The Fiorenza Forced Marriage Read online

  Emma frowned again. ‘You mean about the will?’

  ‘No,’ Sondra said with a glint in her cold eyes, ‘about his relationship with Rafaele.’

  Something about the woman’s cat-with-the-canary smile bothered Emma. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Valentino told me he had just written a long letter to his son,’ Sondra said. ‘In it he had begged for Rafaele’s forgiveness for how he had treated him over his mother’s and then his brother’s death. It seems you had worked some sort of miracle on Valentino’s hardened soul, Emma. He said as much himself. He decided he wanted to put things right before he died. He knew he didn’t have long to go.’

  ‘I don’t remember him asking me to post a letter to his son,’ Emma said. ‘And I’m sure if he had got Lucia to do it she would have told me about it.’

  ‘That is because he didn’t ask you or Lucia to post it,’ Sondra said with a malicious glint in her eyes.

  Emma felt her heart begin to slam against her sternum. ‘Who…who did he ask to post it?’ she said, her voice coming out slightly strangled.

  ‘Oh, Emma.’ Sondra gave a cackling laugh. ‘Valentino was right. You are as innocent as a dove.’

  Emma’s skin began to prickle all over. ‘You took the letter…’ she said hollowly. ‘You took the letter but…but you didn’t post it…’

  Sondra’s expression turned bitter. ‘Of course I didn’t post it. Valentino Fiorenza broke my heart. He refused to marry me. He wanted a mistress, not a wife. No one was ever going to replace his beloved Gabriela. Do you know what that was like for me? I was competing with a dead woman and there was no way I could win.’

  ‘So you waited all this time to get back at him in the most despicable way,’ Emma said, her stomach churning with disgust. ‘You pretended to still care about him in those last months of his life just so you could have your revenge.’

  ‘Revenge, as they say, is a dish best served cold,’ Sondra said with a disaffected smile. ‘And you can’t get any colder than a dead man in his grave, now, can you?’

  Emma swallowed back a mouthful of bile. ‘When did you find out about the codicil?’

  ‘That was only recently,’ Sondra said. ‘I have a friend who works in the legal firm handling Valentino’s affairs.’

  ‘That’s a breach of client confidence,’ Emma pointed out. ‘Your friend could be criminally charged.’

  Sondra gave another careless shrug. ‘That is of no concern to me.’

  Emma set her mouth. ‘What exactly is your concern?’ she asked.

  ‘I am offering you a chance to get back at Rafaele for using you,’ she said. ‘If you leave him before the year is up I will let you retain your half share of the villa. And if you choose to sell it I will pay you double what he offers for it. I have some money an uncle left me. We could both have our revenge on the Fiorenza men—what do you say?’

  ‘I say no,’ Emma said coldly. ‘I will have no part in hurting Rafaele even more than he has already been hurt. What you did is unforgivable, not just to Rafaele, but to Valentino. He waited in vain for his son to contact him. It broke his heart, I am sure of it. He went to his grave believing his son hadn’t forgiven him. That is no doubt why he never talked about it with me. He felt such a failure as a father. He was so bitterly disappointed. So terribly hurt. How could you do that? How can you live with yourself?’

  Sondra opened her handbag and pulled out an envelope with a broken Fiorenza wax seal on the back. ‘Give that to that arrogant bastard of a husband of yours,’ she said. ‘Better late than never, right?’

  Emma clutched the envelope with a shaky hand, her heart feeling so heavy she could scarcely breathe, watching in silence as Sondra Henning strode off just as purposefully as she had approached, until she rounded a corner and disappeared.

  Emma was waiting for Rafaele in the salon when he returned from Milan. He came in carrying a bunch of blood-red roses and handed them to her with a wry smile. ‘For you, mio piccolo,’ he said. ‘For being so patient with me.’

  Emma took the roses and put them to one side. ‘Rafaele…I need to talk to you,’ she said, ‘about the codicil on your father’s will.’

  Had his expression become shuttered or was she imagining it? Emma wondered as she searched his face.

  ‘How did you find out about that?’ he asked after a small but tense pause.

  ‘I ran into Sondra Henning this morning in town,’ she told him. ‘She came over and introduced herself. She said you had agreed to marry me, not just because of the villa, but because you stood to gain millions from your father’s company. Is that true?’

