Italy's Most Scandalous Virgin
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Carol Marinelli
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HarlequinCHAPTER ONE
‘LET’S NOT GO THERE.’
‘No, no,’ Dante Romano responded to his brother with a black smile. ‘Let’s.’
The board had convened for a meeting at the headquarters of Romano Holdings in EUR District, Rome, and though it was a frosty January day the subject matter was hot. Yet again the latest salacious articles regarding their majority shareholder’s rather wild private life took precedence.
Dante Romano, the subject of said articles, sat at the head of the table, both unapologetic and confrontational as his brother, Stefano, did his best to steer the meeting away from an unpalatable topic. Except Dante was more than willing to face it and turned to his uncle. ‘Perhaps you would care to clarify that, Luigi?’ Dante’s rich, deep voice could cut ice, as could his dark eyes. He looked across to his uncle, a substantial shareholder, and dared him to go on.
‘I am saying that we are a long-standing family business.’
‘We all know that.’ Dante shrugged.
‘And as a family business, we have a certain reputation to uphold.’
Dante drummed his fingers on the highly polished table, refusing to make this easy on his uncle. ‘And?’
‘Headlines like the ones over the weekend don’t help to portray us as a reputable, wholesome family—’
‘Enough!’ Dante’s patience had run out. ‘We’re hardly in some shed, bottling wine and oil to sell at the market. We’re a billion-dollar company. Who the hell cares who I’m sleeping with?’
He looked around the table that consisted mainly of extended family, all wealthy and powerful thanks to the Romano name. Few would meet his eyes, though his younger brother, Stefano, did. Ariana, who was Stefano’s twin, was forgiven for looking down at her nails, clearly uncomfortable with the subject matter.
But Luigi pushed on. ‘With your father so ill, with so many changes still to come, we need to show stability, we need to get back to the values your grandfather built this company on...’
Famiglia, famiglia, famiglia. Dante had heard it a thousand times before and was more than sick of hearing it.
Dante loved his family, yes.
But to him love was a burden.
After this meeting, Dante told himself, he would go down to Giardino delle Cascate, kick a stone and scream—because the fact was, the Romanos were not the perfect family.
Dante had always loathed that his mother portrayed them as such when he had, after all, witnessed many rows. There were so many secrets at this table: Luigi himself had nearly destroyed the company with his penchant for casinos, which Dante had uncovered some years ago. That was the first time he had saved the company. In fact, Dante’s eternally suspicious nature came from the belief that he felt lied to.
Always.
‘Hold on, Luigi.’ Dante would not back down. ‘My grandfather was running a tiny family business from a shed, but then my father came along and set the Romano world on fire with his vision—’
‘And also his family values!’ Luigi was pretty formidable too, but he was no match for Dante.
‘Until he had an affair with his PA,’ Dante said.
‘Really,’ Stefano interjected again. ‘Let’s not go there.’
But there was to be no holding back Dante. ‘Why not? My father was all about family values until he left his wife of thirty-three years and married someone younger than his own daughter.’ He pointed to Ariana, who sat there with her lips pursed as Dante blew the lid off the uncomfortable truth. ‘So don’t you dare lecture me about family values. Not one of you.’ He looked around the table but, still, very few dared meet his eyes. ‘I don’t have to discuss this with you. I give enough of myself to the company without having to explain my personal life. I am single and, despite the board’s desire to have me settle down, I shall remain single and sleep with whomever I choose.’
And all too often he did.
Women adored him.
Adored him!
It wasn’t just his undeniably handsome looks, with thick raven hair and black, bedroom eyes. Neither was it all about his stunning body, which he happily shared in his endless appetite for sex. Possibly his obscene wealth played its enviable part, along with his stamina in the bedroom.
There was more to it, though.
His arrogance, his insolence, his completely untamable ways would be offputting for some, just not when combined with Dante’s charisma and his sudden smile.
For—and this was the kicker—he could be so charming.
Even when he was being a bastard.
‘Come on, bella,’ he would say as he ended the affair—they were all called bella, or beautiful—it was easier than remembering names. ‘Would a diamond bracelet help dry those tears?’
