by Rachel Lyndhurst; Carmen Falcone; Ros Clarke; Annie Seaton; Christine Bell
Both girls’ eyes opened wide, their little mouths forming the shape of a pink rosebud.
“You’ve both been so lovely to me.” Lora reached into her bag and pulled out the floral blue and white paper one from the shop. “I want to give you a little present before I…we go away. You’ve been such good girls.”
They tore at the silvery tissue paper and swirly ribbons excitedly and somehow managed to get to the sparkly kernels inside the wrapping at exactly the same time. Bee held hers up to the light from the lamp. “A rainbow!”
Lora stood in front of the little family and didn’t know who to hug first. Perhaps it would be better not to hug at all. “For your pretty charm bracelets.”
“They’re beautiful,” Lorenzo said. “A kind gift. Say ‘thank you’ nicely.”
Bee and Fina scrambled out of bed and hugged Lora around the knees, yelping grazie and shivering with excitement.
“There’s a reason why I chose those for you two lovely girls. Do you want to know why?”
They nodded silently, staring at the shiny scrap of sentimentality between their fingers.
“Well, it’s because a rainbow is a bridge between your dreams and the reality you have traveled along. Never give up on your dreams, keep heading for that bridge, and you’ll get there someday.”
Lorenzo’s jaw became visibly rigid and she saw him swallow deeply before breaking the soft silence. “You should look at your rainbow every day in that case, don’t you think so, Lora?”
She forced a smile in spite of the swell of tears she could feel were going to erupt any minute. “They must do as they like.” Her voice cracked. “Just be happy.” Lora kissed them on the top of their heads and backed out of the room. She felt herself losing control; she couldn’t let any of them see her cry. “Night, night now, darlings. Sleep tight.”
She twisted her body through the half open door and shut it firmly behind her before fisting her knuckles into her mouth and rushing down the two flights of stairs down to the back garden. Hiding from the spotlights that illuminated palms and banana trees, she felt safe enough from prying eyes to let harsh, anguished gasps finally escape. A tear fell from each eye, and the sensation of them trickling down her cheeks made her angry with herself. She’d never asked to be here, to be coerced into the role of a fake fiancée and future stepmother, but she could have taken so much more care with her heart.
A moment or two to compose herself, that was all she needed. She dipped into her bag for a packet of the wet wipes and tissues she’d started carrying again to mop up the twins. A flash of color caught her eye, followed by a soft plop of water. There were terrapins in one of the ornamental ponds of the garden. She thought how cute they looked and then a lizard came to drink.
She should go back inside and show her face shortly. To her relief, the hallway leading in from the garden was quiet, so nobody would notice her sneaking back in, but she tiptoed anyway. Raised voices came from a room to the left, a room she hadn’t been in so she wasn’t sure what it was. There was a crack of light where the door wasn’t completely closed, and the sound of Rosa’s wine-soaked voice boomed out loud and clear. “You should marry her, Lorenzo. In fact, I insist that you do.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Mamma. You’ve had too much to drink, and you know how I feel about getting married again after the last time.”
“Tsh. That was completely different. Ivanka was business—your father’s business, to be precise.”
“And this time? It’s your turn to interfere in my life? I’m thirty-two, I’ve made a lot of money, and I can make my own decisions. Especially when it comes to my private life.”
“Fina and Bee adore her.”
Lora heard the sound of a bottle chinking on a wineglass and then the ring of glass on marble. “They will be heartbroken when they discover you’ve sent her away like a ship in the night, disappearing like a ghost same as their birth mother did.”
Lorenzo’s voice fizzed with exasperation. “It’s nothing like the same. Ivanka walked out on all of us. I tried my best to make our travesty of a marriage work, but she never cared for me, and the feeling was mutual. If it hadn’t been for her obsession with Sergei…”
“If it hadn’t been for her long-term lover, your marriage may have worked?” Rosa let out a sharp laugh. “It was doomed from the start, but that’s your father’s fault entirely.”
