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“What about that little daughter of his? What’s her name? Mia? You saved her life a while back, you know that?”
“So what?” I asked, exasperated. “She’s a little kid, I wasn’t gonna let her get shot.”
“You took a bullet for Lorenzo’s daughter, Dante. Of course he wants to make amends.”
I scoffed. “It was just a scratch, and she could have been any kid.”
“Nevertheless, I think we need to accept this olive branch from Luca,” my father insisted. “So, no more scuffling around with his brothers and cousins, yeah?”
I set my jaw but was silent.
“Dante?” There was a warning tone in my father’s voice, and I knew that I had no choice.
“Yes, Papa,” I said finally, and stalked out of his office.
“Hey, man, you still there?” Nico’s voice pulls me out of my head, but my rage toward Luca is still boiling.
“Yeah, I’m here.”
I shuffle through the papers that I found in the locked drawer, and I come across my father’s will, my heart jumping into my throat as I begin to read it.
“I found it,” I near whisper it, but it’s enough.
“Yeah? What does it say? Not that I have any question about it.” Nico sounds eager. I know he is behind me and same as me, he is sure my dad wanted me to step up in his place.
Not surprisingly, he’s left almost everything to me.
“Marisa got some of it, but yeah, we were right.”
I don’t mind that Marisa Lopez, our housekeeper, got a small amount in the will. She’s a second mother to me. She’s kind and lovely, and she deserves what my father left her. She was also his mistress for the last fifteen years.
“I’ll go through this in detail and let you know if there are any surprises, But as far as I can see at first glance, it’s pretty clear.”
“Okay, let me know if you need anything.”
We hang up and I read the whole thing with an eagle eye. No reason to just skim it only to have someone find something that will screw me over.
It’s all pretty standard until I come across a section later in the will called A List of Wishes. It’s probably not legally binding, but it lists out all of Papa’s desires on how he wants to be cremated, how he wants the service, and then, at the bottom, he lists something that shocks me.
I wish for my son, Dante Ricci, to marry Mia Lorenzo.
What the hell? Mia is just a kid, for one thing, and she’s Luca Lorenzo’s daughter. I stare at it for a long while before the wheels in my head start turning.
What’s the best way to get close to Luca Lorenzo? To punish him for what he did to my family?
Getting close to his daughter.
A smile spreads across my face as I take the will and slide it into a briefcase, taking it with me to the lawyer.
* * *
“Don’t worry, Dante,”Edgar Lent tells me, looking over the list of wishes. “This isn’t legally binding, so you don’t have to marry Mia Lorenzo.”
I smile at him, showing my teeth. He looks a little nervous. I guess when we come to Edgar, usually something is terribly wrong, so he’s worried that I might snap after my father’s death.
Lucky for him, I’m pretty strong-willed, and I’ve got a plan that will help me grieve.
“But I want to marry her,” I say, and Edgar blinks at me.