Or a car, perhaps?
Earrings, maybe?
And, yes, they did sort of help, because the women had been told from the start it would never go anywhere, and had very willingly entered the glamorous—temporary—highs of Dante Romano’s life.
They just weren’t so willing to get out from between the silk sheets and the caress that smile gave.
Dante wasn’t smiling now, though, as he told the board how it would be. ‘I shall party on and I shall continue to enjoy the fruits of my work. I work damned hard, and you all know it. Were it not for me, we would be back in the shed. I didn’t save this company once,’ he reminded all present, ‘I saved it twice.’ When his father’s divorce had hit, Dante had taken the helm and completely restructured the company, hence the reason Luigi was no longer a major shareholder. But, as Dante had pointed out, thanks to his business acumen, Luigi was still doing very nicely.
Yes, there were tensions indeed.
Dante leant back in his seat, not quite finished tearing Luigi to shreds, but, glancing down, he saw on his silenced phone that the doctor at the hospital was calling.
It was no surprise as he was expecting to be contacted today.
Dante had visited his father in a renowned Florence hospital last night to discuss his transfer to a private hospice here in Rome.
It made sense because Dante himself was mainly based in Rome, Stefano hopped between Rome and New York, and, though Ariana spent a lot of time at their Paris office, she was often in Rome too.
Last night, though, Rafael had said he had changed his mind. Dante had listened to his father express his desire to return to the sprawling family home in Luctano, nestled in the Tuscan hills and surrounded by his beloved vines.
‘We can do that,’ Dante had said. ‘Of course we can.’
They were close, though they had not always got on so well.
Growing up, his relationship with his father had been distant at best, given the impossible hours Rafael had worked.
The same impossible hours that Dante now took on.
When he was seven Stefano and Ariana had been born and the family dynamics had changed. The fighting between his parents had stopped, perhaps because of the rapid growth of the family business meaning that there were fewer money concerns. Or perhaps, Dante had privately thought, because he had been shipped off to boarding school in Rome, and the family had bought an apartment there where his mother had spent a lot of time. Yet holidays had been wonderful, and his father would take time off in the summer and teach him, carefully, the intricacies of the lush land and its produce that had always been the foundation of their business.
But it had been in his midtwenties that Dante had stepped in and put his business mind to the grindstone when the company had been close to crashing. His father had put all his energy into the product, and had left the business side to Luigi, who was impulsive, made poor decisions, and spent too much time and profit in casinos. Dante had taken over the administration of the company, which had brought with it an unexpected bonus: the relationship with his father had changed, first to one of mutual respect, then that of confidants, and finally to friends.
Until Mia Hamilton had come along.
Dante could not bring himself to be nice towards her.
She had been plucked from the relative obscurity of trainee executive assistant in the London office and promoted to the esteemed role of Rafael Romano’s Personal Assistant, although Dante thought of her as his father’s Personal Assassin.
Still, following his father’s diagnosis, Dante had pushed animosity aside—at least towards his father—and had done—and continued to do—anything he could to make the time his father had left easier on him. Although Rafael being at home in Luctano would make things far from easy for Dante.
The logistics did not concern him for he had his own helicopter and used it with ease. And certainly they could afford a virtually hospital-calibre set-up in his father’s residence.
What concerned him was that she would be there.
At least at the hospital Mia had the decency to step out when his family came to visit. Dante rarely acknowledged her, referring to her as ‘Stepmother’ any time he did.
He loathed his father’s wife with a passion, and having to deal with her in the family home in his father’s final months did not appeal.
Still, it was not about Dante, so he would call the hospital back to make the necessary arrangements for his father to be cared for at home. For now, he would get on with the meeting.
Except his screen lit up and he saw that the doctor was calling him again.
Someone of importance was calling Sarah, his PA, Dante guessed, for now she glanced down at her own phone and then looked straight up to him in that particular way she did when there was a call Dante needed to take, and the hackles on the back of his neck rose.
‘Why don’t we take a short recess?’ Dante said smoothly. ‘And when we return, perhaps we can discuss something other than my sex life.’
He strode out, leaving Luigi looking like thunder, and headed straight for his office.