“And it’s all over now, something I never want to repeat for my own sake and especially for my daughters.”
There was a silence for a second. “I’ve seen how she looks at you, Lorenzo, and I see a woman in love.”
Lora clasped her hand over her mouth to smother a gasp of shock at Rosa’s words and a prickle of horror at what Lorenzo’s reply might be. But Rosa wasn’t going to keep quiet. “And I’ve watched you, too, mio figlio, and the arm I see around her waist and shoulders is a possessive one. Look me in the eye and tell me you don’t have deep feelings for her, too.”
Lora flinched and took a careful step back as his voice drew nearer to the door. “You’re being ridiculous. I won’t tolerate your insane fantasies any longer, Mamma.”
“You can’t deny you’re sleeping together every night, either, can you? So the sex is clearly hot enough to keep you interested.”
“Basta! Stop it!”
Rosa’s voice softened. “Think about it, Lorenzo. There’s chemistry between you that is undeniable. She would make a perfect mother for those little angels sleeping upstairs, and she may even give you more children. You don’t want to spend the rest of your life alone, believe me; it’s not natural. Think hard about what I’m saying; that’s all I ask.”
Lora heard something like a wooden chair falling on a stone floor. “I don’t want any more children. I also have work to do and places to be,” Lorenzo said. “This subject is closed.”
Lora tiptoed past the door and then ran as quietly and quickly as she possibly could. She had overheard more than enough.
Chapter Fifteen
“You seem tense, Lora.” Lorenzo straightened his tie in the bedroom mirror of their luxury suite in Cyprus. Their eyes met in the glass. “Is everything okay?”
She frowned at his reflection. “You’d be tense faced with the prospect of spending an entire evening in crystal-encrusted, four inch-heeled, designer, strappy, bloody sandals. And be expected to smile, as well.”
“Sorry, but there are certain expectations and standards to be maintained this evening. A lot of important and influential people will be at this party, and it’s important we look the part.”
“The part?”
“Horribly rich and deeply in love.”
“Right.”
“You will be introduced to Grigor Pontecorvo and his lovely wife Raisa at some point.” He adjusted his cufflinks and then flicked his wrists to set his cuffs straight. “Be your most charming self, because he’s the guy I want to wire me a few billion dollars.”
“Just like that? You must be good.”
“Not really.” He smiled. “There are conditions.”
Lora fiddled with an ankle strap. “I should hope so for that amount of money. Care to enlighten me? Or would it mean you would have to kill me afterward?”
“Let me help you with that thing.” He knelt on the floor and took the flimsy strip of leather in his long fingers. “I’m selling him almost everything I own in Italy. Even the refrigerator.”
“Seriously? Everything? Even your beautiful hotels in Sorrento?”
“Apart from the Nebrodi Castle Estate that Mamma mentioned, yes, every square meter, each pebble, the lot.” He tightened the strap but kept his little finger beneath it so it didn’t pull too tight. “That’s why we had to finalize the deal here in the middle of nowhere in the wilds of north Cyprus. If my father and Siro got wind of what I was up to, or some of the other major players in Italy, there would have been…obstacles put in place.”
“It’s nobody’s business but yours and Pontecorvo’s, surely?”
He began work on the other strap. “They don’t want foreigners buying up any more of Italy because they can’t compete anymore. The economy is in bits, my assets are depreciating daily, and God only knows what the politicians will get up to in the coming months and years. Sicily needs fresh investment to bring some balance, to even out the power struggles. Trust me when I say the guys in charge of what happens in Sicily right now are not doing anyone any favors apart from themselves.”
“But if you sell everything, where will you live?”
He laughed, and his eyes sparkled. “Anywhere I like. Somewhere beautiful, somewhere safe and warm. Somewhere a long way from Sicily.”
“But that’s where your roots are, all that tradition and history.”
“And bad memories. And bad blood.”
Lora’s hand flew to her mouth. “But the twins.”
