Kate hummed as she stirred the pasta sauce.

The nightmare of the previous evening seemed like a world away.

Her day had been busy, and now, she was with Benedetto. Or she would be soon. Her eyes lifted to the clock on the microwave. He had said he’d be back after seven, and that was only a few minutes away.

Her skin dusted with goose bumps.

The anticipation in itself was delightful. How she craved him! How she longed to wrap her arms around him and feel his warmth. To see his eyes smile at her, to see his body respond to hers.

The smile was etched on her features as she added a dash of pepper and then turned the heat off. The water was boiling, ready for pasta to be added, but she wouldn’t do that until they were ready to eat. She put a lid on the saucepan and turned it to a low simmer.

Kate hadn’t heard the door bell before; it rang through the mansion with a rather imperious, electronic insistence. Her eyes lifted to the microwave once more. Who would be calling at this hour? And should she answer it? It was unlikely to be a delivery. Perhaps someone door knocking for a charity? She really had no place, and yet the door buzzed again and on instinct she moved through the downstairs, towards the enormous timber entrance.

She pulled it inwards without pausing to wonder if she was being foolish.

And stared at the past, as though her nightmare had conjured it into reality.

Had she done just that? Was he a figment of her imagination?

No.

He smelled the same and it set off a visceral reaction in her gut. Fear, so real it transformed her body into an instrument of pure sensation, sledged down her spine.

“Dad.” She swallowed. How long since she’d seen him? Since she’d said his name? What was he doing there? How did he know where she was? A frown drew her eyes closer. Or did he know Benedetto? Was this some horrifying coincidence? Was he here to see the man she’d fallen in love with?

“Katherine,” he snapped, pushing past her and into Benedetto’s home. “So, it’s true.”

“What’s true?”

“What the hell did you hope to achieve with this?” He spun around, and he was so close to her that she flinched. The reaction mortified her. Damn it, she’d grown up since she’d last seen him. She would not let him cower her.

“With what?” Her voice shook. She was terrified, regardless of what she wished to feel.

“You’re sleeping with this bastard. Did you know he was using you? Are you using him? Did you think this was a way to hurt me more than you already have?”

Her mind was reeling. Nothing made sense. “What … I don’t know why you’re here …”

Augustine stared at her for a long, silent minute, and then he grabbed her wrist. A scream died in her mouth. She had learned not to scream, for it only made it worse. She bit into the sides of her tongue, and stared at him with silent, catatonic panic.

“This.” He hissed. Whisky was putrid on his fat tongue. He held the phone before her eyes but it took a moment for her vision to focus. Fear was making everything watery.

Your daughter is lovely. And then, the photograph of her that Benedetto had taken. It was as though she’d been smacked in the solar plexus. She tried to pull her hand free; she couldn’t bear to be touched by him. But he was still so terrifyingly strong. She remembered the way his fingers had been able to press into her neck and stop her from breathing. So easily, as though he was kneading dough.

“This is a mistake,” she said haltingly, her body so flooded by terror that she felt like she might collapse to the ground at any moment.

“You bet your arse it is. I did not raise you for this. My God, Katherine, you disappeared for four years and now I find you’re living with this asshole? What the hell?”

“I’m not living with him,” she said softly. Her wrist was hurting, but she tried not to let him see that. Another lesson she’d learned over time – he enjoyed seeing her flinch. He liked wounding her. That was part of the control for him.

“You got that right. We’re leaving.”

The surge of certainty was powerful. If she left with him, she’d never be safe again. She’d escaped once. She couldn’t go back to a life in his orbit. But how could she break the lifetime habit she had of submitting to him? Of choosing the path least likely to inflame?

Benedetto.

He’d be home soon.

Whatever else he’d done, she knew he would never let Augustine hurt her. Nor would he let Augustine take her against her will.

“I need to grab a few things,” she said, playing for time.

But Augustine was smart. Too smart. He reached up and wrapped his fingers in her hair, close to her scalp, then pulled hard. It jerked her neck back. “Get out of his house, now. I will not let him have you.”

Kate sobbed. The pain was blinding. “Please don’t,” she said softly.

“He’s using you. Do you know that? He’s using you because he’s obsessed with punishing me. And you’re letting him. You’re a dumb bitch, Katherine, but I didn’t know you were so completely stupid.”

