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“I’m going to go home and pack for a little vacation,” I said with a smile. “I’ll be back, and I’ll certainly call before I place the condo on the market.”
“And what about the beach house you were going to make an offer on?”
“Bree, you dear heart,” I softly laughed. “Remember what I said about being unemployed? You don’t go making offers on dream homes in my situation, okay?”
“Just get the hell out of here,” she said, walking up to me and hugging me. “I swear, I’m the one who needs her mind checked right now, not you.”
“That was going to be the next thing I told you before I left.” I stood back and turned to grab my phone. “Get out and get some of that amazing Malibu sunshine. I love you.”
Within thirty minutes, I returned to my place to pack my bags. I had no idea what I was doing with this crazy idea, but I knew it felt right, and I would follow my instincts.
Chapter Forty-Five
SPENCER
The last thing I expected to do was jump on a jet and come to Italy, but the circumstances demanded it. For years, I’d wondered about my mother’s scheming, and after Gino Trazzi, a former employee of Nonna, contacted me out of the blue, everything came together.
The PI I’d had looking into Heidi hit the jackpot when he came across Gino’s name, and after getting into contact with him, Gino insisted he be the one to tell me what my mother had done.
I wasn’t in Italy for more than half a day before everything started tipping like dominoes. Gino offered to meet at a café, and once he started talking, I knew Heidi was going to prison just like Nat’s father.
Gino was motivated to speak to me because he’d found out my mother hired a man to kill him once she knew a PI was sniffing around, knowing Gino was the only person who could tie her to her crimes. It would’ve only been a matter of time before Gino led the police to Heidi’s doorstep. She would be arrested for fraud, forgery, attempted murder, and a litany of other offenses.
Heidi had known my father’s health was failing before he passed away. She spent the weeks leading up to his death unsuccessfully trying to change his will, having Gino help with the forgery and paying off estate attorneys to look the other way when anyone got suspicious.
She’d tried to divert the entirety of my father’s estate to my siblings and me, with the caveat that she be in control of the estate and how and when we received our inheritances. She didn’t realize until later that our trusts had been set up separately from what we were to inherit from the estate because my father had foreseen this happening. As such, he’d set up an addendum to his will, which left the remainder of the estate—aside from what he’d already set aside for his children—entirely to Nonna. When Heidi found out her whole plan was a failure, she offered Gino half of Nonna’s estate if he would ensure she had an untimely accident resulting in her death. And when Gino refused to commit murder on my mother’s behalf, she inevitably put out a hit on him.
The murderousness of my mother and Nat’s father was so baffling that I couldn’t wrap my mind around it. It would have been laughable if I could even believe it was true. Heidi failed at all her attempts to keep my father’s money, so she was going to murder the only woman who’d ever suffered her treacherous personality. The horrible part was that if Heidi needed money, Nonna would’ve given it.
All those years of her meddling in my personal finances made more sense. She was pissed that my father had given us our own trust fund without her knowledge. She thought she was entitled to it and did whatever she could to pretend she had a say over it.
I sat here, thinking about the look on Heidi’s face when she was arrested, thinking it would’ve felt better than it did to watch her get hauled away in handcuffs. But it didn’t feel good. It felt sad to know she’d wasted her life trying to control money that she didn’t even need, and she lost her ability to have a meaningful relationship with anyone because of it.
I always knew my mother was wretched, but the confirmation of it stung more than I anticipated. Maybe I was a bit raw after hearing Nat’s father say he wouldn’t mind killing his daughter if it meant he got paid and knowing we both had a parent who could be so cruel was almost unbelievable.
I glanced down at my watch. Sunset would be in about twenty minutes, and I looked forward to watching the sun slide behind the mountains surrounding the lake, painting the sky in orange and pink pastels as the aqua-blue water shimmered in the distance.
I could sit on this stone bench, next to this ancient olive tree, for the rest of my fucking life. I would bet my life there wasn’t a more perfect view on Earth.
“Beautiful sunset,” I heard a ghostly, harmonic voice say.
I glanced over to ensure I wasn’t losing my mind and instinctively rose when I saw Nat’s face, glowing and radiant.
“Natalia?” I said.
“In the flesh,” she said with a touch of her well-known sass. “Is it me, or is it more peaceful out here with your mother and my dad behind bars, rotting like the villains they are?”
“It’s not you,” I said, properly nervous. “Why are you here?”
The first dead giveaway that I was tense as fuck was that I had just said something idiotic to a woman who flew across the world to see me. She was here for a reason, and I couldn’t imagine it being bad. How could things get any worse?
“To celebrate your victory over your mother, I guess. I honestly have no idea why I’m here. Maybe it was just a random, crazy idea I had. I feel sort of stupid.”
I eyed her, thinking of how many times I’d imagined our reunion. It didn’t start with me asking why she was here, nor didn’t include her saying she felt stupid.
“I don’t think it was stupid.”
I think I’m fucking stupid, though, because I can’t think of a normal, well-thought response.
