‘I want you to leave,’ she announced, beginning to shake on the inside.
‘This is not your home to order me out of,’ he replied, and at last his thin lips did what she suspected they had been wanting to do since he arrived here and twisted into bitter dislike. ‘Just name your own figure…’
Staring at him, she realised he’d had the absolute gall to reach into his inside pocket and take out his chequebook! He was expecting to pay her off! Anger returned, and she was glad to feel it rise up inside her because it saved her from bursting into tears.
He was standing there with book and pen, waiting for her to say something. So she did. It was really too irresistible not to. ‘Everything you’re worth,’ she announced, then folded her arms and watched his face turn to plastic. Money, it seemed, was all-important to him. Oh—and his reputation, she added, since he really couldn’t cope with the idea of having a twenty-five-year-old mistake come back to haunt him!
Irritation flashed across his face. ‘I don’t think you understand—’
‘My own worth?’ she put in. ‘Or how much you are worth signor?’ She took delight in watching him stiffen. ‘Well, let me put that question straight before there is any more confusion here. You are worth precisely nothing to me—capisce?’ She even used Marco’s way of saying it. ‘So you may write on your cheque “I give my illegitimate daughter Antonia Carson exactly nothing!”‘ Her eyes flashed with disgust. ‘Now excuse me,’ she said, and turned and left the room.
If Marco had been there to watch her do it, he would have recognised the move as Antonia showing her contempt.
But Marco wasn’t here. And neither did she intend to be by the time he arrived home. If her own father could view her like that, what hope did she ever have of gaining the respect of anyone while she continued to stay with Marco?
She had to go—and right now, she decided. Before Marco had any chance of convincing her otherwise! And the saddest thing was she knew he could do it. One word, one touch, and she was as weak as a kitten where it involved him.
Carlotta was hovering in the hallway. Her face looked concerned, which made Antonia wonder if the housekeeper had overheard what had been said in the sitting room.
But, ‘Will you see Signor Gabrielli out for me, please?’ was all Antonia said to her. Then walked past her and into the bedroom…
At about the same time that she was confronting her father, Marco was confronting his own across the desk in the family library. All around them stood the results of centuries of time-honoured collecting. The house itself was a national treasure. And out beyond the window spread a whole valley strung with the vines which made the wine the Bellini name was as famous for as its centuries-old corporate leadership.
‘I need your support,’ Marco was saying grimly. ‘I have no wish to feud with my own parents, but push me and I will.’ It was both a threat and a warning.
‘You are expecting me to dictate to your mother?’ the older man asked, then released a laugh of fond derision. ‘Sorry, Marco. But I am too sick and too wise to accept the task.’
But he wasn’t as sick as Marco had expected to find him. ‘You’re looking better,’ he remarked—perhaps belatedly.
‘Thank you for noticing.’ His father thought it belated too. In height, in looks, in every way there could be, Marco was his father’s son. But a few months ago a virus had sucked the life out of Federico Bellini. By the time the doctors had managed to stabilise him he had halved his body weight, lost the use of one lung and damaged his heart, liver and kidneys.
‘New drugs,’ the older man dismissed with the same contempt with which he had always treated the medication which kept him living. ‘Who is this woman your mother sees as such a threat that she publicly offends her?’
Subject of his health over, Marco noted. It was his father’s way. It would be Marco’s way, given the same circumstances. ‘You know who she is,’ he sighed. ‘She’s been living with me for the last year.’
‘You mean you’re still with the same one?’ Federico pretended to be shocked, but Marco wasn’t taken in by it. Though he did allow himself a wry little smile of appreciation for the thrust. ‘No wonder your mother is in a panic.’
‘It isn’t her place to panic.’
‘Then I repeat,’ his father incised, ‘who is she?’ And the accent was most definitely on the who.
Dipping his hand into his inside pocket, it was not a chequebook that Marco retrieved, but a photograph, taken at his best friend’s wedding. He dropped it on the desk in front of his father. Federico picked it up, studied it.