Nate expelled a breath. Sank into a silence that said this particular conversation was over.
Giovanni sat back in his chair and rested his gaze on the sun, burning its way into the horizon. “I need you to do me a favor. There is a ring that means a great deal to me I would like you to track down. I sold it to a collector years ago when I first came to America. I have no idea where it is or who possesses it. I only have a description I can give you.”
Nate was not surprised by the request. Natalia had mentioned at the gallery all of the Di Sione grandchildren except Alex had been sent on quests around the world to find similar treasures for Giovanni. The trinkets that his grandfather called his Lost Mistresses in the childhood tales he had told his grandchildren were, in fact, real entities his siblings had begun to recover: various pieces of precious jewelry, a Fabergé box and the book of poetry Natalia had found for him in Greece along with a husband in Angelos. What the grandchildren couldn’t figure out was the significance of the pieces to their grandfather.
Nate nodded. “Consider it done. What do these pieces mean to you, if you don’t mind me asking?”
His grandfather’s gaze turned wistful. “I hope someday to be able to tell you that. But first, I need to see them again. The ring is very special to me. I must have it back.”
“And you will send Alex on the last task,” Nate speculated.
“Yes.”
His relationship, or the lack of one, he had with his oldest half brother who ran Di Sione Shipping was volatile and complex. Giovanni had made Alex work his way up the ranks to CEO, starting out at the very bottom loading goods at the shipyards, while in contrast, he had appointed Nate to a desk job straight out of the university education he had provided his grandson—compensation, Nate figured, for his having had so little growing up.
But what ran far deeper than this preferential treatment of Nate at Di Sione Shipping, Nate suspected, was that Alex blamed him for his parents’ death. The night Nate’s mother, his father’s mistress, had shown up on Benito Di Sione’s doorstep, ten-year-old Nate in tow, begging for financial support, had been the night his father had wrapped his car around a tree and killed himself and his wife. There had been a violent argument between the adults prior to the crash, perhaps the precursor to his father’s reckless performance behind the wheel.
“Nathaniel?”
Nate shook his head to clear it of things that could never and would never change. “I’ll begin the search right away. Is there anything else I can do?”
“Know your brothers and sisters,” his grandfather said. “Then I will die a happy man.”
An image of Alex’s young face in the window that night Nate and his mother had stood on his father’s porch begging for assistance filled his head. The confusion written across his brother’s face...
Only Alex had known of Nate’s existence in the years that had followed, yet he had never once revealed his secret—not until Giovanni had fallen ill. If Nate wondered why, when surely the revelation would have changed his own life irrevocably, when sometimes the question burned a hole right through the center of him, the two brothers had never discussed it.
And really, he thought, shaking his head and bringing himself back to the present, what was the point? Nothing could ever alter the circumstances of that night. What fate had thrown at all of them... Some things were just better off left alone.
* * *
Nate put finding Giovanni’s ring at the top of his priority list. He gave the description to the private investigator he used to research the mega-million-dollar deals he made on a daily basis and received a response back within forty-eight hours. The ring had been purchased at auction by a Sicilian family decades ago and was, apparently, not for sale.
A patently incorrect term in Nate’s book. Everything and everyone on the planet were for sale if the price tag was high enough. He simply had to come up with a number at which the family would find his offer too sweet to resist.
Concluding his business in New York, he had dinner with his mother, who complained per usual that he was never home, neglected to mention he was doing an errand for Giovanni because the Di Siones were always a sore spot for her, then flew to Palermo on Wednesday. Not known for wasting an opportunity, he checked into the six-star Hotel Giarruso he had been eyeing for acquisition and scheduled a meeting with the consortium who owned it for later that day.
His first order of business after he’d been welcomed into the luxury two-level suite with a personal check-in was to make himself human again. He stepped under a bruisingly hot shower in the palatial marble bathroom on the upper level and closed his eyes, letting the punishing spray beat down on him. No matter how luxurious the jet, how smooth the ride, he never slept on planes. His PA, Josephine, liked to call it the control freak in him, but the truth was he always slept with one eye open, a habit he’d developed while living in a series of sketchy Bronx apartments he and his mother had rented where bad things could and did happen on a regular basis.
Installing his mother in a luxury apartment with 24/7 security and ensuring she never had to work again should have provided him with some level of peace. Instead, his wary nature persisted. When you’d run errands for a neighborhood enforcer for a couple of years in your misguided youth before your mother straightened you out, you knew danger lurked everywhere, particularly for someone with his money and reputation. A smart man kept his eyes open.
His humanity suitably revived, he stepped out of the shower, sluiced the water from his face and grabbed a towel to dry off. Intent on answering a few urgent emails before a catnap and his meeting, he headed down to the lounge. His brain busy running the numbers the lawyers had given him for the hotel’s value, he didn’t notice the chambermaid bent over the cherrywood bar until he’d taken a couple of steps into the room.
His first impression was that she had the sweetest behind he’d ever seen. Round, firm, shapely buttocks stretched the material of her pewter-colored uniform tight across her hips. Spectacular legs completed the picture. His imagination effortlessly supplemented the rest of the tempting scenario: her face and remaining assets would be equally as luscious.
But what the hell was she doing in his suite?
“Would you mind,” he requested deliberately, taking the final two steps into the lounge, “telling me what you are doing here when I left explicit instructions with the butler not to be disturbed?”
She straightened and turned, all in one wary slow-motion move. His gaze slid over her. Her waist in the dress, which was stylish for a chambermaid, was tiny, cinched in just above those delectable hips. Her ample cleavage strained the buttons of the modest, short-sleeved style, as if she was too abundant to be contained in it. Her glossy dark brown hair was caught up in a tight ponytail, her cheekbones high and defined under the most stunning pair of espresso-brown eyes he’d ever seen.
He’d been wrong in his estimation. She wasn’t just temptingly attractive—she was one of the most beautiful women he’d ever laid eyes on. Exotic in that olive-skinned, perfectly curved Sicilian sense of the word.
His body tightened as biology demanded in the face of such perfection. He imagined one sultry look from those eyes and most men would be on their knees.
Except right now, he noted, those eyes were aimed at him in a wary perusal, tracing their way down to where the towel was slung around his hips. They widened, darkened into giant espresso orbs. His towel had worked its way lower during his trip down the stairs, sitting now on his hip bones. He was giving her an eyeful. A gentleman would remedy that. But he had never been, nor would he ever be, a gentleman.
This was a six-star hotel he was considering purchasing. He had told his private butler he was not to be disturbed. He wasn’t letting it go.
He lifted an eyebrow. “So?”
* * *
Dio mio, but he was beautiful. Mina dragged her gaze up to the American’s