The Italian's Doorstep Surprise

Honora lifted her chin. Her green eyes glittered in the red sunset. “It is your fault, Nico, and you know it. You gathered up all his debts and then demanded that he pay them all in full at once. As his creditors never would have done.”

“So what are you saying? That I killed him? That I caused his heart attack? You’re doing her dirty work, Honora—using the very words she insulted me with, over his grave.”

“She was probably upset, lashing out—”

“I’m the one who should be lashing out. Did you know I called my father after my mother’s cancer diagnosis?” His heart was pounding, flooded with emotion he didn’t want to feel. “The only time I ever asked him for anything. I begged for money to try to pay for an experimental treatment, and he refused. He said we were nothing to him. And she died.”

Her expression changed. She whispered, “Maybe he didn’t have the money...”

Nico looked away. “He was rich back then. He just didn’t care. So I promised myself that someday I’d show him how it feels, to be desperate and poor and to ask your own blood for help, only to have the door slammed in your face.”

“He hurt you,” Honora said quietly.

“Yes.”

“You’ve spent your whole life trying to get revenge.”

“Yes.”

“But your father is dead.” She lifted her chin. “Why are you punishing her?”

When she put it like that, it did seem strange that Nico would go to such obsessive lengths to get revenge on an elderly woman he’d met only twice in his life. After all, he couldn’t blame Egidia for his mother’s death—at least not directly.

And yet something in his heart yearned to get the woman’s attention, since he could no longer get his father’s. He wanted to force his father’s wife to admit she’d been wrong, and that she was sorry. So very, very sorry.

He set his jaw. “What do you know about her?”

“I met her a few weeks ago in Trevello while I was walking the dog. I helped her carry some groceries, and this morning she realized who I was.”

He set his jaw. “She was probably targeting you all along, as a soft touch to try to get to me.”

“No. She wasn’t.” She glared at him. “She has almost nothing, but you’re trying to take her house.”

“I did offer to pay her for it. It’s not my fault she’s forced me to play hardball.”

“Is that what you call it? You didn’t even try to go to court to legally claim your father’s estate. He had no other children. That would have been kinder. No, instead you slowly ruined him, humiliated him, as you’re now doing to her.”

“You think I’d want to claim Arnaldo as a father after he rejected me? No. He made me a stranger so I’m taking his estate like a stranger. By force.”

“And what about Egidia? His devoted wife of fifty years?”

Devoted. Nico realized he was trembling. “I don’t give a damn. She’s nothing to me.”

His wife stared at him for a long moment in the darkness as their yacht approached the glittering lights of the Trevello marina. “You’re lying. You hate her. Why? What did she ever do to you?”

Honora was right, Nico suddenly realized. He did hate Egidia Caracciola. With a passion. Gripping the railing, he turned away.

“I saw her with my father once, on the street in Rome. I was just seven years old. My mother pushed me forward, begged Arnaldo to recognize me as his son. Egidia wouldn’t let him even look at me. She couldn’t admit her husband had a bastard son. Because of her pride.”

“Or maybe she was distracted with her own grief. She lost three sons of her own. Did you ever think of that?”

Nico blinked, turning to her. “What are you talking about?”

“I asked her why she was living alone in that old mansion with no one to help her. She said long before she lost her husband, she’d lost their three children as babies, one by one.” Wrapping her hands protectively over her baby bump, Honora whispered, “Can you even imagine? Three?”

He stared at her, his heart pounding. Then he pushed away what was obviously an attempt at emotional manipulation. “She probably made it up. To try to get sympathy.”

“How can you be so cold? Just go talk to her!”