There had, in fact, been four missed calls from his father’s doctor and as the screen lit up again he took the call.
‘Dante Romano speaking.’
And just like that it was over.
He was told that his father’s condition had deteriorated suddenly, and even before a call could be made to alert the family that the end was near, Rafael Romano had passed.
Dante had known this day was coming for months and yet the news of the death of his father brought the ice of the winter outside right into his soul.
He looked over towards the Basilica dei Santi Pietro e Paolo, the church set on the highest point of the district, and fixed his gaze on its enormous dome. He could not fathom that his father was gone. ‘Did he suffer?’ Dante asked.
‘Not at all,’ the doctor assured him. ‘It was very quick. His lawyer was there for a meeting. Signora Romano was walking in the hospital grounds, but your father was gone before we could get her back to his side...’
Dante did not need to know her moves. Mia Romano was irrelevant and would soon be carved out of their lives like the cancer she was. He thought of his father dying with the family lawyer beside him. Ironic, really, when it should have been family. He moved on to ask about the person who mattered, the person who had been a loyal wife to his father for more than three decades before that grifter, Mia, had come along. ‘Has my mother been told?’
‘No,’ the doctor said. ‘Just you. Signora Romano thought it better that this call come from me.’
Well, at least Mia had got that much right, for there was no way Dante would have wanted her breaking this news to him.
Dante had hated her on sight.
Only, that wasn’t strictly true.
Dante had hated her on second sight.
The first time they had met she had quite literally stopped him in his angry tracks, for he had been furious with his father about a rumoured affair, though he had not known at that time that his mistress was Mia.
She had worn velvet stilettos and a lavender linen shift dress and had been delightfully pale for an Italian summer. She had worn her blonde hair up and back from her face, allowing full access to sapphire-blue eyes framed with pale lashes.
‘Who are you?’ he had asked when he’d strode into his father’s office.
‘Mia Hamilton,’ she had said, and had told him in less than perfect Italian that she was his father’s new PA and had been brought over from the London branch. Her poor Italian should have been a red flag—his own PA was fluidly multilingual, as was Dante himself, but he had been too enthralled in that moment for logical thinking.
And as he had looked at her and continued to look, Mia had stared back at him. For how many seconds their eyes had held Dante chose not to count. He recalled with perfect precision, though, the slight flush that had spread up her long slender neck and to her cheeks and the thick yet exquisite tension in the air as they’d assessed each other with desire in their eyes, but then his father had come in.
Or rather, thank God, then his father had come in!
It was easier on his soul to omit that memory.
To simply erase that first kick of lust.
His father had asked Mia to leave the office, and in an angry confrontation Dante had found out why her less than impressive linguistic skills had been overlooked. And he had later found out how focused, determined, resilient and tough the very prim Mia Hamilton could be.
As well as ruthless.
No, she refused to remain his father’s mistress, and would settle for nothing less than to be Rafael Romano’s wife.
The newspapers had been full of the drama of the irretrievable breakdown of the long marriage of the golden Romano couple and had been lavish in their vilification of Mia. She had been branded as a gold-digger seeking a sugar daddy, and it had been a sustained and savage attack.
The Ice Queen, many had later called her—the press, his family, the board—for she never betrayed even a hint of emotion. Even when the soon-to-be ex-wife, Angela Romano, openly wept in a televised interview about the end of her marriage, Mia Hamilton merely went about her day and was photographed shopping in the tree-lined Via Cola di Rienzo.
Yet Dante had not joined the pack in its condemnation of her, for his animosity towards Mia was deeply personal.
His blistering, disdainful treatment of her was really about self-preservation.
Dante had shored up the business himself—anything to get her gold-digging hands away from it. And while he told himself he wanted her on her knees, begging, the deeper truth was that he just wanted her on her knees.
A fast-track divorce had ensued and it had all gone through uncontested, so just over six months after the day he’d first laid eyes on her Mia Hamilton had become Mia Romano.
Naturally, Dante had not attended the wedding.
He had responded to the invitation with a handwritten note, stating that he had always considered marriage to be a pointless institution, and never more so than now.
