’t be here.’

      ‘Papà’s downstairs.’

      ‘Even so.’ Violet clutched the folds of her silk dressing gown together, her face pale with worry and strain. Twenty years ago she’d been a beautiful young woman, a world-class pianist who played in London’s best concert halls, on the cusp of major fame. Then she’d married Arturo Rocci and virtually disappeared from the public, losing herself in the process.

      ‘Mamma...’ Sierra stared helplessly at her mother. ‘I think I may have made a mistake.’

      Violet drew her breath in sharply. ‘Marco?’ Sierra nodded. ‘But you love him...’ Even after twenty years of living with Arturo Rocci, cringing under his hand, Violet believed in love. She loved her husband desperately, and it had been her destruction.

      ‘I’ve never loved him, Mamma.’

      ‘What?’ Violet shook her head. ‘But Sierra, you said...’

      ‘I trusted him. I thought he was gentle. But the only reason I wanted to marry him was to escape...’ Even now she couldn’t say it. Escape Papà. She knew the words would hurt her mother; Violet hid from the truth as much as she could.

      ‘And now?’ Violet asked after a moment, her voice low.

      ‘And now I don’t know.’ Sierra paced the room, the anxiety inside her like a spring that coiled tighter and tighter. ‘I realise I don’t know him at all.’

      ‘The wedding is tomorrow, Sierra.’ Violet turned away from her, her hand trembling at the throat of her dressing gown. ‘What can you do? Everything has been arranged—’

      ‘I know.’ Sierra closed her eyes as regret rushed through her in a scalding wave. ‘I’m afraid I have been very stupid.’ She opened her eyes as she blinked back useless tears and set her jaw. ‘I know there’s nothing I can do. I have to marry him.’ Powerlessness was a familiar feeling. Heavy and leaden, a mantle that had weighed her down for far too long. Yet she’d made her own trap this time. In the end she had no one to blame but herself. She’d agreed to Marco’s proposal.

      ‘There might be a way.’

      Sierra glanced at her mother in surprise; Violet’s face was pale, her eyes glittering with uncharacteristic determination. ‘Mamma...’

      ‘If you are certain that you cannot go through with it...’

      ‘Certain?’ Sierra shook her head. ‘I’m not certain of anything. Maybe he is a good man...’ A man who was marrying her for the sake of Rocci Enterprises? A man who worked hand in glove with her father and insisted he knew how to handle her?

      ‘But,’ Violet said, ‘you do not love him.’

      Sierra thought of Marco’s gentle smile, the press of his lips. Then she thought of her mother’s desperate love for her father, despite his cruelty and abuse. She didn’t love Marco Ferranti. She didn’t want to love anyone. ‘No, I don’t love him.’

      ‘Then you must not marry him, Sierra. God knows a woman can suffer much for the sake of love, but without it...’ She pressed her lips together, shaking her head, and questions burned in Sierra’s chest, threatened to bubble up her throat. How could her mother love her father, after everything he’d done? After everything she and her mother had both endured? And yet Sierra knew she did.

      ‘What can I do, Mamma?’

      Violet drew a ragged breath. ‘Escape. Properly. I would have suggested it earlier, but I thought you loved him. I’ve only wanted your happiness, darling. I hope you can believe that.’

      ‘I do believe it, Mamma.’ Her mother was a weak woman, battered into defeated submission by life’s hardships and Arturo Rocci’s hand. Yet Sierra had never doubted her mother’s love for her.

      Violet pressed her lips together, gave one quick nod. ‘Then you must go, quickly. Tonight.’

      ‘Tonight...?’

      ‘Yes.’ Swiftly, her mother went to her bureau and opened a drawer, reached behind the froth of lingerie to an envelope hidden in the back of the drawer. ‘It’s all I have. I’ve been saving it over the years, in case...’

      ‘But how?’ Numbly, Sierra took the envelope her mother offered her; it was thick with euros.

      ‘Your father gives me housekeeping money every week,’ Violet said. Spots of colour had appeared high on each delicate cheekbone, and Sierra felt a stab of pity. She knew her mother was ashamed of how tied she was to her husband, how firmly under his thumb. ‘I rarely spend it. And so over the years I’ve managed to save. Not much...a thousand euros maybe, at most. But enough to get you from here.’

      Hope and fear blazed within her, each as strong as the other. ‘But where would I go?’ She’d never considered such a thing—a proper escape, unencumbered, independent, truly free. The possibility was intoxicating and yet terrifying; she’d spent her childhood in a villa in the country, her adolescent years at a strict convent school. She had no experience of anything, and she knew it.

      ‘Take the ferry to the mainland, and then the train to Rome. From there to England.’

      ‘England...’ The land of her mother’s birth.

      ‘I have a friend, Mary Bertram,’ Violet whispered. ‘I have not spoken to her in many years, not since...’