His warm fingers curled around the bones of her ankle. “My daughters, sister, and Mamma are already on a private jet over the Atlantic headed for the Caribbean. They’re completely safe, and I know they will be happy. None of us will be going back to Sicily.”
Lora had an epiphany. “So that’s what the last few weeks have been all about. The traveling about and the carefully managed photo opportunities weren’t just about making our fake engagement look authentic, were they? You’ve been saying good-bye, visiting all the places that held meaning for you for one last time.”
He bit down on his lower lip before answering. “Yes.”
“I find it hard to believe you’re abandoning your country. I thought you Italians, Sicilians, whatever, were fiercely proud of your heritage, even if the nation is in a terrible state.”
“Well, I am abandoning it, and it doesn’t bother me. I’m leaving my country like your mother left hers.”
“She did it for love.”
“So am I.”
Her heart leapt for a moment, because she’d never noticed him use the word love and she still hadn’t, but just the inference that he was capable of it made her feel something she really shouldn’t. A longing for something she could never have from him. “You are?” she said cautiously.
“I would go to the ends of the earth for the people on that jet,” he said, and her thread of hope snapped. “Besides, I was born in Switzerland. Mamma insisted I had some kind of prestigious start and used the legacy her grandmother left her to fund it. Papa was furious because they were broke at the time, or at least he told her they were. It was as if she didn’t want him to claim me totally, her only way of maintaining some control until she brought me back home to Sicily.”
“He didn’t attend the birth?”
He shook his head and smiled. “No way. Nor Mariella and Maria’s. Maria was her twin; she died within hours of them being born eleven weeks early. If they’d been in a Swiss hospital like I was they might have stood a chance, but Papa refused to accept she was going into labor as it was so early. It took too long to get them to the hospital… I was seven years old when all this was happening. One baby gone, the living one with a twisted spine and levels of brain damage they couldn’t initially assess. It was a bad time.”
“That’s so sad. I’m sorry.” Some kind of instinct kicked in that told her there was more going on than she knew with this conversation. “Lorenzo, why are you telling me all this now?”
“Because I want you to know. This has gone beyond a business transaction for me, and I can’t believe it’s not the same for you.”
Lora’s heart melted at the thought that he must consider her at least a friend now if he was sharing such intimate things. She smothered the tiny but persistent seed of thought that was suggesting his feelings could run deeper than that. “Are there no friends you will miss if you leave Sicily completely?”
“Once you have assets over a certain level you don’t have many genuine friends, and I was never allowed to get too close to anybody. My years growing up were dictated by politics and the business. My father is a textbook narcissist, feeding from my achievements and attributing my success to himself. I’ll never feel I am my own man until I shake him off for good. I’ve tried, but in Sicily and Italy it’s almost impossible. All I ever wanted to do was be a fisherman or a farmer or an artist high up in the mountains. Or a baker! Something real, something that made me feel like a human being, not part of some genetic killing machine.”
“But can you simply leave the mafia if you decide you want to? Will they let you?”
“I was never properly part of it, another reason my father was so disappointed with me. I was never much more than a sickened, guilt-ridden observer, but you know what they say about keeping your enemies close.” A long outward breath left him looking tired. “My business interests and insider knowledge gave me enough power to keep the wolves at bay and my hands clean. I’m not scared of that weasel Siro, my father, or any of his pathetic cronies. They are nobody outside their villages and Palermo. They won’t bother me or my family once we’re gone from under their noses.”
Her heart twisted as she realized this outpouring of personal information was a release; she could see it on his face. Whatever anybody might think, the steps he was taking were the right ones for him. Lora let out a long sigh. “My God, all this stuff, it’s almost as if I never knew you.”
“Am I more real to you now?”
“You’re certainly not the Sicilian cliché I met weeks ago, but there are still gaps and unanswered questions.”
“Such as?”
“All your secrecy and paranoia since this began; it isn’t all just about your father and dark forces, is it? The deal had to be kept secret so Ivanka can’t produce any evidence that you’re moving all your funds offshore or wherever it is billionaires stash their money so the law can’t take a slice.”
“Oh no, that’s completely wrong. You’ve been reading too many trashy magazines. Ivanka certainly wants the world to think she’s the wronged ex-wife so she’s not seen in Russian society for the grasping gold-digger she is. There are no outstanding issues between us legally or emotionally. The marriage is over, and she got fifty million and a few Greek islands for her trouble.”
“And you got the girls.”
“I would lay down my life for them, Lora, and, even though I’m probably not making the best job of it, I’m the only one willing to take legal responsibility for them now. I want that responsibility, and not just because Ivanka dumped them. She has all the maternal instinct of an atom bomb and begged me to take them on in spite of Fina being the only link she has with—”
“With?”
He took a deep breath. “I said I wanted you to know everything, so that there are no secrets between us, okay? But what I’m about to tell you stays between us for now. Only Ivanka knows, although I think my mother has her suspicions.”
The back of her neck prickled with anticipation. “I promise, go on.”
“Fina is not my child.”
“Not your child? But they’re twins!”
“You probably won’t have heard of the term heteropaternal superfecundation.”
“Well, you’d be right there. What the hell is it?”
“Ivanka had sex within five days of our wedding night with another man. A Russian ballet star she’d been in love with since they were teenagers. She refused to give him up, even when I found out about it and her father went ballistic. It’s rare, but she managed to conceive non-identical twins. Beatrice is genetically mine, Fina isn’t, but they are both my daughters. I love them equally and will do until the day I die. It’s not their fault their birth mother is a demon.”
He used the word love.
Lora swallowed her astonishment. “But Fina’s real father—”
“Her genetic father never knew about her and was taken out before she was born.”
“Are you suggesting—”
“Somebody cut his brake cables. Could have been the Russian mafia or the Sicilians. Maybe even the Lithuanians, I have no idea. It sure as hell wasn’t me.”
“But you were pr
epared to bring up his baby as your own?”
“She is mine. I’m the only father she’s ever known.”
“Will you tell her when she’s older?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. It’s one of the big things I need to think about in the future, certainly. I don’t want to, though. She’s my little girl.”
Lora felt as if she’d been hit by a bus. All the things he’d been telling her was like pulling off rose petals one by one until they were all gone, leaving raw innards on the end of a stalk. Not as attractive as the original pristine exterior maybe, but revealing. And real. She wanted to reach out to that raw center, to the man beneath the harsh exterior, to the man who loved his daughters more than life itself. To the man she had fallen head over heels in love with but hadn’t even realized it until it was too late. The man she would probably never see again in a day’s time.
“I think we should get to the party.” Lora lowered her voice, not wanting the cracked tone to betray her tortured feelings. “We don’t want to screw it all up for you now.”
“No, that’s the last thing I want.”
…
Lora looked stunning in a silver sequined fishtail gown. Slit to the thigh, glimpses of her long, suntanned thighs drew glances from every man in the room, even the ones over eighty. Being so close to her all day, it was a shock to see her from a distance, and she looked utterly beautiful. Yet Lorenzo’s heart still yearned for the scruffy tomboy in ripped denim shorts and heavy brown boots. She could have been a supermodel with a body like that. He was damaged, she wasn’t, and the thought of her image spread across the world’s tabloids was a short, sharp shock to his system as he realized what he’d done to her in that way. Her image was generating a lot of money for photographers and the trash print media already. She didn’t realize the extent, and now he felt fiercely possessive and angry at the circumstances that had forced his beautiful Lora into the toxic spotlight. It was all his doing, and he would fix that. Somehow, he’d make it better.
“You haven’t taken your eyes off your fiancée all evening.” Grigor Pontecorvo appeared at his shoulder and topped up Lorenzo’s glass with Cristal Brut champagne. “I don’t blame you; she’s divine.”