“Don’t,” she tried pull her head up but he yanked on it again.

“What the hell is going on here?” Benedetto’s voice came to her as if carried by the wings of angels. Tears were running down her cheeks. She knew that one way or another she would be saved from Augustine, and that was all she could think of. Beyond that, she would simply cope with things one step at a time.

“I’m only going to say this once: Get your hands off her.”

The silence sparked with caustic rage; it was beyond anything Kate could understand. But Augustine released her, and when she stood, blinking and rubbing the back of her hair to ease the throbbing pain, she could see why. The man she feared with all her heart was no match to the man she’d believed she loved with all her heart.

Physically, they were chalk and cheese. Benedetto could slay Augustine with a single punch, she had no doubt.

Benedetto stared at Kate, but he didn’t touch her.

He had no right. And she was glad. She couldn’t bear to be with either of them. As soon as Augustine was gone, and the coast was clear, she too would leave.

Her heart, so used to being broken and betrayed, switched off from feeling. She wouldn’t process the hurt now.

Survival mattered more.

“You had no right to do this,” Augustine spoke with cold fury.

“Do you think not?”

Kate braced herself against the wall behind her. Her wrist was throbbing.

“She’s nothing to you. Nothing to do with you and me. She is just my daughter.”

“And he was my father,” Benedetto responded with cold fury. “It is done now.” His eyes flashed to Kate. Guilt almost felled him.

“So what? You think this is revenge? You sleep with her and send me a photo? That’s pathetic and it won’t bring him back. Nothing will.” Augustine’s sneer was vile and at another time, Benedetto might have given into the desire to punch it from his face.

But violence did not come naturally to him.

Instead, he moved his body to stand between Augustine and Kate. “Get out of my house.”

“Not without Katherine.”

“She’s Kate now, and she’s staying here.”

“Like hell …”

“Listen, old man. You need to leave before I do something I’ll regret.”

Augustine flexed his fist by his side and Benedetto hoped he would raise it. Then, and only then, might he return the gesture.

“This is not over,” Augustine promised, sending Kate a warning look before stepping out of the house. He slammed the door behind himself and Kate jumped.

The silence hung in the hallway like a thick blanket. As if in slow-motion, Benedetto turned to look at her.

He didn’t recognize the woman. She was terrified. She was shaking. She was either about to pass out or vomit; possibly both. “God, Kate,” he instinctively knew not to touch her. “Come and sit down.” He nodded to the lounge. She shook her head and sunk down to the floor, keeping her back pressed against the wall.

The tiled floor was cold under her bottom; she didn’t notice.

He crouched down opposite her, still not touching her, just looking. Staring. Wondering. Not daring to hope. The silence continued to stretch between them like elastic

“How do you know him?”

His Adam’s Apple bobbed in his chest. She looked back at the floor. Her head was stinging with the kind of pain that she knew would stick around for days.

“My father …”

“I don’t want to talk about your father right now,” she cut across him.

“He’s the reason I know your father,” he promised heavily. “My father was a wonderful man. There is nothing I wouldn’t have done for him.” He grimaced. “But there was a time, in his youth, when he was caught up with the wrong crowd.” He grimaced. “That is not completely accurate. My father was … a long time ago …”

“God, Benedetto,” she snapped, her body still quivering like a feather in a storm. “Get it out.”

He winced. “He was a runner for the mob. Just a small-time part. He took money and delivered it. Nothing impressive. He was just a kid who got caught up in the glamour and wealth.”

“So?” She rubbed her temples.

“He got out when he met my mother. He went underground. He chose a life that was good and pure. He chose a life that he could be proud of.”

She didn’t react. She couldn’t.

“But you don’t leave those guys. You can’t. Eventually, they caught up with him.”

“This is nothing to do with me. Nothing to do with … him.”

“It is, Kate.”

She shivered at his use of her name. “Don’t.”

Don’t what? Don’t address her? Don’t speak to her?

“You sent him that picture of me.” Bile flavoured her lips.

Benedetto was too proud a man to deny it. Besides, what would be the point. “Si.”

She flinched. “Why?”

His voice was gravelly. “Your father is a terrible man.” And now, his fingers tingled with a burning ache to touch her. “He is the worst of humanity. I hate him, Kate. I hate him in a way that terrifies me, for what I could do to him.”

