* * *
Why? It was a fair question. One Vito couldn’t answer. At least, not without admitting to himself that he was a very weak man.
“I want to explain why I sent you away,” he said. Even though he had walked out on Lauren that day, telling himself she was wrong. Better to break ties cleanly, to let Gwyn move on with her life without knowing what kind of a near miss she’d had.
Why had he decided, after seeing her with another man, that he should let her know why she couldn’t be with him? It was flawed logic.
He had wanted to see her again was the real answer. He could say that he wanted to talk and her to listen, but that was a lie. He wanted her to talk. He wanted her to relay every detail of the minutes she’d been away from him, the way she might have given him the highlights of her day visiting a museum, or conveyed a funny conversation she’d overheard on the street or simply traded views with him that might be more liberal than his own, but were always well thought out and left him with a broader view of the other side.
“I thought we were going to dinner,” she said as he turned into the underground parking lot of the Donatelli International building.
“You said it was too early,” he reminded, pulling into the spot reserved with his name, right next to the elevator. She scowled so mistrustfully at him, he had to chuckle. “I’m not going to kill you and eat you, cara.”
No promises against licking and nibbling, of course.
It was all he could do not to pounce on her after he punched in the override code to get him to the floor he wanted. She had come out of her workplace with her jacket slung over her arm. Her black skirt was of a modest length, but narrow and stretchy, clinging to her hips and thighs. She wore a light green top that was so plain it was unremarkable, but the narrow belt at her waist gave it some traction across her bustline, emphasizing her hourglass figure. And those shoes with straps as narrow as her belt were positively erotic.
He hoped like hell he had paid for them, unsure why it mattered, just wanting to know she was still allowing him some place in her life.
She flicked her hair behind her shoulder, affecting cool composure, but her mouth was pulling at the corners as she said, “I know why you sent me away. It was an affair, nothing more. Like you said, it was always going to happen.”
“Sì,” he agreed, and the word moved up from his chest like gravel. “But for different reasons than you think.”
The elevator opened into the private residential floor, where he and Paolo had suites and guest accommodations were made available to other family members. There was a private gym and indoor pool here, a dining lounge with views to the ocean that was closed because he was the only one here. Paolo’s suite, where he had taken Lauren the night he’d told her that her husband was dead, was on the far side of the oversize foyer. Vito’s was here, to his left, but before opening his door, he paused in the foyer and indicated the portrait on the wall.
It was a print of the original that had first hung in the old bank in Milan and now occupied the main lobby of the new tower.
“My great-grandfather,” he said, looking at the man who’d been painted in his middle-aged prime wearing a brown plaid suit and a bowler hat.
He felt Gwyn’s gaze touch him, questioning why this might be important, but she gave the portrait a proper study.
“He had two sons and five daughters, but only his sons inherited.” He nodded at the two brothers who had cemented the foundation for what Banco Donatelli would become. “This one is my grandfather. His brother only had daughters. We’ve become more progressive and all share in the dividends now, but my uncle, Paolo’s father, was recognized as his successor.”
He moved to the photo of his grandfather with his wife and five children. It was a formal color photograph with the family posed for posterity, the fashions laughably dated. His grandfather had long sideburns and his pointed collar jutted out like wings against his tan suit and gold tie. His grandmother wore a floral print dress and Paolo’s father, nearing twenty, was dressed like a newsboy. The four teenage girls wore identical dresses in a truly horrid purple.
“You Donatelli men get stamped out with the same mold generation after generation, don’t you?” She glanced from his great-grandfather, to his grandfather, then to his uncle and then to him. “The girls take after your grandmother. Except this one.” She pointed at Antoinietta, barely twelve.
“Sì,” he agreed, giving himself one last moment for reservations, but he had none. “That’s why I look so much like a Donatelli. She is my actual mother.”