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“Or you’re scared of Dante…”
I smirked. “Trust me, I’m not scared of him. He looked like a toddler throwing a tantrum.”
“You think you don’t look like that?” he asked incredulously.
“Shut the fuck up, asshole.”
He chuckled then brought the cigar to his lips.
“She said she doesn’t mix business with pleasure, and neither does her father. Not sure where this rule comes from, but they seem intent on enforcing it.”
“Something must have gone down in the past.”
“I have no idea what that would be. Dante’s never been married. Scarlett seems too young to have had a relationship with such intense ramifications.”
“What about her mother?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know anything about her.”
“Maybe something happened there.”
“Maybe…”
After a long pause spent in comfortable silence, Russell spoke again. “What do you have going on tomorrow?”
“A trust meeting.”
“Oh, that’s gonna suck.”
“It always sucks.”
“Let me know if you want to drink afterward. Pick up a couple women.”
“We’ll see.”
My driver pulled up to the building so I could get out.
I looked at the historic building, a building that had been in my family for generations, handed down through the ages until the present day. I stepped out, and my driver immediately took off.
The guards opened the front door and allowed me inside. It was the place where the greatest artists of the Renaissance had created their works of art, had even lived there temporarily. We opened it to private events for rich foreigners who wanted to feel like royalty for the night. If royalty were such a thing for Italians, it would run through my veins.
I moved upstairs to the grand room, the ceiling a hundred feet in the air, paintings of my ancestors along the wall. My blood was rich with European aristocracy, from French nobleman and even the royal line in England. I had ties to Greece and Norway as well.
The room was enormous, but somehow my father’s presence filled every corner. He sat at the table that was placed there, a lawyer on either side of him, because he’d never been in my presence one-on-one since that fateful day.
I pulled out the chair and sat across from him.
He immediately opened his folder and started looking through the pages.
“Nice to see you, Father.” I relaxed in the chair, one ankle on the opposite knee, my joined hands in my lap.
He continued to ignore me.
“Your beard’s coming in nicely.”
Once he had his papers in order, he straightened and looked at me. “Let’s get this over with, Axel.”
“What a shame,” I said. “I love small talk.”