And despite her shock, fear, panic and despair, she gasped at his words. Her eyes beseeched him to continue.

“You … you must know what he is capable of. I wondered, when I first me you, if you understood the depths of his depravity. I still can’t be certain.” His face was ashen. “Did you know, for example, that he took money from the mob? That he took bribes to imprison innocent men? To find against them when no facts could support such a verdict?”

“No,” she shook her head and winced at the slash of pain that radiated from her scalp. “I … don’t believe him capable of that. My father is a servant to justice. If you could only hear the lectures I endured about the importance of upholding the law; respecting authority …”

“Words are cheap,” he spat, forgetting for a moment that it was not her he felt the burning hatred for. “In reality, your father sent my father to prison for a crime more hateful than you can imagine.” He studied her as the words sunk in.

“What crime? When?”

Benedetto shook his head. “Years ago. The rape and violent murder of a young girl.”

Kate gasped. “It’s not true.”

“Of course it is not. It was undoubtedly his former colleagues.” He spat the word with derision. “Looking for a way to punish him for having left the mob, they pinned it on him. A payment to your father saw him locked up for life.” His words were louder and harder than he’d intended. “He deserved so much better. He was the best of men. In contrast to Augustine, my father was good and kind; a man who should have lived out his days in the farmhouse, enjoying the smell of wildflowers and the taste of just-made jam.” He closed his eyes against the pain of injustice.

Kate let his statement digest and slowly little snippets of the past began to knit together. “I think …” She cleared her throat. “I think Connor knew about that. I think he found something out. I mean, he … he said something. I don’t … I can’t remember properly. I know that my father was doing something Connor found utterly reprehensible. I know they argued about it. And I know Connor left because of it.”

Benedetto nodded. A week ago, this information would have sent him into a tailspin. He would have hit the speed dial button on his phone to speak to his detective in London and get the information he sought. But now?

It was a side plot to the real problems he faced. “Perhaps. Your father’s duplicity was shockingly bold and yet no one ever spoke out against him. I cannot fathom how he ensured that,” Benedetto muttered disapprovingly. “But his skills were evidently beyond compare.”

Kate pressed her head back against the wall and squeezed her eyes shut. Tears dripped down from the corners of each eye. “I am sorry about your father.” The sentence was hollow. “I really am.”

Benedetto crouched onto his knees now, moving closer. “Kate, I have hated your father for a very long time.” Still, he didn’t touch her. He knew she would move away and he couldn’t bear that rejection. “I have hated him in a way that someone like you could never understand. Hatred for him has consumed me.”

She flinched at his words yet she understood them. “And so you used me to get back at him.”

It was such a bare-faced assessment, yet so crudely accurate, that he could only nod.

Her eyes were closed; she didn’t see it.

“Kate, cara, all my dreams came true when I saw you that night.” His throat was thick, his words coated with emotion. “I looked into your eyes and saw him staring back at me. I felt a fierce need to possess you. And to hurt you, yes. God, Kate, when I think back to what I felt and how I wanted … I am appalled.” A muscle jerked in his cheek; his expression was haunted. “I did not know you then. I did not know who you were.”

“Yes you did,” she denied with fierce determination. “You knew I was a person. A woman. A human being. You knew I was someone separate to him. That his acts don’t represent me. And yet still you used me.”

She sucked in a deep, steadying breath. “I can’t believe you took that photo. And do you know what I thought …” Her words were squeezing out of her; they were almost impossible to form. Emotion was sledging across her chest. She squeezed her eyes closed for a moment and then tried again.

“I would never normally let someone photograph me like that. Ever. But you took a photo and I smiled, because I trusted you.” She gripped his face with both hands. “I trusted you. And I don’t trust anyone.” A sob bubbled out of her. She hung her head and dropped her hands. “My father is the worst of men. You’re right. I can’t believe that after the way he raised me I could ever feel for someone what you made me feel. But I did. My God, how stupid I’ve been.”

“Not stupid,” he contradicted, angrier with himself than he’d known he could ever be.

“I fell in love with you, Benedetto. Don’t you get it? I fell in love with you.” She closed her eyes again, her expression anguished. “I fell in love with who I thought you were. Probably the moment we arrived at the farm house. When you took that photo and sent it to my father, I loved you even then.”

