Chapter Four #2
“I have never heard you mention a hotel or any expansion ideas of any kind,” he told the youngest Aniello. “That must be the sort of thing you tell those idiots you carouse with all over Europe, funded entirely by my legacy.”
That set him to thinking about legacies.
This castle, for example. He had thought it a daring, over-the-top purchase back in the day, but he’d never regretted it.
This was the place he came to when he wanted to hear himself think.
This was the place that was entirely his and did not exist only because he provided services to those who came here.
No one asked him for anything here. He kept a skeleton staff because after a lifetime of too many siblings and restaurants filled with various dependents, he needed very little but his own company.
It was here that he’d spent a lot of time in the kitchens, wishing he felt inspired to experiment again.
It was here that he’d come to the conclusion that his experimentation days were over and what he had before him instead was the bolstering of his reputation, and that legacy he intended to outlive him and all the rest of his siblings, Rocco included.
“Your legacy is a generous benefactor,” his brother was saying. “Grazie. As for your new hobby, why don’t I come and manage it? Just think what I could do with a hotel.”
“If you want a hotel, I’m sure we can find you one.
” Antonluca had showered off the cold and now stood at the window with his aperitivo, the way he did every night.
He stared across the expanse of fields and vineyards drenched in the dark to that hill in the distance, where the hotel gleamed against the night.
Like his very own star of Bethlehem.
“What’s wrong with the one you have now?” Rocco asked. Perhaps with a slight hint of belligerence in his otherwise easygoing tone.
“La Paloma already has a manager,” Antonluca told him. “And quite a talented one.”
“She might be talented,” his brother argued, which told Antonluca that Rocco had been paying much closer attention to what happened in Tuscany than he’d imagined. “But she’s not family, is she?”
And that stung a little because Antonluca had always been open about the fact he liked to keep things in the family.
It was easier that way. Not that his siblings couldn’t squabble amongst themselves, because they did.
But each and every one of them felt a deep connection to one another because they’d all made it out of their childhoods. They’d survived.
They felt even more connected to Antonluca because he was the reason why.
No need to worry about motivations when it was family.
What he found was that he really didn’t like being reminded of this.
“She is not,” Antonluca agreed, a bit more icily than necessary. “But I trust her just the same.”
And it wasn’t until a couple of days later that he realized he could not have said anything that could have alarmed his brother more.
He realized this because when he finished walking home that night, the week before Christmas, he found Rocco waiting for him in the grand hall of his castle. With some stranger beside him, looking snobbish and pinched-faced.
Antonluca took against the stranger immediately.
“To what do I owe this entirely unexpected and unsolicited honor?” he asked his brother. “And who is watching over the restaurant in Rome if you’re here?”
“I also have a manager.” Rocco waved a hand. “You have to listen to what this man is here to tell you, fratello. It’s important.”
Antonluca doubted that very much, but he ushered the men into one of his sitting rooms, called for his single member of staff, and took his time showering and changing his clothes before he went down to join them.
Rocco was lounging in Antonluca’s favorite chair when he returned—and knew it, judging from the smirk on his face—but the stranger was standing by the fireplace, looking stiff and ill at ease.
“Forgive me,” Antonluca said, barely sparing the stranger a glance. “I find anticipation makes me hungry. Perhaps a meal while we—”
“I will get this out and then take my leave,” the stranger belted out.
Rocco’s eyes widened. Antonluca merely stared at him.
He was not used to being interrupted. Particularly not by uninvited strangers in his home.
“My apologies,” he replied after some long moments, with scathing courtesy. “I have clearly forgotten myself. Of course I want any guests in my home, invited or not, to feel at ease when they arrive without warning.”
But his sardonic words were lost on the stranger.
The pinched-faced man puffed himself up, standing taller and looking even more pompous.
“I used to be the manager at La Paloma,” he intoned, and managed to give off the impression that he was offended Antonluca did not already know this, and recognize him.
“I was tossed out without so much as a thank-you by that evil old witch and replaced with—”
“The current manager, yes,” Antonluca interrupted him smoothly, before this man called Hannah a name. It was bad enough that he had spoken so disrespectfully about Paloma. He already disliked the man.
But if he said the same kind of things about Hannah, Antonluca rather thought that he might end him.
“Your current manager is a woman of low morals,” the man told Antonluca.
Meaning, of course, that Antonluca began plotting his death immediately. Perhaps he could simply toss the man off the battlements, the way the ancients who’d built this place had surely done with their enemies. Otherwise, there would be no need for battlements, would there?
“Raffaele still has family in the village,” Rocco chimed in then, perhaps reading the look on his older brother’s face. “There’s nothing that happens around here that he doesn’t know about.”
“Is that so?” But that was less a question and more a threat, the way Antonluca said it.
“She turned up about two and a half years ago,” Raffaele said with great, whining umbrage, which did not endear him to his host in any way.
“Like most Americans, she made no attempt whatsoever to integrate herself into the village. Instead, she thought that she could simply appear and everything would be handed to her. Just as my own job was.”
He lapsed off into a tirade that was mostly a list of complaints about Paloma, and Antonluca shifted his gaze to his brother. Rocco knew exactly how Antonluca felt about complaining. That he always wanted solutions, not feelings.
But Rocco made a face at him, as if there was something in all of these complaints that should matter to him.
“I’m sorry that you feel that you were cruelly treated,” Antonluca said shortly when Raffaele finally paused for breath. “But I’m afraid I can’t help you with any of that. Paloma is no longer involved in the hotel. And I did not fire you.”
“Your brother wanted to know about this manager of yours,” Raffaele said, sounding somehow even more aggrieved. “And I say again, she is a woman of extremely low morals. I would not be surprised if she keeps some kind of a side business going out of the cottage she rents.”
Antonluca decided that the man could not possibly mean what it sounded like he meant.
“You perhaps mean some crafting?” he asked, dangerously. “The sort of thing that can be sold in the Christmas Market, I imagine?”
His brother had the sense to look alarmed, and rose from the chair he’d been lounging in. But the stranger Antonluca had decided he disliked intensely enough to perhaps relive the more violent days of his misspent youth let out a bitter sort of laugh.
“She moved here pregnant,” he said with a sniff of disgust. “And all alone. And there has never been a man in the picture. She is simply a sad single mother who ran off from her own country to hide her shame in Tuscany. Aren’t you tired of these people? I know I am.”
He launched off into another tirade, but Antonluca stopped listening.
Because all he could think about was timing.
Two and a half years ago.
Already pregnant.
What were the chances…?
But he knew that chance had nothing to do with this.
He didn’t need to hear another word from this weasel of a man. He needed to hear it from Hannah directly. He needed to know.
Because down deep in his bones, as if his DNA recognized what it was being told without a single shred of proof—he was already sure.
Hannah had a child.
And if Hannah had a child after the night she had given her innocence to him in New York, well.
He was absolutely certain, sight unseen, that it was his.