‘Did you not even look at the boy Orla’s holding?’ she snarled. ‘That’s your nephew.’
‘Of course it is. What better than a beautiful child to pull on a man’s heartstrings and charm him into giving you money? I have to say, of all the hustlers who have tried to con me, you, dolcezza, are by far the best.’
Her foot moved. For a moment Dante thought she was going to kick him.
Instead she spun around, grabbed her handbag and pulled her phone out.
In seconds she had it unlocked and was thrusting it in his face.
‘What am I supposed to be looking at?’ he asked drolly.
For someone who had to be a foot shorter than him, she raised herself magnificently. ‘The photos. There must be a hundred of Finn on it and a load of Orla too.’
The coldness in his veins made a sharp return.
‘Take the phone, damn you, and look!’ She grabbed hold of his hand and pressed the phone into it.
A jolt ran through him at the touch of her skin on his, a charge that flowed through them both and had their eyes locking together in mutual shock.
After a pause that went on a beat too long, she moved her hand and stepped to the side, away from him.
Aislin dropped her eyes to the floor and rubbed her hands together, trying to negate the charge flowing through her veins.
Her heart beat so hard its thrum echoed in her ears.
She had not expected that. It had been like those times when she touched something and received a surprise charge of static. But those charges had always been unpleasant, something only a masochist would enjoy. The charge she had felt when touching Dante had been...
Not unpleasant at all.
‘Please, look at it,’ she whispered, summoning the courage to look back at him.
Aislin was not the greatest photographer in the world, and generally managed to chop the top off heads or get a partial thumb over the lens or get a blurry finish. But, however terrible the pictures were in comparison to the one she’d printed off for him, they were documentary proof that she wasn’t lying; that she hadn’t catfished Orla’s identity; that her sister was Dante’s half-sister.
Biologically, Orla was Aislin’s half-sister too, but she had never thought of her as anything other than her whole sister. They’d been raised together, shared a room until Orla had left for university and been true sisters in every sense of the word. They’d protected each other, fought each other, played, loved and hated. No one could wind Aislin up better than Orla could and she knew it was the same for her sister.
Dante’s Adam’s apple moved a number of times before he slowly walked to the dining table and sat on the nearest chair, his focus solely on the photos of the two people she loved most in the world.
Her legs suddenly feeling weak too, she took the seat opposite him, close enough that she could hear him breathe, the deep breaths of someone whose life was in the process of being turned upside down.
Aislin knew that feeling. Orla’s accident, which had resulted in Finn’s premature birth, had turned their world upside down. Life as they knew it had come to a stop that day, three years ago.
She could not help but feel for Dante, trying to imagine what it would feel like to discover a family secret of this magnitude.
It must be shattering.
Her own dad had fathered two more children after his split with her mum but there had been no deception about it, just an awareness that he’d created a new family unit that Aislin was a part of, if somewhat removed from. Her mother, for all her many faults, was no liar. Sometimes Aislin had wished her mum was a liar. It would have saved a lot of angst and heartbreak.
‘I’m not a hustler,’ she said softly after a good two minutes that felt more like two hours had passed, the only sound Dante’s breaths and the swipe of his thumb against the screen of her phone. ‘Orla is as much your sister as she is mine and Finn is as much your nephew too. I know she’ll be happy to take a DNA test if you think it necessary.’
More silence fell until he came to a photo that made him peer more closely. Then he turned the phone to her. ‘Why is he in hospital? What are those things on his head?’
She looked at her darling nephew, smiling in his hospital bed. ‘That was taken six months ago when he went for an EEG.’
‘What’s that?’
‘It measures brainwaves. He was born prematurely and has cerebral palsy. One of the side effects of that, which he has since been diagnosed with, is severe epilepsy. It’s the reason Orla didn’t come to Sicily herself—she’s terrified to leave him. Finn’s condition is the reason she wants a share of the inheritance. She honestly is not being greedy. She just wants a home he can be safe in.’ She was silent for a moment before adding, ‘That’s all I want for him too. I’m sorry for breaking into your cottage. Honestly, I’m not normally one for criminal behaviour, but we’re desperate. Please, Dante, Finn is your nephew. We need your help.’
Dante expelled a long breath and put the phone on the table, then dropped his pounding head and kneaded his fingers into the back of his skull.
He felt sick.
If the evidence was to be believed—and, no matter how hard he strove to find a new angle to disprove it, the evidence appeared compelling—he had a sister and a nephew. A sick nephew.
Another wave of nausea ripped through him.
His father had lied to him.
He thought back to Orla’s date of birth. He would have been seven when she’d been born. His mother had divorced his father when he was seven.
Did his mother know he had a sister? Had she conspired to keep it secret too?
So many thoughts crowded in his head but stronger than all of them was the image of the tiny boy, his nephew, lying on that hospital bed, hooked to a machine via a dozen tubes stuck to his head.
‘How old is he?’
‘A month shy of three.’
He didn’t want to hear the sympathy now ringing from the soft Irish brogue. He could feel it too, radiating from her.
This woman felt sorry for him?
She didn’t know him. All they shared was a sister. And a sick nephew.
He muttered a curse.
He raised his head and looked Aislin square in the eye.
Yes, there was compassion in the reflected stare, but also a healthy wariness.
He steepled his fingers across the bridge of his nose and thought hard, pushing aside the emotions crowding him, sharpening his wits and clearing his mind.
He had a business deal to salvage with the D’Amores before he could begin to think about this, never mind deal with it. The clock was ticking. Five days to salvage the biggest deal of his life. Unless he could convince Riccardo that his own playboy days were behind him and prove his parents’ faults were not his, then the deal for the exclusivity agreement would be lost for good. On Monday Riccardo intended to sign it with Dante’s biggest rival.
One lesson he had learned at a young age was that nothing must come before business. His father had allowed emotions and addiction to take first place and had lost everything for it.
Yet still that image of the boy, his nephew, stayed lodged in the forefront of his mind, and as he stared into the grey eyes of this woman who had just told him his entire life had been a lie, the kernel of an idea flared.
He swept his eyes again over the curvy body and imagined it dressed in expensive couture, and the hair whose colour he still couldn’t determine beautifully styled.
Aislin