‘Injustices?’ he prompted flatly.
‘You ruined her reputation by referring to her as a prostitute. As that ludicrous designation and the story is still available online to anyone who cares to look her up, Vivi found it impossible to find a job commensurate with her abilities,’ Stam revealed. ‘She suffered a great deal for someone who was innocent of fault. Her friends dropped her, her name was bandied about. She was laughed at, despised and she was obliged to leave jobs until she was finally forced to legally take another surname to hide that embarrassing past. She is now known as Vivien Fox.’
Raffaele nodded, that little sob story of Vivi’s woes touching him not at all. Of course, he wasn’t an elderly man, keen to believe only the best of his grandchild, he reasoned without hesitation. He was cool, logical, innately critical and suspicious, particularly when it came to labelling a woman an innocent. He had yet to meet a genuinely innocent woman.
He remembered Vivi very well. Hair that glittered like copper wire in the sunlight but which felt like spun silk. A tall, beautiful redhead, who could look impossibly elegant in anything she wore, even jeans. Skin like translucent porcelain and eyes as brilliant a blue as the Italian summer sky. He also remembered how very close he had come to succumbing to her wiles, even though she didn’t fit his preferred expectations of a woman in any field. He had had a narrow escape there and he was still grateful for it and not one bit regretful for anything he had said that could have offended Stam Fotakis.
Unless his misfortune in offending Stam was to lead to his kid sister being harmed, he adjusted grudgingly. And harmed Arianna very definitely would be, if that dossier of her past foolishness was ever to be released to the press, because her fiancé’s family were very conventional, and he would come under a lot of pressure to ditch her. That would send Arianna reeling and straight back into the erratic behaviour she had left behind her after falling in love with Tomas.
‘I don’t know what you want from me,’ Raffaele intoned levelly. ‘But I cannot believe that you genuinely want to injure another naive young woman like my sister. Arianna was born with problems.’
Stam lifted a silencing hand. ‘I know she was born addicted to drugs and suffers from poor impulse control. I know she’s not particularly bright and is far too trusting of strangers, but she’s not my responsibility, she’s yours,’ he pointed out calmly. ‘To make restitution, I want you to marry Vivi and give her your illustrious name.’
‘Marry her?’ Raffaele exclaimed in angry disbelief before he clenched his jaw shut and bit back any unwise comments as to the likelihood of Vivi’s much-vaunted innocence.
‘Only for the ceremony, suitably publicised to give her proper standing in society,’ Stam continued in the same mild tone, much as though he were discussing the weather. ‘I want nothing more. You will part on your wedding day and a divorce will duly follow. No financial settlement will be required on her behalf either. It is a modest request.’
‘Modest?’ Raffaele queried with incredulous emphasis.
‘Yes. I have no doubt that you think yourself very much above my granddaughter in terms of background and breeding,’ Stam conceded drily. ‘I won’t hold that against you. But you should be grateful that the temporary use of your good name is all that I require from you in return for that dossier, which would have a catastrophic effect on your sister’s marital plans.’
Fotakis knew it all, Raffaele acknowledged grittily, and, no matter how outrageous Stam’s demand that he marry Vivi, he knew he would have to consider it to protect Arianna’s future stability and security. Tomas was charmed by his sister’s giggly immaturity and impulsiveness where many men would have run a mile, and he didn’t want her only because she was an heiress either. Tomas, as sensible and stable as Arianna was not, was his sister’s perfect match and, what was more, Arianna loved him.
How could he stand by in silence while she lost all that over matters as trivial as a naked bathing episode in a famous fountain and being mistakenly arrested as a shoplifter? Unhappily, there were other murkier episodes involved and included in that file, he conceded grudgingly, such as the time she had spent the night with two men because her so-called friends had dared her to do so.