“Don’t say that.” His words were a harsh rejection. “You can’t love me.”

“I’ve never known love before,” she said slowly. “So when I felt it, I recognized it instantly for its newness and strangeness.”

She stood slowly. Her body was aching all over, as though she had the flu. “I can’t believe I’ve been such an idiot.”

He watched her for a minute and then pushed to his feet. “I am sorry.”

The words were not ones he used often. “My father killed himself after years of suffering in prison. He turned into a man I barely recognized. And despite the money at my disposal and the power many would consider me to possess, I was unable to help him. I was constrained by the same legal system that had failed him so poorly. I loved him and I let him down.”

She sobbed. “I’m sorry that happened to him. I’m sorry. My father …” The words trailed into nothing.

Benedetto was impatient.  “You defended him last night. You told me he is a good man. Why?”

Her eyes sunk to the floor. “Because I didn’t want him to taint what I shared with you.” Her grimace was pathetic; it made him ache to hold her to his chest. “I didn’t want to give him the power of thought nor time. Those memories are in my past. At least, I thought they were.” She rubbed her wrist and now Benedetto’s eyes dropped to it. He saw the dark marks and swore.

“Cara, let me hold you. I know that this is a God awful mess, but in this moment let me be what you need.”

Another cry escaped her soul. “You’ll never be that.” A noise sounded from somewhere in the apartment and she jumped.

“The kitchen,” he murmured, moving towards it. Belatedly Kate recalled the water she’d left simmering. When they entered, a small amount had bubbled out from under the lid and was flaming the fire of the cooktop. He flicked it off and lifted the pan from the heat and turned to face her. As if for the first time he noted her apron and fought the smile that was tingling on his lips.

“You cooked?”

“Yes.” Her eyes were loaded with pain. Strange now that he didn’t see Augustine in them at all; he saw only Kate. “But it’s my father’s recipe, so I doubt you’ll want to eat it.” She rubbed her hands together and then shook her head. Hopelessness was a pit all around her. “That’s the problem. I am his child. I am his daughter. He is my father. So much of who I am is because of him.” She reached around and untied the apron with fingers that shook. “And you hate him so much. How could I ever have hoped you’d care for me?”

“It is not you, Kate. None of this has anything to do with you.”

She arched her brows. “You don’t think? Cause I feel pretty much in the middle of it all.”

He nodded, but internally he was rejecting everything she thought and felt. “You were just a means to an end at first; a way to hurt him. And as soon as we slept together, I regretted it.”

He had regretted it, and she had been on cloud nine. Grief was rushing over her. “I hate you right now. Do you get that?”

“That is probably for the best. You’ll get over this faster if you hate me.” He propped his hip against the bench. “But you are stuck with me for a while longer, I’m afraid.”

She stared at him in confusion. “Why?”

“You can’t go anywhere. Not now.”

“Wrong. I’m leaving you, I’m leaving my father. I’m getting out of here.”

“Augustine saw you tonight for the first time in years and attacked you. Do you really think anything will lead him to stop? Do you think he’ll let you go because I just kicked him out of my house?”

She opened her mouth to speak but slammed it shut again. Doubts plagued her. “I … he doesn’t … I don’t know.”

“He has powerful friends, Kate. He’s a powerful, connected, completely immoral bastard. And I cannot let you go knowing the kind of danger I have put you in.”

“He hates you, not me. I’m in more danger here with you,” she whispered.

“That’s a lie, and you know it. He has hurt you. Again and again. How many times did he hit you? How many times did he pull you by your hair as I saw him do just now?”

“Screw you,” she shouted, holding her hands up to her ears. “Just stop it!”

“Your inability to talk about it does not change the reality of this situation,” he muttered grimly. “Sit down.” He nodded to a stool and Kate stared at it as though funnel webs had started crawling up the legs.

“I want to go.”

“Go where?” He pushed, his eyes loaded with sorrow as he studied her crestfallen face.

Kate shook her head. She was numb. “Anywhere. Benedetto … this is … this is all I was to you?”

He shook his head slowly and now, finally, he put his hands on her shoulders. When she might have flinched away from him, he rubbed her arms, until he reached her hands. He grasped them in his and squeezed her fingers. “You have seen how my father lived. You have felt the beauty of the life he created. You can imagine what prison was like for him.”

