Chapter Twelve
TO MIRA’S SHOCK—and Axel’s—they discovered they were Otto’s beneficiaries.
Before Otto had learned of Joy’s existence, all the properties and assets that he had held jointly with Mira’s mother were designated to go to Mira.
He had earmarked Vorstoben for Axel. That was the real reason he had been so affronted when Axel talked of leaving a few years ago.
Otto had planned to leave the company to him, anyway.
Otto had felt that if his life’s work was going to someone who was not his blood, he ought to be able to choose who that recipient was. He had chosen Axel.
Otto had not been a man who simply gave things away, however. He had had to extract acts of loyalty first.
And, once he learned there was a child with his DNA, he had seen a chance to leave something to her while still allowing Axel to assume control.
Processing all of these minute details was emotionally taxing. So was the very fact of his death. Mira didn’t imagine she would have reconciled with Otto in any way. She had never wanted to see him again, but she still mourned what might have been.
And she was curious about Otto’s daughter, Joy, whom she finally met at his service. Joy was genuinely beautiful, very fit yet curvy and quick to smile. She and Axel made a stunning couple.
Mira was envious of her for having Axel to lean on. For more than two weeks, she had been wallowing in that other side of love’s coin: hatred.
Today, after saying a few words at the service that had felt like blatant falsehoods, she was forced to play hostess in the nearby reception hall, accepting condolences and continuing the charade that Otto had been her father.
She missed Rocco. He had always been adept at turning a conversation from rocky waters, or extracting her from a bore. She had always felt bolstered when his hand was in the middle of her back, or his fingers casually linked with hers.
She was chatting with Joy while staring longingly toward the door, wishing she could be the first to leave, not the last, when she realized who that was in the black suit.
“Oh, my God.” She nearly dropped her plate of untouched finger foods.
“Who is he?” Joy followed her gaze to where Rocco had spotted her and was making a beeline toward her.
“Would you get Axel for me, please?” Mira began to shake. She set down the food before it skated off the plate, then gulped some cool wine to wet the back of her throat.
“Rocco,” she said tightly as he came close enough. “Here to gloat?”
“No, cara. I came for you.”
She choked on her disbelief.
“I know I hurt you very deeply, but I couldn’t let you think I don’t care.” The tenderness in his eyes and the compassion in his voice nearly undid her. “Is there anything I can do to help you?”
“Leave me alone?” she suggested, voice striking a higher octave.
“I don’t want you to be alone, Mira,” he said with quiet vehemence. “I don’t think you want that, either. I think you want to be with me as badly as I want you with me.”
“Which is not at all because I don’t want to be with a liar,” she hissed, conscious of the fact people were milling nearby.
“One omission. Everything else between us was real.”
“How can you say that?” she countered.
“What should I have done?” he asked, in a low, heated tone. “Ignored you that first day? I couldn’t. There was no right answer, cara.” He held out a palm.
She shook her head, not wanting to see his side of it because she might start to crumble and let him back into her heart.
His gaze lifted to a point behind her shoulder and flared with animosity.
“Problem?” Axel arrived beside her with an anxious-looking Joy.
“Axel has taken over at Vorstoben,” Mira told Rocco. “It’s all his now, so I’m no use to you. In fact,” she continued in a quavering voice. “Now that Otto is dead, you’re no use to me.”
It was a spiteful thing to say, blurted in an effort to save face.
His mouth tightened and his cheek ticked.
“I’d like to discuss a truce,” Axel said, forcing Rocco to look at him. “Let’s find my assistant and set up a date for discussions.”
Axel was being kind. Perhaps Rocco walked away for the same reason. She had essentially told him to get lost, but she was bereft as he turned his back on her.
“Shall we fix our lipstick?” Joy suggested.
Mira’s mouth was quivering. She could feel it.
She let Joy guide her into the ladies’ room, where she hid in a stall, toilet paper pressed to her eyes, until Joy assured her Rocco was gone.
Mira was upset for days after seeing Rocco. Flowers arrived without a card and she threw them out without bringing them inside her apartment, certain they were from him. She tried to push him from her mind completely, but she kept hearing his voice.
I came for you. I couldn’t let you think I don’t care. I don’t want you to be alone.