Neither had his siblings, nor indeed any of Dante’s family, attended.
His mother now lived permanently in Rome, and dear Mia, his stepmother, had her stilettoed heels firmly through the doors of the Tuscan residence.
The family home.
Thank God he had taken care of the business.
The only small positive to come from his father’s illness had been that Rafael’s high-profile social life in Rome had been curtailed and as a result Mia had been rather tucked away, no doubt screaming to the hills that the glamour of being Signora Romano had been denied to her.
Yet he could not think of Mia now.
For his father was gone.
‘Thank you for all you did for him,’ Dante said to the doctor, and pressed a tense palm to his forehead when he thought of the unpalatable task ahead. ‘I shall let the family know now.’
Rafael’s real family.
When the call had ended, Dante stood for a silent moment, gathering his thoughts.
The wheels would soon be set in motion. His father had planned his own funeral with the same care that had seen that first vineyard and property on a Tuscan hillside grow into the vast empire it now was.
And, God knew, despite their differences at times, Dante would miss him very much.
‘Sarah...’ he pressed the intercom ‘...would you ask Stefano and Ariana to come into my office, please?’
‘Of course.’
‘And Luigi,’ he added.
The twins were twenty-five to Dante’s thirty-two.
Stefano was inward with his emotions and stood silent and grey as Dante imparted the sad news. Ariana, the absolute apple of her father’s eye, had no such reserve, and sobbed noisily.
Luigi sat with his head in his hands, stunned at the loss of his older brother.
‘We need to go and tell Mamma,’ Dante said to his siblings, as he offered Luigi use of his helicopter to take him home to Luctano to tell his wife.
It was wretched, Dante thought as he headed back into the boardroom, that the board would know what had happened before Mamma, but Ariana’s cries might have reached them, and the three of them leaving together would speak on its own.
He looked down at the solemn faces. Some were already crying because, though Rafael Romano had been an arduous boss, he had also been devoted and passionate and respected and loved.
‘The news is not to leave this room,’ Dante said, his voice a touch gravelly, but apart from that there was little to betray his emotions. ‘A formal announcement shall be made in due course, but there are people close to him who need to be told properly.’
They all knew who that meant as Dante walked out.
‘We need to go now and tell her,’ Dante said, and put an arm around his sister. ‘Come.’
‘Poor Mamma,’ Ariana gulped. ‘This will finish her.’
‘She is strong,’ Dante said, and they took the elevator down. ‘She’s a Romano.’
Still.
Despite the divorce, his mother had not reverted to her own familial name, but had been given permission by the judge to keep the Romano name. In the vast scheme of things, it had been a minor point, and Dante had not given it much consideration, and neither did he now.
In the car, Ariana sat quietly sobbing as the car threaded its way through chaotic streets; Stefano called Eloa, his fiancée, and told her the sad news.
‘Mamma should have been with him,’ Ariana said as they neared the luxurious Villa Borghese where Angela Romano had a penthouse apartment. ‘It is all her fault.’
‘No,’ Dante said, knowing his sister referred to Mia. ‘There is much we could blame her for, but not Pa’s death. When we get there we need to be...’ His voice trailed off as a couple approaching the apartment building caught his eye. They were holding hands and the woman was suddenly coquettish—his mother was suddenly coquettish—running a little forward as the man pulled her, laughing, back to his side. And the man was somewhat familiar, though Dante could not place him... ‘Drive around again,’ Dante ordered the driver, and Stefano looked over at his older brother.
‘Why?’ Stefano asked.
‘I need a moment to gather myself before we tell her.’
Stefano frowned as he ended his call to Eloa and Dante saw the question in his eyes, for usually Dante baulked at nothing. ‘She needs to be told,’ Stefano said. ‘It will soon get out.’
‘Of course she needs to be told,’ Dante agreed, and took out his own phone. ‘But we should alert her first, not just turn up unannounced. That would be too much of a shock...’
He was grasping excuses from thin air as he called his mother and it went straight to messages. He called her again and thankfully this time she picked up.
‘Dante?’ she said. ‘Pronto?’
