Mina didn’t understand. ‘Yes…but——’
‘Evidently Sandro was involved in a highly confidential and dangerous call to Severn when you interrupted him. He was afraid that you had heard too much and would tell me when I returned from Hong Kong. The die was cast in that moment. He had to find some way to ensure that I got rid of you…’
Mina uttered a shaky little laugh and sank down on a seat. It was so simple that she would never have guessed. Sandro had been on the phone when she’d come out of the bedroom but she hadn’t picked up a single word of what he had been saying. Her mind had been on other things. She had been deeply embarrassed by the discovery
that the voice she had assumed to be Cesare’s was in fact his brother’s. Now she could recall how shocked Sandro had been when he had first turned to look at her that day, but she had naively misread what lay behind that shock.
‘In the space of forty-eight hours he paid someone to forge your signature and someone else to doctor that tape. He had Severn’s voice on tape and he was able to acquire yours. The two were spliced. If the fraud had been exposed, Sandro would have been in the clear. He was too greedy to put more than fifty thousand into your bank account…and no, I don’t know whether he actually got that money back,’ Cesare told her heavily. ‘He didn’t cover that aspect with my lawyer. When he had compiled the file, he flew out to Hong Kong to present me with it in person.’
‘I had no idea…’
‘I was already wondering what was wrong. Sandro had called me to inform me that you had gone on leave without clearing it with anyone. Since you didn’t have a phone at home, I had no immediate way of contacting you. I was worried,’ Cesare revealed tautly. ‘I thought you might be upset and I blamed myself for not having talked to you that morning before I left.’
‘But I was in the office…I didn’t take any leave!’ Mina protested.
‘I know that now but I didn’t at the time.’
‘So you didn’t phone,’ Mina whispered in belated understanding and she could still remember how agonising that wait for a call had been. Cesare’s silence had tormented her and made her suspect that he regretted their brief intimacy, just as Sandro had forecast.
‘Sandro took one hell of a risk. If you had contacted me direct——’
‘But I wouldn’t have done that.’ Mina repeated what his brother had said to her that morning.
Cesare paled and swung away. ‘In Hong Kong he told me that he had heard you on the phone some days earlier and suspected that you might be passing on confidential information. He presented the file of evidence as the results of his investigation. He never once intimated that he had any idea that you and I were already lovers. I was shattered by that file,’ he confided roughly.
The silence weighed heavily between them.
‘I had you on a pedestal. I thought you were perfect. You were clever and gutsy and sexy, everything I ever wanted in a woman and I was crazy about you.’ Cesare swung back round to face her, strained dark eyes bleak in his set features. ‘But I’d always been pretty much of a cynic about love and marriage. My mother married my father for his money. He worked himself into an early grave maintaining her in the style to which she was determined to become accustomed and from time to time she had other men as well. When Sandro gave me that file, I thought that underneath I had to be as stupid and blind in love as my father once was!’
Her eyes prickled. ‘Cesare, I don’t——’
‘So the first thing I did to prove I was no wimp was sack you out of hand,’ Cesare continued with bitter derision. ‘I wanted to cancel the rest of my trip and fly back but I wouldn’t let myself do that. I was scared I needed to see you for the wrong reasons, so I made myself wait, and then when I did try to see you you had vanished!’
‘Which must have made me look even guiltier,’ Mina conceded before telling him that she had been on the brink of moving into a flat at the time and had not had the money to stay on in London.
‘I felt guilty for hating Sandro for producing that file, especially when I felt I ought to be congratulating him for doing something constructive for once! But then I’ve always felt guilty about Sandro,’ Cesare admitted with a grim twist of his expressive mouth. ‘Only a year apart, we should be almost as close as twins, but we don’t have a thing in common and never have had.’
‘That happens in lots of families,’ Mina murmured ruefully.
‘He was a sickly baby and my mother’s pet. I was very protective of him when we were children. But when he grew up no matter what he did he made a mess of it and that made me feel even worse because I knew he was always comparing himself to me. He hates me, he always has. He tries to hide it but he can’t,’ Cesare volunteered wryly. ‘And if I’m honest, I’m not much keener on him and he was a constant embarrassment in Falcone Industries.’
‘I gather he isn’t a director any more.’
‘I threw him out six months after I sacked you. Two of the secretaries came to me and lodged a complaint of sexual harassment against him.’ Cesare’s eyes hardened at the recollection. ‘He had been behaving in the most disgusting manner towards them. His language and his conduct was utterly indefensible. He openly admitted it to me and actually laughed about it. He flatly refused to apologise and reform his behaviour. I set him up in his own company to get rid of him.’
‘Must have been a relief all round’ Mina decided that now was not the time to horrify Cesare with the news that she too had once been the cringing target of Sandro’s foul-mouthed and unwelcome attentions.
‘It was. The whole atmosphere on the top floor changed. But, let’s face it, people in glass houses should not throw stones,’ he muttered tautly, and looked at her, a dark tide of colour drenching his hard cheekbones. ‘When I finally found you again I too behaved in an indefensible manner. I was so scared that you would somehow end up making a fool of me again, I went off the rails and——’
‘I know that,’ Mina interrupted. ‘But nothing you did puts you on a par with your creepy brother.’
‘But I behaved like a maniac let loose! I wanted you back. I didn’t much care how I did it either,’ he conceded with self-loathing.
The silence stretched tautly.
Cesare searched her with dulled golden eyes. ‘How do I say sorry for messing up your whole life?’
‘Sandro messed it up. I can understand that you were presented with some very powerful evidence against me,’ Mina told him soothingly.