Neither did she. And it hurt that he knew her well enough to know that.
I think you want to be with me as badly as I want you with me.
She couldn’t allow herself to believe that, even though she couldn’t imagine what his motives were for coming all this way to say it. Had he fallen out with Silvio and needed her money? What did he want from her?
She might have descended back into her pajamas on the sofa if she hadn’t been consumed by the business of executing Otto’s will.
She could have left everything in the hands of a lawyer, but she was unemployed and wanted a last look for anything that might have belonged to her mother.
She was still angry with Trude for hiding her paternity, but she couldn’t help thinking she might find some explanation—some justification—for her mother’s secrecy among the flotsam of Otto’s effects.
After Joy’s kindness at the service, Mira was also determined that Otto’s “real” daughter have something from Otto’s estate. Joy had only met Otto once and, according to Axel, Otto had been his bastard self toward her—which was why Joy insisted she didn’t want anything.
Mira could relate. It was only right, though. Promises had been made in the marriage contract that had yet to be fulfilled.
She struck on the perfect solution when she was preparing Otto’s mansion for sale.
Aside from the house itself, there wasn’t much here that had belonged to Mira’s mother.
Mira had taken what she had wanted after her mother had passed and Otto had put more of his own stamp on his living space.
Which was to say, he had hired a decorator to change out the furniture and a curator to fill it with tasteful pieces of art that Mira had no particular affection for.
They were good investments, though. If Joy didn’t want to display them in her home with Axel, he could put them on the walls of the Vorstoben offices. Mira invited them to come look at them and make decisions before she had them packaged and removed.
It felt very unsettling to pick over someone’s life this way, though. Ultimately, Otto had been a stranger to her. Now, she understood why he hadn’t been the father she longed for, but it still hurt that she had never had one.
She was in the study, sorting through documents, when she heard the doorbell ring.
Axel and Joy were early, she thought with a glance at the antique clock on the mantel.
Either that or it was someone from the property agent.
They had said something about hiring someone to stage the house before it was photographed and listed.
There were so many bits of red tape in closing out a man’s life that Mira was barely keeping up.
She stepped into the adjacent powder room to wash her hands and came back to see Winola was showing a man into the study.
His silver hair was trimmed short, his jaw shaven clean.
He was tall and trim for his sixtysomething years and wore a razor-sharp suit with a blue striped tie.
He held his hat in his hands and searched her face in a way that reached so deeply into her chest, she had to look away.
But she recognized him. Of course, she did. She’d looked him up. Once. Briefly. Just to see what the man who’d made her looked like. They didn’t look a lot alike, but now she knew where she got her nose.
“Herr Silvio Galetti?” Winola said, perhaps sensing Mira’s ambivalent reaction.
Mira nodded, trying to recover from her shock.
“I was expecting someone else, but please come in.” Her hand trembled as she waved at the sofa.
“May I bring you anything?” Winola asked.
“Coffee, please.” Mira was already wired from too much caffeine. What did one more matter?
She closed the door behind Winola, then joined Silvio where he stood in front of the dark green brocade sofa. She habitually chose the least comfortable chair for herself, the one with wooden arms that she had always perched on when talking to Otto in this room.
“I didn’t expect I’d find you here,” Silvio said, waiting to sit until she did.
He angled to face her. His English held the hint of an Australian accent overlaying the subtle musicality of Italian.
“I didn’t know how best to reach you. I came here to see if anyone could direct me. Thank you for seeing me.”
“Rocco has my number. You could have got it from him.” She folded her icy hands in her lap.
“Rocco isn’t taking my calls. And I wanted to see you.” His eyebrows pulled into a pained look while his mouth took on a wistful smile. “You look so much like your mother.”
A pang of lightning struck her heart. She swallowed and brushed at an invisible wrinkle in her pant leg.
For a moment, there was only the tick of the clock, the one Winola had realized had stopped so she’d rewound it this morning.
“I told my wife,” Silvio said. He was sliding the brim of his hat through his fingers in a slow circle. “I would like to tell my children, but I wanted to speak with you first, so you’re prepared if they reach out. I want to tell them whether you would welcome that or not.”