He swung his long legs out of the car, wincing as his muscles protested the long drive in the low-slung machine. He had barely put his foot on the top step of the sweeping column of stairs that led to the villa’s elegant entrance when Alma, the Di Sione family’s longtime housekeeper, opened the door.
“Master Nate,” Alma greeted him, ushering him in. “Signor Giovanni is enjoying the last rays of the sun on the back veranda. He’s been anxiously awaiting your arrival.”
A twinge of guilt stirred low in his gut. He should have made more time for his grandfather, but he had fallen into the trap of thinking Giovanni was invincible like everyone else.
A few pleasantries exchanged with Alma, he set off toward the back of the villa, his footsteps echoing on the gleaming marble floors. He’d first visited this house at eighteen, hunted down by his half brother Alex as the only genetic match for a bone marrow transplant that would save his grandfather’s life—a man Nate had never met.
A vision of his six half siblings perched on the handmade wrought-iron and stone staircase filled his head. They had sat there, lined up like birds on a telephone wire, big eyes inquisitive as Alex had led Nate past them into the salon to meet an ailing Giovanni for the first time.
Orphaned, they had been taken in by his grandfather after Nate’s father, Benito, and his wife, Anna, had been killed in an alcohol-and drug-fueled car crash. A tragedy to be sure but all Nate could remember was the isolation and bitterness his hardened, eighteen-year-old self had felt at the charmed life his half siblings had led while he and his mother had fought to survive.
The family he’d never been privy to as Benito Di Sione’s illegitimate child.
Which was ancient history, Nate told himself as he stepped out onto the veranda with its incomparable views of the sparkling gray-blue sweep of Long Island Sound. He had obliterated that iteration of himself and replaced it with a success story that no one could ignore—not even the aristocrats who loved to snub him.
His grandfather sat in a wooden, high-backed chair, bathed in the dying light of the sun. He turned with that sixth sense of his as Nate approached, a slow smile spreading across his olive-skinned face.
“Nathaniel. I was beginning to think Manhattan had eaten you up whole.”
Nate walked around the chair and stood in front of the man who had come to mean so much to him. A lump formed in his throat at how small, how fragile, his once vital grandfather looked, even more wasted away than their last meeting. And now he knew why.
Giovanni stood and drew him into an embrace. The cancer, his treatments, had robbed his olive skin of its robust glow, turning it a sallow hue. His shoulders felt like skin and bone as Nate closed his fingers around them, his throat thickening with emotion. Despite the very mixed, complex feelings he held toward the Di Sione family, Giovanni had been the self-made, ultrasuccessful, honorable man Nate had modeled himself after in the wake of his father’s failings. In those formative years, when his life could have gone either way with the anger consuming him, his grandfather had been the difference. Had shown him the man he could be.
He drew back, his gaze moving over his grandfather’s ravaged face. “Is there nothing that can be done? Are the doctors sure another transplant won’t help?”
Giovanni nodded and squeezed his shoulder. “They only did the transplant the first time because of my name and health, you know that. It’s my time, Nathaniel. I’ve had more of a life than many could ever dream of having. I’m at peace with it.”
His grandfather sat down and waved him into a chair. Nate took the one opposite him, declining the offer of refreshments from a maid who appeared in the doorway. “I have plans to review when I get back to Manhattan.”
Giovanni told the maid to bring Nate a beer. “You work too much,” he admonished. “Life is for the living, Nathaniel. Who is going to keep you company the day you have made so many billions you can’t hope to spend it all?”
He had already reached that point. For him work, success, was biological, elemental, spurred by a survival instinct that would never rest as long as there was a deal to be made, another building block to be put into place.
“You know I’m not the type to settle down.”
“I wasn’t talking about the lack of a permanent woman in your life,” his grandfather came back wryly, “although that, too, could use some work. I’m talking about you being a workaholic. About you never getting off that jet of yours long enough to breathe fresh air, to register what season it is. You’re so caught up in making money you’re missing the true meaning of life.”
Nate lifted a brow. “Which is?”
“Family. Roots.” His grandfather frowned. “Your nomadic ways, your inability to put a stake in the ground, it won’t fulfill you in the long run. I hope you will realize that before it’s too late.”
“I’m only thirty-five,” Nate pointed out. “And you are as much of a workaholic, Giovanni. It’s our dominant trait. We don’t choose it. It chooses us.”
“I seem to be gaining some perspective given my current situation.” His grandfather’s eyes darkened. “That discipline becomes our vice, Nathaniel, when taken to extreme. I failed your father and, by virtue of that, you, by spending every waking moment building Di Sione Shipping.”
Nate scowled. “He failed himself. He needed to own his vices but he never could.”
“There is truth in that.” Giovanni pinned his gaze on him. “I know you have your demons. I have them, too. Ones that have haunted me every day of my life. But for you, it’s not too late. You have your whole life ahead of you. You have brothers and sisters who care about you, who want to be closer to you, yet you push them away. You want nothing to do with them.”
His jaw hardened. “I flew in for Natalia’s art exhibition.”
“Because you have a soft spot for her.” His grandfather shook his head. “Family should be the rock in your life. What sustains you when the storms of life take over.”
The suspicious glitter in his grandfather’s eyes, the bittersweet note in his voice, made Nate wonder, not for the first time, about the secrets Giovanni had kept from his grandchildren. Why he had left Italy and come to America with only the clothes on his back, never to have contact with his family again.
“We’ve had this discussion,” he told his grandfather, his response coming out rougher than he’d intended. “I have made my peace with my siblings. That has to be enough.”
Giovanni lifted a brow. “Is it?”
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