When they reached the top of the hill, they saw at least forty cars parked around the circular drive and stone fountain.
“Looks like they’re having a party,” she said awkwardly.
Vin parked the car right by the front door and turned off the engine. For a moment he didn’t move. His handsome face looked strangely bleak. She reached for his hand.
“Two minutes,” he said, pulling his hand away.
“We agreed we’d stay for ten—”
At his look, she decided not to press her luck.
Moon laced through clouds, decorating the October night like bright pearlescent lace across black velvet. He walked toward the front door, looking like a man going to the guillotine. The bodyguards, after doing a quick eyeball check of the perimeter, hung back respectfully. So did Scarlett.
At the door, Vin glanced back at them, then set his jaw. He reached for the brass knocker and banged it heavily against the wood. For some moments, no one answered.
Then the door was thrown open, and light and music from inside the villa poured out around them. Scarlett saw a dignified gray-haired man standing silhouetted in the doorway.
“Buona sera,” Vin began woodenly, then spoke words in Italian that she didn’t understand.
But she didn’t need to. He had barely spoken a sentence before the man in the doorway let out a gasp and, with a flood of Italian words, pulled Vin into his arms with a choked sob of joy.
* * *
Vin was furious.
He hadn’t wanted to come here. He felt manipulated, backed into a corner. Exactly how he’d promised himself he’d never feel again: like someone else’s puppet, under their control.
But Scarlett had made her threat clear, with her pointed insinuation, twisting her engagement ring, that she might change her mind about their marriage if he didn’t do this. He’d barely contained his fury during their drive up the cypress-lined road. This was the thanks he received for striving to take good care of his pregnant soon-to-be wife, letting her have her way in everything? It still wasn’t enough? Now Scarlett wanted to put her spoon into his heart and stir?
He hated her for this. Up till the very moment when he’d banged on the door.
Vin had been prepared for a servant to answer, or someone he didn’t know, as there seemed to be a party. But he instantly recognized the man in the doorway.
Giuseppe Borgia had aged twenty years, with more lines on his skin and gray in his hair. But he’d known him. His father.
No. The man Vin had believed to be his father for his entire childhood. The man whose heart would be broken if he ever knew the truth.
The last time they’d seen each other, at his mother’s funeral, Vin had been hostile and cold. Nothing like he’d been the week before, during the happy Christmas he’d stayed at this very villa, believing he’d found a place to call home and a real family who loved him.
But when he’d returned to Rome after Christmas and asked his mother if he could permanently live with his father, she’d barked out a cruel laugh.
“You’re not even Giuseppe’s son,” Bianca Orsini had said. She’d taken a long drag off her cigarette. “It’s time you knew. I got pregnant after a one-night stand with a musician I met in a bar in Rio.” She smiled her brittle, hollow smile. “But I needed Giuseppe’s money. So I lied.”
“I have to tell him,” Vin had choked out.
“Do it, and for reward, he’ll just stop loving you.” Her fingers tightened around the shrinking cigarette. “Did you really think I’d let you go live with him and that British woman and give up my only source of income?”
Ironically, Bianca hadn’t needed that income for long. She’d died a few days later, when, while distracting her current boyfriend with caresses of an intimate nature—at least that was what the police believed—she’d caused him to accidentally swerve his convertible off a cliff, killing them both.
Vin had barely been able to face Giuseppe and Joanne at the funeral a few days later. They’d tried to hug him, to console him, telling him to pack up and come home with them. But he’d known if they realized he wasn’t really Giuseppe’s child, how quickly they would have given him up. Especially since they had their own child, an adorable little girl of four, who actually deserved their love.