The Sicilian's Defiant Virgin. Susan Stephens

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СКАЧАТЬ ‘I’m done here.’ Dropping his head into his hands, the once great leader began to sob like a child.

      Tactfully turning his back, Luca waited for the storm to blow over. He wasn’t going anywhere. Neither his father nor Raoul had ever been able to accept that he would love them, no matter what.

      Luca Tebaldi could have been a worthy successor to a man who had ruled his fiefdom with a rod of iron for more than fifty years. Well over six feet tall, with the hard-muscled frame of a Roman gladiator, Luca was considered to be outrageously good-looking. With the intellect of a scholar and the keen stare of a warrior, Luca possessed the type of dangerously compelling glamour of a man born to rule. But it was Luca’s steel-trap mind that had brought him such huge success. His business interests were wholly legitimate, and had been founded far away from his father’s crumbling empire. Rampant sex appeal made him irresistible to women, but Luca had no time for softening influences in his life, though his late, hugely passionate Italian mother had drummed into him an appreciation of the fairer sex. Luca’s raging libido was a hitch that he and his iron control had learned to live with.

      His father looked up. ‘How could you not know what was happening to Raoul? You both own property in London.’

      ‘Our paths rarely crossed,’ Luca admitted. His life was so different from that of his fast-living brother. ‘Is there anything more I should know before I leave for London?’ he pressed, wanting to move past the histrionics to the meat of the matter.

      His father shrugged. ‘Raoul owed money everywhere. He left several properties, all heavily mortgaged—’ These he dismissed with a contemptuous flick of his wrist. ‘It’s the trust fund that concerns me. She gets that!’

      A trust fund worth millions, Luca calculated, and one of the few sources of money Raoul hadn’t been able to get his hands on to fritter away. Raoul wouldn’t have been able to touch the trust until his thirtieth birthday, a date still six months in the future. ‘This will make Raoul’s girlfriend very wealthy indeed,’ he murmured thoughtfully. ‘Do we know anything about her?’

      ‘Enough to destroy her,’ his father informed him with relish.

      ‘That won’t be necessary,’ Luca ruled. ‘Raoul didn’t expect to be killed. He almost certainly drew up this will on a whim—probably after you fell out about something?’ The brief look on his father’s face suggested he was right. ‘My brother would almost certainly have changed his intentions in time.’

      ‘How comforting,’ his father scoffed. ‘What I need to know, is, what are you going to do about it now?’

      ‘I’d rather Raoul had lived,’ Luca reproached his father.

      ‘Live to your prescription?’ his father scorned angrily. ‘Hard work and trust in your fellow man—who doesn’t give a flying fig about you, by the way. I’d rather be dead than live like that!’

      ‘Raoul has paid the ultimate price,’ Luca pointed out sharply.

      He’d had enough of pandering to a self-centred old man. He was still grieving for his brother, and longed for solitude so he could dwell on happier times. Raoul hadn’t always been weak, or a criminal. As a child with the world at his feet, Raoul had been trusting and funny and mischievous. Luca remembered him as a wild-haired scamp, who had liked to tag along with Luca and his friends to show the older boys how reckless he could be. Raoul could swim as fast as they could, and he could dive as deep too, sometimes remaining submerged for so long that Luca had to dive down to bring him up again. It was always a prank, designed to wind Luca up, but Raoul’s daring had been his entry ticket into the group. Luca and his friends had grown out of their wildness as life forced them to shoulder increased responsibility, but Raoul had never lost his lust for danger, and in one last reckless act had joined an infamous street-racing gang. He’d been killed instantly in a head-on collision between two cars. By some miracle, there were no other casualties, but Raoul’s death was the most hideous waste of life.

      ‘What a tragedy,’ Luca murmured out loud as he remembered the details as relayed to him by the police officers on the scene.

      ‘What a mess,’ his father argued. ‘Sometimes I think your brother’s sole intention was to hurt me.’

      Always the self-pity, Luca thought, but when his father’s fist closed around a lethal-looking paper knife and he looked as if he might stab it into the document in front of him, which Luca presumed could only be Raoul’s will, he intervened. ‘May I see that before you destroy it?’

      ‘Be my guest.’ His father shoved the papers across the desk. ‘Raoul’s lawyer was here before the funeral. “As a courtesy to you, Don Tebaldi—”’ His father mimicked a wheedling voice. ‘When you and I both know he was only interested in his fee.’

      ‘You can’t blame him for that,’ Luca observed as he settled down to read. ‘Raoul wasn’t always quick to pay his debts.’ He glanced up briefly. ‘And he certainly isn’t in a position to do so now.’

      His father’s expression hardened. ‘You’re missing the point, Luca. The lawyer’s visit was a warning. He was telling me—me, Don Tebaldi—not to accidentally misplace Raoul’s will, or destroy it, as he had already cast his weasel eyes over it.’

      ‘Raoul was free to do as he liked,’ Luca commented mildly. ‘This document seems very thorough. This girl must have meant a lot to him.’

      ‘It’s unlikely the girl was a love interest,’ his father rapped. ‘More likely, she was a clever trickster. Thanks to Raoul’s mismanagement the Tebaldi family has lost most of its power and influence, but we still have enemies, Luca. How do I know that one of them hasn’t put this girl up to this act of extortion?’ He clutched his chest theatrically. ‘I can just imagine—’

      ‘Has she been notified of Raoul’s death?’ Luca interrupted.

      ‘I asked the lawyer to hold off.’ Having made an instant recovery, his father shrugged. ‘I made it worth his while to do so. And she won’t find out from the media. Your brother’s death will hardly make the international news. Raoul would have had to make a mark on the world to do that. So yes, we can keep it quiet for now. You’re still one step ahead of her. Go to London. Buy her off. Do whatever it takes—’

      While his father warmed to his theme, Luca battled the ache of loss for a brother he had loved as a child, and had lost touch with as an adult. The few times they’d met recently, Raoul had mocked the way Luca lived his life, while Luca had been frustrated that Raoul couldn’t seem to break free of the vicious cycle of gambling and debt. On their last meeting, he had sensed Raoul had wanted to tell him something, but hadn’t felt able to confide in him. It was no use asking his father what this might have been, but maybe the girl could help. He would take the jet to London to find out who she was and what she wanted.

      It was time to drill down into the facts. ‘What do we know about this woman?’

      Having tired of the theatricals, his father had moved on to studying the racing papers. ‘She’s a mouse,’ he stated with confidence, glancing up. ‘She’ll give you no trouble. She lives quietly on her own with no money, no family, and no way to fight us.’

      Luca frowned. ‘The lawyer told you this?’

      ‘I still have my contacts.’ His father laid a finger down the side of his nose to demonstrate how clever he was. ‘She works behind the scenes at Smithers & Worseley—the auction house that handles the high-value gemstones I collect. She makes tea СКАЧАТЬ