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CHAPTER ONE

STEPPING out of her son’s bedroom, Catherine closed the door just as quietly as she could, then wilted wearily back against it Santo had gone to sleep at last, but she could still hear the heart-wrenching little sniffles that were shaking his five-year-old frame

It really could not go on, she decided heavily The tears and tantru worse each ti her head in the sand in the vague hopes that his probleed to exacerbate the situation

It was ti about it, even if the prospect filled her with untold dread

And if she was going to act, then it had to be now Luisa was due to catch the early co, and if she was to be stopped then it ht, before it caused her mother-in-law too much inconvenience

‘Damn,’ she breathed as she levered herself away from her son’s bedroom door andthrough such a sensitive call was enough to set the tension singing inside her

For what did she say? she asked herself as she stepped into the sitting room and quietly closed that door behind her

The straightforward approach seeical anshere she just picked up the phone and told Luisa bluntly that her grandson was refusing to go back to Naples with her tomorrow and why But that kind of approach did not take into consideration the fragile sensibilities of the recipient Or the backlash of hostility that was going to rebound on her,her the troublemaker

She sighed fretfully, caught a glimpse of herself in theat her own reflection

Good grief, but she looked a h in truth it didn’t particularly surprise her The battles with Santo had been getting worse by the day as this week had drawn to a close Now her face was showing the results of too hts while she lay aorrying about them Her eyes were bruised and her skin looked so pale that if it hadn’t been for the natural flashes of copper firing up her golden hair then she would probably resehost

Not so much of the little, she then mocked herself on an unexpected burst of rueful huht-inch frame Slender—yes, she conceded Too slender for some people’s tastes

Vito’s tastes

The humour died as suddenly as it had erupted, banished by the one person who could turn laughter into bitterness without even having to try

Vittorio Adriano Lucio Giordani—to give hiht Man at the root of her son’s problems

Once she had loved him; now she hated him But then that was surely Vito Man of dynaant to a fault Exquisitely versed in the art of loving Deadly to love

She shuddered, her ar up to wrap around her as if in self-protection as she turned away fro to watch it alter from tired to bitter, which hat it usually did when she let herself think about Vito

Because not only did she hate hi about him He was the skeleton in her past, linked to her present by an invisible thread that went directly froh the heart of their son and then into Vito’s heart

In fact Vito’s only saving grace, in Catherine’s vieas his open adoration of their five-year-old son Now it seeh Vito didn’t know it yet

‘I hate you! And I hate Papà! I don’t want to love you any more!’

She winced painfully as the echo of that angrily emotive cry pierced her like a knife in the chest Santo had meant those words; he had felt them deeply Too deeply for a confused and vulnerable little boy to have to cope with

Which brought her rather neatly back to where she had started when she walked into this roo about Santo’s distress and anger

A point that sent her eyes drifting over to where the telephone sat on the s perfectly innocent when in actual fact it was a time bomb set to explode the moment she so much as touched it