“It is not for me.” Cesare rose to his feet. “It is for your mother.”
Nick burst out laughing. “That’s good. That’s great! ‘Do it for your mother.’ Right. As if Mama wants to invest in an Italian vineyard.” Nick’s laughter stopped abruptly. “But it’s not going to work, so if you’re done—”
“There are things you do not know about your mother and me, Nicolo.”
“Damned right, I don’t. For starters, what in hell possessed her to marry you?”
“She married me for the same reason I married her.” Cesare’s gruff voice softened. “For love.”
“Oh, sure,” Nick said sarcastically. “You and she—”
“We eloped. Did you know that? She was betrothed to the wealthiest man in our village.”
Nick couldn’t keep his surprise from showing. Cesare saw it and nodded with satisfaction.
“That man is the father of Rafe’s wife, Chiara.”
“Chiara’s father? My mother was engaged to…?”
“Your brother knows. He kept the information to himself, as is proper. Sì, Sofia and I eloped.” Cesare’s expression softened. “We fled to Tuscany.”
Nick was still working on the fact that his mother had run away with his father, but he managed to ask the obvious question.
“Why? If you were both Sicilian…”
“Tuscany is beautiful, not harsh like Sicily but soft and golden. There are those in Italy who think Tuscany is the heart of our people’s culture while Sicily and Sicilians…” The don shrugged. “What matters is that it was your mother’s dream.”
Nick felt the story drawing him in.
“Then, why did you emigrate to America?”
A small tic danced under Cesare’s left eye.
“I had no skills other than those I acquired as a boy,” he said in a low voice, “skills that had a use in Sicily. And here, in this country, as well. I knew this, you see, just as I knew that if I wanted to give your mother more than a life of poverty—”
Nick leaned over the desk and slammed his hands on either arm of his father’s chair. “How dare you use my mother as an excuse for the things you’ve done!”
“I have done what I have done,” Cesare said flatly. “The decisions were mine and I offer no apologies or excuses.” His tone softened. “But if I could give Sofia this—this bit of Tuscan soil, this only thing she ever asked of me—”
“It’s a hell of a story,” Nick said coldly, “I’ll grant you that.”
But was it true? The only way to know was to ask his mother, and there wasn’t a way in hell he was about to do that.
What it came down to was simple. Cesare might be using him…but so what? A couple of days out of his life was all it would take.
“Okay,” Nick snapped. “I’ll give you two days. That’s it. Two days in Tuscany. Then I head home.”
Cesare held out the manila envelope. “Everything you need is here, Nicolo. Mille grazie.”
“Don’t thank me. Thank your wife for having eloped with a man unworthy of her forty years ago.”
Nick took the envelope, turned on his heel and walked out.
“Two days, Alessia,” Prince Vittorio Antoninni said. “That is all I ask.”
Alessia Antoninni kept her gaze on the moonlit grape vines that stretched toward the softly rolling Tuscan hills. It was fall and the vines, long since stripped of their fruit, seemed lifeless.
“I told you, Papa, I have work waiting for me in Rome.”
“Work,” the prince scoffed. “Is that what you call running around with celebrities?”
Alessia looked at her father. They stood on the verandah that spilled from the rear of the centuries-old villa that was her ancestral home.
“I work for a public relations firm,” she said evenly. “I do not ‘run around,’ I deal with clients.”
“Which means that handling public relations for your very own father should take you no effort at all.”
“It is not a matter of effort. It is a matter of time. I don’t have any.”
“Perhaps what you do not have is the wish to be a dutiful daughter.”
There were endless answers to that but the hour was late. Alessia decided to let the gauntlet lie where her father had thrown it.
“You should not have agreed to a visit from this American if you knew you would not be available for it.”
“How many times must I explain? Something’s come up. I cannot be here for Signore Orsini’s visit and it would be impolite to cancel it.”
“You mean, it would be dangerous to disappoint a gangster.”
“Cesare Orsini is a businessman. Why believe the lies of the tabloid press?”
“Your staff can handle things. Your accountants, your secretary—”
“And what of the dinner party I arranged?” The prince raised an eyebrow. “Would you have my housekeeper assume the role of hostess?”
“I have not been your hostess for years. Let your mistress play the part. She’s done it before.”
“Signore Orsini was born in this country.”
“He was born in Sicily,” Alessia said, with all the disdain of a Tuscan aristocrat.
“And Sicilians often cling to the old ways. Being entertained by my mistress might offend him.” The prince’s eyes turned cool. “Did you expect me to deny that I have a mistress? You know of your mother’s condition.”
Alessia looked at him in disbelief. “My mother is in a sanatorio!”
“Indeed.” The prince paused. “A very expensive sanatorio.”
Something in her father’s tone sent a chill down Alessia’s spine. “What are you saying?”
The prince sighed. “Without an infusion of capital, I am afraid I will have to make some difficult choices. About your mother and the sanatorio.”
“There are no choices.” Alessia could feel her heart pounding. “There is the sanatorio, or there is the public hospital.”
“As you say, my dear. There is the one—or there is the other.”
Alessia shuddered. She knew he meant it. Her father was a man with no heart.
“I see the condemnation in your eyes, daughter, but I will not lose what has been in our family for five centuries.”
“You should have thought of that before you brought the vineyard to the edge of bankruptcy.”
The prince made an impatient gesture. “Will you do as I ask or not?”
Was there a choice? Alessia thought bitterly.
“Two days,” she said. “That is all I can give you.”
“Grazie, bella mia.”
“A blackmailer does not thank the person he blackmails, Papa.”
It wasn’t much of a rejoinder, she thought as she went into the villa, to the room that had once been hers, but it would have to do.
Chapter Two
THERE was