  Rafaele let out his breath in a long uneven stream. ‘I knew once you found out about that wretched codicil you would think that,’ he said. ‘That is why I went to Milan this morning. I met with the lawyers and set up a trust in your name. You are now the principal shareholder of my father’s company until such time as our child is able to take control.’

  Emma’s mouth dropped open. ‘I don’t believe it…’

  He gave her a crooked smile. ‘Why is it you do not believe a word I say, mio piccolo?’ he asked. ‘I finally summon up the courage to tell you I love you and you think I am fibbing. How on earth am I going to convince you it is true?’

  She blinked back tears of happiness. ‘You really mean it, don’t you?’ she asked. ‘You really love me.’

  He blocked the pathway of her tears with the pad of his thumb. ‘I love you so much it hurts,’ he said in a husky tone. ‘I did not think I had the capacity to love so deeply. For years I had shut myself off from feeling. But you, cara, with your big heart and caring ways, changed all that.’

  ‘Oh, Rafaele…’ Emma said. ‘There’s something else Sondra Henning told me…’

  He went very still as if he sensed what was coming. Emma took a breath and in a gentle voice told him about the letter his father had written to him and how the wicked spitefulness of Sondra Henning had ruined any chance of Valentino making peace with his son. When she had finished, Emma handed him the letter with tears in her eyes.

  ‘Have you read it?’ Rafaele asked.

  She shook her head. ‘No, that letter was meant for you, no one else.’

  He gave her a smile that was shaded by sadness. ‘Would you excuse me for a moment or two?’ he asked.

  ‘Of course,’ she said softly. ‘Please…take your time.’

  He went over by the bank of windows and opened the unsealed envelope, his eyes travelling down each page until he came to the end.

  It seemed a long time before he looked back at Emma and when he did she could see the film of moisture in his eyes, making her own tears run all the more profusely.

  Rafaele came back to stand in front of her. ‘I do not know how to thank you, Emma, for what you have done,’ he said.

  She creased her brow at him. ‘What have I done?’

  He touched her face with his fingertips. ‘You are an angel, do you know that? An angel sent down to this planet to make stubborn people like my father and I change our ways. If it had not been for you I would still hate my father. I would still be blaming him for all that was wrong in my life.’

  Her eyes were glistening with tears. ‘You don’t hate him any more?’

  He shook his head. ‘Even if I had not seen this letter I had already decided to forgive him,’ he said. ‘You were so right when you said he was consumed by grief. He loved my mother so much he couldn’t cope with the shock of her loss. There was no grief counselling in those days, he soldiered on in the only way he knew how, which was to bury himself in bitterness and denial.

  ‘And then he was hit with the blow of Giovanni’s accidental death. He blamed himself; he says so in the letter. He felt guilty that he hadn’t been an involved father, leaving us for long periods on our own while he worked too hard and too long. His affair with Sondra Henning was his attempt to find a replacement mother for me after Giovanni’s death, but of course it backfired. She wasn’t interested in mothering some other woma
n’s child. She wanted him to herself, but he would never agree to it. That proves more than anything how much he cared for me.’

  ‘Oh, darling,’ Emma said, tearing up again. ‘You have been through so much.’

  ‘He loved me, Emma,’ Rafaele said, still trying to get his head around the fact. ‘He loved me but just didn’t know how to communicate it.’

  Emma lifted her hand to his face and gently stroked the stubbly growth on his cheek. ‘Now who does that remind you of?’

  He smiled and pulled her close. ‘Now, about that honeymoon we never had. Where would you like to go? I have cleared my diary so I am all yours for as long as you want.’

  Emma looked up at him with love shining in her eyes. ‘How long does a normal honeymoon last?’ she asked with a playful smile.

  He gave her a sexy grin in return. ‘I do not really know, but I can tell you one thing for sure,’ he said, and paused as he planted a kiss on the end of her nose.

  ‘What’s that?’ she asked, wrinkling her nose in delight.

  He scooped her up in his arms and carried her towards the stairs, his dark eyes smouldering with passion. ‘This one is going to last for ever.’

  ISBN: 978-1-4268-2966-6

  THE FIORENZA FORCED MARRIAGE

  First North American Publication 2009.

  Copyright © 2008 by Melanie Milburne.

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

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  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Copyright

  Contents

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN