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The don’s tone was arrogant. It made Rafe bristle.
“I’m not asking you to accept it,” he said sharply, and turned to Chiara. “I shouldn’t have kissed you. If I frightened you, I’m sorry.”
“Perhaps you would care to explain how you managed to meet with my daughter before you met with me.”
Perhaps he would, Rafe thought, but he’d be damned if he’d stand here and admit he’d almost been bested by a slip of a girl and an old man. Besides, that part of the story belonged to Cordiano’s daughter, he thought grimly, and looked at her again. But she locked her hands together in her lap, bent her head and studied them as if she had no part in this conversation.
The hell with that.
“Your turn, signorina,” Rafe said coldly.
Chiara felt her heart thump. The American was right.
This was the time for her to say, “You have it wrong, Papa. This man didn’t ‘meet’ me, not the way you make it sound. I stopped him on the road and tried to scare him away.”
What a joke!
Instead of scaring him away, she’d brought him straight to San Giuseppe. And she couldn’t explain that, not without telling her father everything, and that meant she’d have to tell him about Enzo.
No matter what the consequences, exposing Enzo’s part in the mess would be fatal.
She knew her father well. He would banish Enzo from San Giuseppe, the place where the old man had spent his entire life. Or—her heart banged into her throat—or Enzo could suffer an unfortunate accident, a phrase she’d heard her father use in the past.
She was not supposed to know such things, but she did. When she was little, her father would say that Gio or Aldo or Emilio had left his employ but by the time she was twelve, she’d figured it out.
No one “left” the don. They had accidents or vanished, and their names were never mentioned again.
She could not risk having such a thing happen to Enzo. And yet if she didn’t come up with something, who knew what her father might do to Rafe Orsini? Not that she cared about him, but she surely didn’t want his “accident” on her conscience.
“Well? I am waiting.”
Her father wasn’t talking to her; he was glaring at Raffaele Orsini…but she would reply. She would make up the story as she went along and pray the American would not correct her version.
“Papa. Signor Orsini and I met when I—when I—”
“Silence!” her father roared. “This does not concern you. Signor Orsini? I demand an explanation.”
“Demand?” Rafe said softly.
“Indeed. I am waiting for you to explain your actions.”
Her father’s face was like stone. Chiara had seen men cower from that face. Orsini, for all his studied toughness, surely would do the same. That patina of arrogant masculinity would crumble and he’d tell her father the entire story.
“I don’t explain myself to anyone,” the American said coldly.
Her father stiffened. “You came here to beg my forgiveness for an insult half a century old. Instead, you insult me all over again.”
“I don’t beg, either. I offered you my father’s apology, and I apologized to your daughter. As far as I’m concerned, that ends our business.”
Chiara held her breath. The room seemed locked in stillness, and then her father’s lips curved in what was supposed to be a smile. But it was not; she knew it.
Still, what he said next surprised her.
“Very well. You are free to leave.”
The American nodded. He started for the door as her father strode toward her.
“On your feet,” he snarled.
Raffaele Orsini had already opened the door, but he paused and turned around at her father’s words.
“Let’s be clear about something, Cordiano. What happened—that I kissed your daughter—wasn’t her fault.”
“What you say has no meaning here. Now, get out. Chiara. Stand up.”
Chiara rose slowly to her feet. Her father’s face was a study in fury. She knew he would have hurt her if she were a man, but some old-world sense of morality had always kept him from striking her.
Still, he would not let what had happened pass. Raffaele Orsini could insist that the kiss had not been her fault until the end of eternity. Her father would never agree. A woman was supposed to defend her honor to her last breath.
She had not.
Someone had to pay for the supposed insult her father had suffered and who else could that someone be, if not her?
Her father’s eyes fixed on hers. “Giglio!” he barked.
The capo must have been waiting just outside. He stepped quickly into the room.
“Si, Don Cordiano?”
“Did you hear everything?”
