ALISTAIR

Max picks me up at the airport, looking as bedraggled as I feel. The first thing out of my mouth is to ask if he found Chiara.

“Yes. She took my car, and I finally remembered it has a GPS tracking system. She drove all the way to our family’s villa.”

“She’s in Tuscany? I wish I had known. I would have flown straight there.”

“It’s only three hours by car. Here, I got you a rental.”

“You’re not coming?”

Max shakes his head. “No. I’m needed here. My mother is…. Well, I’d better stick around.”

“I’m sorry about your uncle.”

Chiara’s cousin looks out in the distance. “Yeah, me too. Chiara was the one who found him. She—Dio santo—she was standing right outside his office when she heard the gunshot.”

“Jesus.” I rub my face, worry squeezing my heart in a merciless vise.

“Come on. I’ll take you to the car. The sooner you get to her, the better.”

Max got me a sports car. Maybe it’s his hint that I should put the pedal to the metal.

It takes me a while to get out of the city, but once I hit the highway, I ignore the speed limit, praying I won’t be stopped by the Italian police. I make the trip in two hours instead of three.

I’m about ten minutes from Villa Moretti when I spot a lonely Vespa parked on the side of the road. Pain twists my gut, and I can’t draw air in. I recognize the spot. It’s where I got my flat tire. I park the rental behind the Vespa and jump out. I’m about to call Chiara’s name when I see her lying against a tree, unmoving.

No. No. No.

“Chiara,” I say as I kneel next to her and shake her shoulder lightly. When she blinks her eyes open, a wave of relief washes over me.

She turns her face to mine, her gaze confused. “Alistair? Is it really you?”

I lift her up, bringing her to my lap and cradling her like a baby. “Yes, my love. I’m here.”

She curls her hands in my shirt, burying her face against my chest. Her entire body is shaking as she cries. I kiss the top of her head, holding her tighter.

“He’s gone. I couldn’t save him,” she says between hiccups.

“I’m so sorry, Chiara.”

“If I had gotten home a minute earlier, he’d still be alive.”

“No, you can’t think like that. What happened is not your fault.”

She cries harder, and I can’t do anything besides let her. It kills me though. I wish I could take away her pain and guilt.

A few minutes pass before she speaks again.

“Then my mother came in and destroyed me.”

Fuck that woman. I don’t know what I’ll do when I come face-to-face with her again. I can’t understand how she can torture her own daughter like that.

“Come on. Let’s get out of here.”

I carry Chiara back to the car. I’ll deal with the Vespa later. When I place her in the seat, she doesn’t look at me, just stares at the road ahead, listless. Not knowing where else to go, I drive back to the villa. It’s a silent and heavy ten-minute ride. She’s no longer crying, but her expression is one of desolation. I don’t know what her mother told her, but it must have been something awful.

As soon as I park in front of the house, Chiara gets out of the car. She only takes a couple of steps in the direction of the front door before freezing.

I touch her lower back and pinch her chin to turn her face to mine. “Goldi, please tell me what I can do.”

“Kiss me, Alistair. Just kiss me.”

I capture her face between my hands and bring our lips together. I taste the saltiness of tears on her lips, and there’s nothing I want more than to make her forget, if only for a moment, the sadness that’s crushing her heart.

Her arms go around my neck as our kiss turns into a clash of tongues and teeth. I lift her up by the waist, and she immediately wraps her legs around my hips. The skirt of her dress hikes up, and I move my hands so her sweet ass fills my palms. It wasn’t my intention to sex Chiara up, but if that’s what she needs, I won’t object.

I stride into the house, and between kisses, I ask her where to go. She points at the hallway on the right, and I immediately guess where she wants me to take her: to the room where she caught me half naked.

Placing her down on the soft mattress, I make quick work of removing my clothes. Chiara just leans on her elbows and watches me with heavy-lidded eyes. Standing completely naked in front of her and sporting the mother of all boners, I wait for her signal. She licks her lips, then slowly pulls her dress off, revealing simple black lingerie. My mouth waters, and I lose the little restraint I had left. Like a starved wild animal, I pounce, fusing my lips with hers again as I cover her body with mine. She parts her legs for me, and I pump my hips, rubbing my erection against her already soaked panties.

“Alistair, I need you inside me right now.”

Letting go of her mouth, I lean back so I can roll her panties down her legs. I would love a taste of her sweet pussy, but that can wait. I can’t resist playing a little with her tits though. I open the front clasp and cover one hard nipple with my mouth before she can protest. While I’m busy sucking and kissing one, I tease the other with my hand.

Chiara’s fingers are in my hair, pulling at the short strands. She doesn’t let me play with her breasts for too long before she urges me to fuck her already.

“As you wish, Goldi.”

I’m inside her with a hard thrust, sheathing myself in her tight heat with ease. Chiara hooks her legs behind my ass, and I ram into her harder and harder with each push. I’m ready to explode, but I hold my release off for as long as I can. My balls are tight as a tendril of pleasure curls around my spine.

Chiara’s long nails scratch my back when her body finally shatters under mine. I lose the fight, grunting as I fill her with my release. Even after the tremors are gone, I keep pumping because she feels too damn good.

She unhooks her legs from behind me, making me stop. I lean back so I can stare at the most beautiful woman on the planet. Her sad eyes stare back at me, and in that moment, I make a vow to spend the rest of my life making sure I don’t see that glint in her gaze again.

48

Chiara

I stretch out on the comfy bed, and Alistair’s arm around my belly holds me tighter. I experience two seconds of bliss before the reality of what happened yesterday barrels down on me, annihilating my bubble of happiness. My chest becomes tight, and the urge to cry renews. But I fight the tears because crying won’t change the fact that my father is dead.

“Good morning, my love,” Alistair whispers in my ear.

I focus on him, on his voice, on his warmth as I fight the sadness that wants to drag me down. He came to Italy even though his life is also falling apart. He dropped everything for me, and that means more than a thousand love declarations. I don’t know how he found me, but he did, and I’ll never be able to thank him enough.

“Good morning,” I reply.