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‘I understand that.’
Dante refused to back down. ‘So go for it.’
‘Thanks,’ Mia said. ‘I’m glad I have your blessing.’
He turned to go then suddenly changed his mind. ‘What was that for then?’ He pointed to the door where she’d knelt just moments ago.
‘I fancied it.’ Mia shrugged, and then gave him a smile. ‘I have ato-dolist now.’
Sarah suddenly called his name from outside the office. ‘Dante!’
His face was black as he turned and saw a harried-looking Sarah coming down the corridor towards him. ‘I’ve been calling you; the mood’s not exactly great in there.’
The mood wasn’t great here either, but Dante shot Mia a look and then strode off to face the hostile board.
‘How could you?’ Luigi was red in the face and so livid that Dante would not have been in the least surprised if he were to jump over the desk and attempt to strangle him with his tie. ‘How could you besmirch your father’s memory and shame the Romano name?’
Dante ran a worried hand over his forehead, but it had nothing to do with their angry, reproving faces.
What the hell had Mia been saying?
He could not go there in his head.
He knew she’d been goading him.
Yet it was more than goaded he felt, for he felt ill at the thought of a future without her, and summers and weekends and evenings with his child—minus Mia.
‘Dante!’ Luigi tried to command his attention. ‘He is barely cold in the ground. You disgust me, Dante. There is no coming back from this. We are a family business...’
‘Perhaps...’ Ariana offered a suggestion. ‘Perhaps you can say you were comforting Mia.’
‘Yes,’ Angela said, completely incapable of simply observing and clearly liking the sound of Ariana’s suggestion—anything to cover up the truth. ‘You could say Mia was crying for Rafael, and you were merely offering support.’
‘By pressing her against a column with his hips?’ Stefano said with a generous dash of Romano sarcasm. ‘No, I think we just have to ride it out.’
There had been no innuendo meant, but when he glanced up at his brother both men did share a slight smile.
And when the rest of the board had had their say, when they had all vented their emotions, and given their exceedingly low opinion of him, Dante stood and walked to the window, sorely tempted to say,To hell with the lot of you, for he knew he could walk away right now and be completely fine.
But,famiglia, famiglia, famiglia...
No, they weren’t the perfect family, but they were his and he loved them.
He gazed out towards the dome, to the Basilica dei Santi Pietro e Paolo, only he wasn’t searching his mind as to how to answer the board.
Mia had just warned him shewouldbe dated and if not by him, then...
‘Go for it,’ he had said, as he always did, refusing to be railroaded or backed into a corner, refusing even to consider a future. Yet here he stood, in the middle of a board meeting, and was deeply considering one.
‘Dante!’ Luigi said, but to Dante his uncle’s voice sounded like it came from underwater; instead it was Mia’s voice that rang clearly in his head, and her response to his suggestion that she annul the marriage.
‘I would never do that to your father and neither would you.’
Thatwas having someone’s back.
Thatwas family.
And at that precise moment the idea of love crystallised for Dante, and instead of a burden pressing even more heavily down on him, it felt as if one had been lifted.
