The company had been both men's lives since they reached adulthood, and for the first time Carlo had to ask himself if that was best. He rang off with his father, his mind busy reframing the past three months with what he knew now. That video call and its outcome made a lot more sense.
Annette had been furious because he had misconstrued her motives and her actions. All based on her father's say so. A man whom Carlo had never considered unbiased when it came to his children. He and his wife played favorites, making it clear they did not feel the same way about their middle child as the other two.
Had she been an oops baby, or something? He'd always wondered, but never asked, not wanting to hurt Annette's feelings pointing out her parents' lack of affection.
Carlo had a great deal of work to do in his brother's office before he could sleep that night, but he found himself thinking about the only woman he had ever asked to marry him. His current lover, though he thought she was doing her best to avoid that role lately.
Because she'd been overwhelmed taking care of Jo-Jo, or because she was tired of him?
She'd turned off him easily enough five years ago. He wished his own craving for her was so easy to turn away.
He'd been shocked when she stood him up at the altar and he'd almost welcomed the media storm that followed because it had got his pride up and he hadn't gone chasing after her as had been his first inclination. By the time he'd dealt with the fallout of his botched attempt at marriage, he'd had no such inclination.
But just as he'd known might happen, the minute he'd seen her, he'd started wanting her again. This time, he'd been careful not to set up expectations. No strings sex.
And still, it hadhurtwhen she stopped answering his texts and phone calls, when she cut him out of her life as he had once cut her out of his.
An idea began to form, a way for Carlo to finally get a little of his own back against the woman who had very nearly cost him his beloved father and the company that had been in their family for generations. A woman who had rejected him not once, but twice.
First as a husband, and then more recently as a lover.
Not because she didn't want him, he was sure of it. She responded too strongly to his touch for that to be the case, but because she'd discovered she wanted the strings of relationship she'd so cavalierly cut eight years ago. She'd said as much in Sicily at the Christening.
A woman who had humiliated and betrayed him, making him an object of pity and anecdote to his Sicilian family and the media.
How the mighty are fallen. That's what several cousins had said, one in particular before trying the takeover bid. That man was selling cars in Rome now, and off every guest list Carlo was on, family, or no family.
Even being a billionaire is no protection from heartache, others had said, meaning well perhaps, but flaying Carlo's pride nonetheless.
Heartache? Eight years ago, he had been far from some lovestruck teen, but he'd been painted as a tragic figure by his family and the media. Turned into an object of pity.
Carlo had hated it.
Now, here she sat, in a prime position for him to get what he wanted for himself, and for his baby niece. All of it onhisterms.
A small niggle of worry said he was tired and stressed and should think before following through on his fantasies, but he ignored it.
The idea of getting anything on his terms seemed like a colossal joke the next day when he got Annette's text saying she was taking the train back to Upstate New York. He could come there and talk about her role in their niece's life while Jo-Jo's parents were still in hospital.
Feeling very much like he was chasing the wind, Carlo had his executive team shift things in his schedule and took the helicopter to Fantino's home, arriving shortly before Annette.
Annette searched out Jo-Jo, the minute she arrived back at the mansion, finding the baby playing with the rattles and things hanging above her plushy blanket on the floor in her nursery while Pamina read a book in the rocking chair.
With no thought to the business suit she'd worn to go into the City, Annette laid down on the carpet beside her niece and started talking to her. "What do you think of that giraffe? He looks like he would be fun to play with. Can you make him rattle?"
Jo-Jo's head turned at the sound of Annette's voice and then joyous baby babble filled the air between them. Dressed in cute, flowered stretchy pants and a long sleeved top with a big flower in the middle, Jo-Jo looked up at her aunt with joy in her sweet gaze. Her little feet covered in fuzzy booties kicked a mile a minute.
"Oh, she's happy to see you. I toldSignoreMessina our little Jo-Jo was missing you." Pamina's voice reminded Annette that someone else was in the room.
Annette looked up and smiled. "It's very good to be back." And she wasn't leaving.
If possession was nine tenths of the law, Annette was going to bolster it with squatter's rights. She wasn't going anywhere until Joyce came home to take care of her baby.
"I should have known you would come straight to the nursery." Carlo's voice came from the doorway.
She sat up, trying to keep her straight skirt from hiking up her legs. "You're here!"
"As you see."