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His blistering, disdainful treatment of her was really about self-preservation.
Dante had shored up the business himself—anything to get her gold-digging hands away from it. And while he told himself he wanted her on her knees, begging, the deeper truth was that he just wanted her on her knees.
A fast-track divorce had ensued and it had all gone through uncontested, so just over six months after the day he’d first laid eyes on her Mia Hamilton had become Mia Romano.
Naturally, Dante had not attended the wedding.
He had responded to the invitation with a handwritten note, stating that he had always considered marriage to be a pointless institution, and never more so than now.
Neither had his siblings, nor indeed any of Dante’s family, attended.
His mother now lived permanently in Rome, and dear Mia, his stepmother, had her stilettoed heels firmly through the doors of the Tuscan residence.
The family home.
Thank Godhehad taken care of the business.
The only small positive to come from his father’s illness had been that Rafael’s high-profile social life in Rome had been curtailed and as a result Mia had been rather tucked away, no doubt screaming to the hills that the glamour of being Signora Romano had been denied to her.
Yet he could not think of Mia now.
For his father was gone.
‘Thank you for all you did for him,’ Dante said to the doctor, and pressed a tense palm to his forehead when he thought of the unpalatable task ahead. ‘I shall let the family know now.’
Rafael’srealfamily.
When the call had ended, Dante stood for a silent moment, gathering his thoughts.
The wheels would soon be set in motion. His father had planned his own funeral with the same care that had seen that first vineyard and property on a Tuscan hillside grow into the vast empire it now was.
And, God knew, despite their differences at times, Dante would miss him very much.
‘Sarah...’ he pressed the intercom ‘...would you ask Stefano and Ariana to come into my office, please?’
‘Of course.’
‘And Luigi,’ he added.
The twins were twenty-five to Dante’s thirty-two.
Stefano was inward with his emotions and stood silent and grey as Dante imparted the sad news. Ariana, the absolute apple of her father’s eye, had no such reserve, and sobbed noisily.
Luigi sat with his head in his hands, stunned at the loss of his older brother.
‘We need to go and tell Mamma,’ Dante said to his siblings, as he offered Luigi use of his helicopter to take him home to Luctano to tell his wife.
It was wretched, Dante thought as he headed back into the boardroom, that the board would know what had happened before Mamma, but Ariana’s cries might have reached them, and the three of them leaving together would speak on its own.
He looked down at the solemn faces. Some were already crying because, though Rafael Romano had been an arduous boss, he had also been devoted and passionate and respected and loved.
‘The news is not to leave this room,’ Dante said, his voice a touch gravelly, but apart from that there was little to betray his emotions. ‘A formal announcement shall be made in due course, but there are people close to him who need to be told properly.’
They all knew who that meant as Dante walked out.
‘We need to go now and tell her,’ Dante said, and put an arm around his sister. ‘Come.’
‘Poor Mamma,’ Ariana gulped. ‘This will finish her.’
