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‘No!’ Aurora cried, and it was emphatic. ‘He left it to you!’
‘Yes.’ Nico nodded. ‘But I didn’t even know he owned it until a short while before he died.’
‘Yet you spoke of his plans for it?’
‘I thought they were just nostalgic ramblings about his hometown,’ Nico admitted. ‘And my father certainly never told me about it—though when I found out I understood better why he hates me so. He married my mother to get his hands on it.’
Aurora looked at the land she loved and knew so well, but she looked with different eyes now. It was Nico’s.
‘What will you do with it?’
‘I don’t have to do anything. It’s a huge asset and I can keep building on that.’
‘Or sell it to developers?’
‘No,’ Nico said, for he had ruled that option out long ago, even if at times he’d been tempted. And then he said what had long been on his mind. ‘I could restore the monastery.’
‘And make it into what?’
‘A very exclusive, very luxurious hotel.’
Aurora swallowed.
‘Just a few suites…’
‘But how would that make a profit?’
‘I would charge a fortune to stay in my Silibri hotel, and I believe I would get it.’
Aurora heard the steely resolve in his voice and blinked, because businessman Nico was someone she did not know.
She spoke then. ‘It would bring people back to Silibri…’
‘It would,’ Nico said, and then he made sure he crushed that last kernel of hope. ‘But not me. At least not permanently.’
‘I get it, Nico.’
She did.
Nico would not be returning to Silibri to live.
He looked at the ruins, and then he looked to the shell of an old stone cottage, and vowed it would be the first thing that was restored. Yes, he would be back to see his father, but there would be no reason to spend another night in the Messina house.
Nico would not do that to Aurora.
And finally, after years of indecision over the land, his decision was made.
He would not marry Aurora.
But he would take care of her this way.
