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“I can’t do anything about being your daughter,” Anna said coldly. “And if you need an attorney, you probably have half a dozen on your payroll.”
“This is a personal matter. It is about family. Our family,” her father said. “Your mother, your brothers, your sister and you.”
Not interested, Anna wanted to say, but the truth was Cesare had piqued her curiosity.
What her father was now calling “our family” had never seemed as important to him as his crime family. How could that have changed?
“You have five minutes,” she said after a glance at her watch. “Then I’m out of here.”
Cesare pulled a folder of documents from a drawer and dumped them on the shiny surface of his desk. Most were yellowed with age.
Anna’s curiosity rose another notch.
“Letters, writs, deeds,” he said. “They go back years. Centuries. They belong to your mother. To her family.”
“Wait a minute. My mother? This is about her?”
“Sì. It is about her, and what by right belongs to her.”
“I’m listening,” Anna said, folding her arms.
Her father told her a story of kings and cowards, invaders and peasants. He spoke of centuries-old intrigue, of lies on top of lies, of land that had belonged to her mother’s people until a prince of the House of Valenti stole it from them.
“When?”
Cesare shrugged. “Who knows? I told you, these things go back centuries.”
“When did you get involved?”
“As soon as I learned what had happened.”
“Which was what, exactly?
“The current prince intends to build on your mother’s land.”
“And you learned this how?”
Cesare shrugged again. “I have many contacts in Sicily, Anna.”
Yes. Anna was quite sure he did.
“So what did you do?”
“I contacted him. I told him he has no legal right to do such a thing. He claims that he does.”
“It’s difficult to prove something that happened so long ago.”
“It is difficult to prove something when a prince refuses to admit to it.”
Anna nodded.
“I’m sure you’re right. And it’s an interesting story, Father, but I don’t see how it involves me. You need to contact an Italian law firm. A Sicilian firm. And—”
Her father smiled grimly.
“They are all afraid of the prince. Draco Valenti has enormous wealth and power.”
“And you’re just a poor peasant,” Anna said with a cool smile.