‘Stefano, Ariana and I are on our way to see you.’
‘Why?’
‘Mamma,’ Dante said, ‘we shall be there in a moment.’ He took a breath. ‘We have difficult news to share with you.’
As he ended the call Ariana looked at him accusingly. ‘You are too blunt, Dante. Why would you tell her over the phone?’
‘Because they were married for more than thirty years,’ Dante snapped, his mind whirring from all he had just seen. ‘She might need a private moment to gather herself.’
And to get rid of her lover!
Who was he? Dante could not place the face, but really that was the least of his concerns—he was simply stunned to see his mother with another man. And while, of course, his mother was right to move on with her life and deserved happiness...
He just didn’t want to have found out on this day of all days.
Dante wondered if his mother would have the same consideration as they took the ancient elevator up to the penthouse floor.
Thankfully she had, for there was no sign of her lover when she wrenched the door open.
‘Dante, what on earth are you—’ Then she saw the tear-streaked face of her daughter standing behind him, and the pale features of Stefano.
Angela Romano stood frozen and stunned as realisation hit.
‘Come on,’ Dante said, and led her through the entrance and to the lounge where she took a seat.
‘No, no, no,’ she said.
‘Mamma, it was quick and it was peaceful. He had his dignity right to the end. He was having a meeting with Roberto. I saw him just last night and we were talking and even laughed...’
‘I should have been there to say goodbye to him,’ Angela said, and started to cry.
Yes, Dante thought as he sat with his mother while she wept, she should have been.
‘What happens for the funeral?’ Angela gulped. ‘I haven’t been back to Luctano since...’
Since the affair had been uncovered.
The scandal had been enormous, and his mother, who felt the family home had been tainted, had moved into their most lavish apartment in Rome.
‘Luigi and Rosa have said you are welcome to stay with them,’ Dante said. ‘Or there is the hotel.’
God.
It had come to this.
His mother, who had lived in that town all her life, reduced to being a guest in a hotel—even if the Romanos owned it.
Dante was black with anger as he poured his mother a brandy and one for himself, though he did his best not to reveal it. But as the conversation turned to funeral arrangements, Dante felt a deep and urgent need to see his father for himself. ‘I’m going to call Sarah and tell her that, after the pilot has dropped Luigi home, I want him to collect me and take me to Florence so I can see him,’ Dante said. ‘Do any of you want to come?’ Stefano shook his head and Ariana started to cry again and said no.
‘I’ll be back tonight,’ Dante said. ‘And then we shall all return to Luctano together on the eve of the funeral.’
‘It’s my fault,’ Angela sobbed, ‘I should have been a better wife. I should have held on...’
Dante frowned, because she had said the same thing when they had found out his father was dying. ‘Held on?’
But she was crying too hard to answer him and so Dante held his mother’s heaving shoulders. ‘None of this is your fault.’
He knew exactly where the blame lay.
Dante called the hospital and said he was on his way, and to please not move his father yet, and then he called Sarah to arrange the pilot and also—
‘It’s fine,’ Sarah said. ‘I’ll feed Alfonzo.’
Damned dog.
He was the bane of Dante’s life, and the reason he preferred to take women to hotels rather than home, to avoid having seven pounds of blind, ancient Bichon baring his teeth.
‘Thank you.’
The helicopter took him to the Florence hospital and Dante made his lonely way through long corridors and to the private room where his father lay.
Mia had gone by the time he arrived, though he hadn’t exactly expected her to be sitting at the bedside, quietly weeping. He was just grateful that there was no awkward meeting or standing back to let her pass.
Rafael Dante Romano looked peaceful, as though he was asleep, and there was the sweet vanilla scent of orchids from an array of blooms in a vase by his bed.
‘You knew, didn’t you?’ Dante said as he sat beside him. ‘That was what you meant last night when you told me you wanted to return to Luctano...’
And then he took his father’s cold hand and his strong voice finally cracked as Dante asked a question he hadn’t dared to when his father had been alive. ‘What did you have to go and marry her for, Pa?’
Dante wasn’t referring to the pain his father’s second marriage had caused.
It was the agony of wanting his father’s wife.
