Serpent Sting. Toni Grant

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СКАЧАТЬ his hand up to briskly rub his face, she knew.

      “Well, she was very interested in you. She watched you all night. You’ve never mentioned her. Was she in another section?”

      Francesca recognised unrequited love when she saw it. There was history between them and it was more than a professional relationship. Her observation of the way they behaved towards each other fanned old insecurities.

      “No, she was in my team,” Sinclair sighed. He remained flat on his back staring at the ceiling. “Any more questions, Detective Salucci?”

      “Yes. I have.” Francesca propped on one elbow, her hand gathering a fist full of bedsheet in the closed area between them.

      “Why didn’t you ever talk about her? Did you have a relationship with her?”

      “Yes. I did,” he answered, as if he was hoping to end the conversation there.

      “When?” Francesca insisted.

      “Months before I met you,” he said, turning to look at her.

      “Were you in a relationship with her when we were at Wild Dog Creek?” she asked slowly unravelling as the stress of being home collided with her fears. Francesca tried to rein in the spiralling emotions. She drew in sharply on the thick air between them, reminding herself to breathe. Her thumb and fingers folded and unfolded a pleat in the bedsheet. She smoothed out the wrinkles to then begin the process again.

      “I finished our relationship at Wild Dog Creek,” Sinclair said truthfully.

      “Is that so? So you were having a relationship with her whilst you were seducing me?” Francesca’s incredulous response was edged in hurt. She’d never lied about Nicholas, even when it was embarrassing to speak of their relationship.

      Sinclair knew every little thing about her. Francesca concluded he would have only kept this relationship quiet if he still had feelings for this Norah woman. Old anxieties needled deeper. Her thoughts escalated. She was suffocating. She cast the bedsheet aside in agitation. Then pulled it up over her body as she sat up, pulling her knees to her chest in self protection and leaning against the bedhead.

      “No, Francesca.” Sinclair moved away. He left the bed, striding towards the window. “Our relationship was technically over …” he said, his back to her.

      “Technically over! You’re unbelievable!” she cut him off, angry at being cheated by him. “That’s such a cop out. My god, I never thought I’d hear you say that!”

      Francesca moved to the middle of the bed, tucking her legs under her bottom and roughly pulling the sheet over her thighs. She faced him.

      “Francesca, if you recall, you …” he couldn’t finish. He was better than that. He would never openly criticise her. She was in the most hopeless place in her life then. It was unfair to now shove it in her face.

      “What? If I recall what? That I’d been with Nicholas in the days before I met you? My list of lovers tallied a string of one-night stands that exceeded your hot dinners? I must have known the family were involved in organised crime. I’d been sleeping with Nicholas for years. How could I not know? Is that what you want to say, Sinclair?”

      She stared at his outline illuminated in the moonlit window. Her shoulders hunched over, heavy in hurt and shame. Francesca wrinkled the sheets in her fingers, clutching at the endless folds of fabric as she fought her insecurities over Nicholas’s son, the Delarno family and her life with Sinclair.

      In the past, she had forced herself to face her demons when Sinclair was on active duty—when he couldn’t witness what that family was doing to her. He’d been home for two years now. It was harder to hide, harder to push down and now suddenly she couldn’t help herself. Francesca lost control.

      “Say it Sinclair. Tell me what you really think,” Francesca continued to goad him. She wanted the fight. She couldn’t stand it any longer. She needed to know he would fight for her. She needed to know once and for all that Sinclair didn’t just settle for second best with her and Archie.

      “I’ll finish it for you. And then I gave birth to his son! A child conceived from an affair between a mafia boss and a cop. Silvio is right. I’m a worthless whore and you couldn’t get out of our relationship. That’s why you stayed,” Francesca continued to wind herself up, speaking in a steady barrage of angry self-flagellation as she slipped into her second language.

      Sinclair understood only a few words of the rapidly spoken Italian, but her meaning was very clear. He’d heard enough.

      “Francesca! Stop! Let go of your torment. I love our son with all my heart. He’s mine in every way but blood. Surely, after all this time you must see that. I don’t know what else I need to do to prove it to you.

      Personally, I don’t give a damn about Delarno. I simply don’t care about that part of your life. The past is the past. We can’t change it. We can only live in the here and now. And to be honest, right at this moment, the only thing I care about is what happens to you every time we come home to Australia. Quite frankly, I’m over it.”

      Sinclair looked at the devastation marking her features in the darkened room. His own face twisted in frustration. She was not the only one with questions.

      “You know, you’re right. This thing that you carry around with you, that you hold so dear. It’s too much. I can’t pretend it doesn’t matter anymore. Maybe it’s time for the third person in our relationship to leave.”

      He glared at the ugly pain splattered across her beautiful face, the tormented guilt that bled inside her. He couldn’t stand it.

      “I’m done. I need some air,” he said, pulling on the discarded clothes hurriedly and finding the door. Not a backward glance as anger drove him to the lift and the bar on the ground floor.

      Francesca quietly watched him leave. Huge drops of silent tears wet the sheet at her lap. She wouldn’t stop him. She couldn’t. As he slammed the door behind him, she sat. And watched. The pain turned a savage blade. Nicholas. Her own father. And now Sinclair.

      Her inability to deal with this guilt had finally pushed him away too. Still she sat silently. Again it was by her hand.

      She swallowed hard and sucked her lips together, biting down into their softness. When had she changed?

      As a cop she had been the first to the fight. The one to take up the most difficult cause and lead the team towards justice. She’d taken on the triad gang of Chi You and won. She’d consolidated the Delarno family links to organised crime. It was her investigation, her insight that’d brought about criminal charges against Silvio.

      With shaking hands, she pushed her fingers along her hot cheeks to hold her head. Eight years ago, when she’d discovered the connection between the Delarno family and the organised crime syndicates, Francesca had gone to the fight. A challenge that had ended in a devastating tragedy she could never foresee. The brutality had scarred her physically and mentally.

      Because of her actions, Silvio had murdered his own son and her dearest father.

      From that day, that terrible day of loss, she’d become a walking, talking frightened shell. A coward.

      Afraid to show strength, she’d turned her back on herself, running from a threat that СКАЧАТЬ