Chapter Twelve
Karl, her driver whenever she was in Rome, eyed her warily in the car’s rear-view mirror.
‘Shouldn’t you be going in there, Ms G—I mean, Mrs—’
‘Not yet,’ Maria said, staring at the entrance to the Gallo Group Headquarters in Rome, through the blacked-out window of the town car.
She was watching them all arrive. Several generations of Gallo men, all dressed in impeccably tailored dark suits, with crisp white shirts and pinned ties. The family resemblance imprinted on similarly dark features.
Her phone vibrated with a message from Antonio.
I’m two minutes out.
She’d called him from the plane late last night, pouring her heart out to him in a way that she’d not been able to with Micha. Oh, she’d wanted to, but she hadn’t trusted herself that night. She’d been too hurt. Too confused. Too…ashamed.
Antonio had threatened to get in the car and drive to her right then and there, but Maria wasn’t even going to get into Italy for another four hours, so there’d have been no point. She’d wanted to know, needed to know, whether what Micha had said was right.
Antonio’s voice had been regretful.
‘I’d always known that it would have been hard for Micha to say no to Gio. And if Gio knew about you and Micha, of course he would have sent him away. And I…’
‘What?’
‘Well, I was so angry at how he’d hurt you, I refused to reach out to him.’ The shame in her cousin’s voice matched the one she felt in her heart.
‘You think he’s right then?’ she asked, not because she needed him to tell her. She knew that Micha was right. ‘That I…didn’t fight for him?’
‘I think we were all young. And,’ he said hesitantly, ‘I think you were hurt and trying to protect yourself. But I also don’t think that he’s entirely wrong, Maria.
I’m not sure that, even with all the information available, you’d have been able to choose Micha.
Yes, you were a fighter, even back then, but Maria…
you were seventeen. Your father would have disowned you, Gio would have had to fire Micha, he would have lost every bit of financial security he had. It would have been…’
‘Impossible,’ Maria finished when Antonio trailed off.
Maria had looked out of the plane window, just as she was doing now from the car. It hurt to even think that she would have chosen the company back then. It seemed inconceivable, but realistically, could she have?
‘Do you think Gio knew that? Do you think that’s why Gio sent him away?’ she had asked Antonio.
‘If you’re asking me whether Gio was somehow doing all this out of the kindness of his own heart? I can’t tell you that. He was a very manipulative, business-focused, difficult man. But speak to Enzo about it one day, he might have a different story to tell.’
She watched the last members of the board enter the building and held her breath. She realised that she was waiting for Micha. But she hadn’t seen him since she arrived, and didn’t know if he had got here before her.
Her door opened and her cousin smiled down at her with a familiar grin.
‘So. Are you ready to fight the family, Maria?’ Antonio asked.
‘I am ready to fight for my family,’ she replied, taking his hand and stepping out of the car.
She should have felt a little bad about turning up at her favourite designer’s studio last night at 11:00 p.m. Instead of going home from the airport, she’d called from the plane and explained what she wanted. Her friend had not disappointed.
She had on a black suit, with a few small adjustments.
Instead of trying to diminish the way that her baby had increased in size, the tailored pantsuit fit her perfectly to show off her pregnancy.
The waist rose a little higher than normal in order, almost, to proclaim it to the world.
The white tucked-in shirt and loose tie made her look effortlessly cool and chic.
And her black Louboutins made her feel powerful.
She was done hiding.
She and Antonio entered the lift that would take them to the boardroom, and he respected her need for silence as she gathered herself, preparing to give the speech that she’d spent all night on.
She hadn’t had much sleep, but she didn’t need it.
She was running on adrenaline and need. The need to do what she should have done eleven years ago.
When they arrived, they were ushered into the boardroom where around a table that sat twenty-four, only two chairs remained empty. Micha sat at the head of the table, his face utterly impassive, hiding his every thought from her.
While the gazes of her family ping-ponged between them, Antonio gestured her towards the seat at the direct opposite end of the table to her husband.
Antonio slipped into the seat beside her and she forced herself to take in, one by one, the faces of the men around the table. She felt Micha’s gaze on her, but she needed to do this first.
Her uncles, her cousins, their sons. Three generations of Gallos and she was the only woman.
She saw expectation on their faces. A little resentment. But a huge amount of satisfaction. As if they’d all been waiting for this from the very moment of her grandfather’s last breath. They were vultures and she hated every single one of them.
Her gaze rested on her father, who sat to her right. The man for whom neither she nor her mother had ever been good enough to capture his interest or attention, until now.
We’ll put you in as CEO.
And he’d thought that would make her fall in line.
He hadn’t ever really seen her, had he? He’d never realised what she had become in spite of him. Powerful, strong, dynamic and damn good at her job. She was so much more than just his daughter. She was a businesswoman. A wife. And a mother.
And it was time to protect her family.
‘We are here to cast a vote of confidence for or against the current CEO of Gallo Group,’ her father said to absolutely no one’s surprise. ‘I don’t see a reason to delay. I shall start the vote. No confidence,’ he said.
And one by one, up the length of the table, votes were cast.
No confidence, no confidence, no confidence.
And through every single vote, Maria held the gaze that Micha had locked on her. His expression, almost one of boredom and unchanging, until Antonio’s vote.
Full confidence.
Micha didn’t lift his eyes from hers, but he did blink. He hadn’t expected that, Maria realised with a spike of sadness for the friendship they’d once had. For the Three Musketeers that they’d once been.
But then it was her turn and every single set of eyes in the room looked to her in rabid expectation.
From a very young age, Micha had become adept at hiding his feelings and he doubted that anyone around the table would see anything more than a kind of lazy boredom. But beneath that outward display, was seething, gut-wrenching tension.
From the moment she’d left for the airport, he’d been reeling.
For years he’d clung to the belief that she’d have done anything for Gallo Group.
That she’d always have chosen it over him.
But he realised in the silence left by her absence, that she’d been right.
He hadn’t given her a choice. Not really.
He’d not had the confidence to trust that she’d pick him, and selectively he had chosen to frame that choice in a way that had set her up to fail.
Because then and even now, he’d not really ever felt that she’d pick him.
And no, she hadn’t fought for him, but he hadn’t fought for her either.
He’d surrendered to his fears and she’d deserved better than that.
Now, his eyes locked on the woman he’d given his heart away to more than eleven years ago and wished he could go back in time to fix it.
‘Maria?’ her father said. ‘As CFO, how do you vote?’
‘With my family,’ she replied, and his heart flatlined.
From the corner of his eye, Micha saw the sickening smirk on her father’s face. He opened his mouth to say something, but Maria cut him off.
‘With Micha Rufina. My husband, the father of my child and the best CEO Gallo Group could have after Gio. With Micha Rufina,’ she repeated before adding, ‘the man I love.’
Gasps of shock and cries of frustration echoed out across the table at the same time as his heart soared back to life. He felt the pump of blood round his entire body and he would have sworn on a Bible that he’d heard his blood whoosh in his veins.
She loved him.
Beneath the table he fisted his hands to stop himself from sweeping everything aside and rushing over to her to take in his arms.
She could have had it. She could have had the whole of Gallo Group. She’d have been CEO. And she’d chosen him. As his brain tried to catch up to the instinctive reaction of his heart, Maria turned to look at the members of the board.
‘None of you, not a single one, has brought in the revenue that Micha has over the last eleven years. He turned Paris around from a middle-of-the-road satellite post to the second-highest revenue earner to Rome. I don’t know what poison my father has been dripping into your ears, but surely, surely, none of you would do anything as monumentally stupid as to remove the man who has consistently built and improved processes and revenue in ways that only financially benefit you?