Kate flinched and pulled out of his grip, taking a vital step away from him. “Awful. I can understand how that must have been terrible for him.” She frowned and dipped her head forward. “My dad wouldn’t … I can’t believe he’s capable of this.”

Benedetto felt anger surge in him; he quelled it for Kate’s sake. She had seen enough anger. She had been on the receiving end of more vitriol than she ever should have experienced.

“I know it to be fact, Kate. But right now, I do not think his actions to my father are what matter.”

“Of course they matter,” she disputed harshly. “They’re the reason we’re here. The only reason we met.” She stared up at him, stricken. “How did you find me? How did you know I would be at the charity event?”

“I didn’t. It was sheer luck, if you can believe it.”

Now, she sunk into the chair, and the shaking was almost unbearable. Her knees knocked together violently. “Not luck for me,” she muttered, pressing her palms into her eyes. It drew Benedetto’s attention to her wrist and he swore silently. “I wasn’t even meant to be part of it.” Kate’s words were so soft Benedetto almost didn’t catch them.

“No?” He prompted, crossing to the kettle and flicking it to life.

“My boss was sick. She asked me to cover for her.” Kate shook her head. “If she hadn’t …”

“We never would have met,” he concluded grimly. “I was a fool to believe I could do anything that would remove the pain of injustice. Nothing I could ever do to your father would bring my father back, nor change the fact that he lived out his last years in such awful circumstances.”

“No,” she agreed, grief making her feel hollow down to her toes.

“I knew you were starting to care for me, Kate. I did not want that.” He shook his head. “I knew that we could never be more than this. That one day it would all implode.” He added a tea bag to a mug, then filled it with water.

Kate nodded. His words were calm, measured and accurate. And yet her heart was splintering at his bald admission that this was the end of the road for them. Did she still want him? Love him? Despite what he’d done?

He placed the tea cup on the bench beside her. “I want you to stay with me.”

Her huge eyes flicked to his face and something seared into her when their eyes clashed. An invisible force of emotion; a wave that she couldn’t fight. Her feelings for him were a tsunami, swamping her with their intensity.

“Don’t you see, Ben? Of all the things I fear in life, of all the dangers I see before me, being here with you is by far the worst.” She stood without touching the tea and moved gingerly through the kitchen.

“You cannot seriously be afraid of me?”

Her expression was one of profound sadness. “Benedetto, I love you. Or I love the man I thought I knew.” She swallowed. “I hate what you’ve done. I hate that you did this to me. And I know there can never be a future for us.” She squeezed her eyes shut because she couldn’t bear to look at him. “You would never be able to love me, would you? You would never want to marry me. To agree in front of all of our friends to spend the rest of our lives together?” Her voice shook. “You would never want to have children with me, knowing that my father’s blood would be in their bodies?”

“No.” It was a completely instant revulsion to the very idea, and he regretted the biting word as soon as he’d uttered it. It was a pile of blackened roses, thrown to her feet.

He shook his head. “I cannot say that would have happened for us in any event. I am not interested in marriage, nor love. I am not looking for a person to travel by my side.”

His words were perfectly aimed darts and her heart the bull’s-eye. She nodded but she wondered how she could still be standing.

“I hate that I hurt you. I hate that you’re crying.”

Was she? Kate hadn’t realized.

“I hate that you are standing there, afraid and in pain, and wanting to leave my house and my protection.”

“Your protection?” She whispered thickly. “You did this to me. It’s because of you that he found me.” She squared her shoulders and straightened her spine. “I can’t stay here.”

She thought of her apartment, and wondered if her father knew where she lived? Was it safe?

It was better than being here with Benedetto.

With a decisive nod, she moved away from him. 

“Kate.” The word was torn from his chest; the sight of her walking bravely towards the door was filling him with an electric shock of feelings. He stared at her and waited for her to turn, to stop walking, but she didn’t. She pulled the front door inward and walked out of his home without a backwards glance. It took several minutes for him to realize that she hadn’t been wearing a coat and that it was freezing cold outside. He paced quickly to the door and pulled it inwards. “Kate!” He looked left, then right, and then left again, but Kate had vanished.

She was nowhere to be seen.

It was over.