Free One Last Night by Melanie Milburne

horrific and tragic time, but Giovanna had pointedly clung to her sons and Maya had felt increasingly shut out. How could a new daughter-in-law offer comfort to that depth of grief? In the end she had stayed in the background, doing what she could when she could, hoping she wasn't inadvertently making things worse.
    Maya's failure to maintain a pregnancy past six weeks had at one point the following year prompted Giovanna to mention how she had delivered three healthy sons and a daughter at regular intervals, the subtext being: what the hell was wrong with Maya for not being able to do the same? Maya had put it down to her mother-in-law's ongoing grief. Giovanna rarely left the family villa and the doctor had even prescribed some antidepressant medication to see if that would help.
    No one in the Sabbatini family, apart from Salvatore, had ever spoken about the death of baby Chiara all those years ago.
    Maya had learned from Salvatore how Giorgio had been the one to find his sister lying cold and lifeless in her crib. He had been only six years old.
    Not much more than a baby himself, certainly far too young to cope with such a loss.
    When she had tried to talk to Giorgio about it after that distressing episode with his mother, as usual, he'd refused to discuss it, other than this time to say it belonged in the past and his mother was still grieving and Maya should have more sensitivity and patience.
    Maya had been stung by his blocking attitude to more intimate communication. She saw it as a sign of what was essentially wrong with their relationship. He did not confide in her. He had never confided in her. He kept things to himself; he never showed any sign of vulnerability.
    Not even when he came home from Switzerland to find her note propped up on the desk in his study had he reacted as she had secretly hoped he would. He had tracked her down within a day or two and informed her he would get the paperwork regarding the separation of assets in order.
    He'd spoken coldly and impersonally, as if he was discussing a legal issue with a business opponent. He'd shown no anger, no emotion at all, in fact. He had left within five minutes, barely even stopping long enough to pat Gonzo.
    Maya had realised then how hopeless it all was; she had been right from the beginning. They were too different, their worlds too disparate. Just like Gonzo, she was a penniless, abandoned orphan with indiscriminate breeding. Giorgio belonged to a large extended blue-blooded family where money and wealth and privilege were never questioned.
    The door opened downstairs and Maya quickly slipped into her bed, pulling the covers up to her chin. She snapped off the lamp, even though she would have loved to continue reading the book she had by the bedside. She found it almost impossible to sleep without reading for a few minutes. She closed her eyes, barely able to breathe, waiting to hear those firm foot treads on the stairs.
    But there was nothing.
    She didn't know whether to feel angry or grateful. But then she started to think of Giorgio trying to get comfortable on that wretched little sofa. She could picture him crunched up like a banana folded in half; his back was probably aching by now, his long legs having gone numb from hanging over the end of the sofa arms.
    She turned over and faced the wall, her eyes opening to see the silvery eye of the moon staring back at her. She lay like that for endless minutes, listening for any sound of movement downstairs.
    After a while there were footsteps on the stairs but they weren't Giorgio's. There was a distinctive scratching at the door and a little doggy please-let-me-in whine.
    Maya rolled on her back and groaned. She had been trying to train Gonzo to sleep on his own cushion in the laundry, but he had apparently conveniently forgotten all about his humble beginnings and now, like all the other Sabbatinis, she knew, expected to sleep on one thousand threads of Egyptian cotton every night.
    She threw off the