Chapter Thirteen
ROCCO STEPPED OUT of the car into one of the fashionable residential streets of Milan, outside Leo Zanetti’s house.
He hadn’t been back to this city since discovering the truth about his half-brother, months before.
Too long. Whilst he might never come back to the city to live, he needed to confront the wounds that still festered here.
He’d never run from anything in his whole life, and Rocco realised that in the past few months, that was all he’d been doing. Running.
Partly from his responsibilities, mostly from the truth of his own feelings.
Now was time to make amends, to repair old wounds.
He didn’t condone what his parents had done, especially his father.
But he’d come to understand some things over the past weeks.
The visceral desire to protect one’s child.
The irrationality and intense power of passion and dare he even think it …
love. He’d disdained it, and denied it, but it had come for him nonetheless.
Yet until he’d done some healing, he could never make things right.
His brother had been the first and oldest casualty. One he needed to atone for. His father was still too proud, or perhaps afraid, to attempt to heal the rift personally. Rocco wasn’t, not anymore. He was happy to raise the white flag because Leo couldn’t hurt him more than he’d hurt himself.
Nothing held interest since Lily had walked from his life two weeks earlier.
Whilst he may not have believed in a muse before, he did now.
His creativity had fallen silent. His studio shuttered.
The wood losing all appeal without the force of life that was Lily Rutherford.
He’d failed to understand how much happiness and peace his farfallina had brought to his life.
Now he’d lost part of himself, and he wasn’t sure how to get it back. Whilst Rocco hadn’t yet figured out how that wound could ever be mended by his broken self, he hoped that with Leonardo Zanetti, his brother, it would be the start of a long atonement.
Rocco pressed the buzzer at the front of Zanetti’s house.
He’d had some checks done and knew he was here, although Rocco hadn’t been put through to speak with him when he’d called Circolo’s office, the company Leo had created, risen from the ashes of grief and recrimination after his mother had died.
Rocco understood his brother’s enmity too well. His own world had been rocked and torn apart by the news, and he’d been an adult. He couldn’t imagine what it would have been like for a little boy to lose everything he’d known. The bitterness it would breed.
A woman’s voice answered. One he recognised. Simone Taylor, Leo’s wife. Reports had them together again. Saying peace and harmony had returned to the Zanetti household.
What would that be like? Rocco wasn’t sure he could even imagine; it seemed so distant and unreachable.
‘Rocco Silvestri for Leo Zanetti,’ he said, then waited, the sun hot on his back. Heat prickling his neck. Would Leo turn him away? In similar circumstances Rocco might. But it didn’t matter if Leo refused to speak with him today. Rocco wouldn’t give up trying to reach out, to make amends.
He wasn’t hiding anymore.
After a moment, the gate clicked open and he pushed it, walking across the marbled courtyard to the front door of the stylish home. It opened, and there was his one-time nemesis with his wife, Simone, by his side.
They stood, regarding each other. A stand-off, of sorts.
‘Silvestri.’
‘Zanetti.’
How had he not realised before how similar they were in appearance?
All he’d ever looked at in the past were the differences.
Though he was slightly bulkier and Leo had an indefinable elegance about him that many tried to copy, but which none could truly emulate.
Rocco had hated it once. He admired it now he knew what Leo had had to go through to get here.
Simone gave a smile that he could describe as welcoming. Leo wasn’t similarly afflicted.
‘Rocco, would you like to come inside?’ she asked.
‘Thank you,’ he said, wondering whether the only reason Zanetti had opened the door was due to Simone’s encouragement. No matter. He walked forwards, with Leo only standing back at the last moment. Clearly as much of an invitation as he was going to get.
‘I have things to say,’ Rocco said as Simone led them through the house.
‘You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t,’ Leo replied, ‘but there are no guarantees I’ll accept them.’
‘Understood. In your position, I’d be the same.’
They walked through the elegant home, past a lounge area. His gaze caught on a chair in the corner covered in older fabric. He hesitated. It looked like a vintage Silvestri design.
Leo stopped next to him. ‘It’s from one of my mother’s drawings. I assume our father made it. The fabric’s vintage Tessitore. My wife and that chair got me the deal with them.’
Rocco let Leo rub in his triumph. It was a coup being talked about in business circles.
Whilst his father wouldn’t admit anything, Rocco knew the evidence was almost indisputable that his father had taken some of Leo’s mother’s designs for his own.
Whilst that might be, Rocco had come to recognise it didn’t diminish how Silvestri Furniture had made a name for itself with new designs over the years, including some of his own.
However the company may have started, it had been built by more hands than just his father’s.
Leo and Simone led him to a patio under grapevines at the back of the home overlooking a flourishing garden growing vegetables and olive trees.
This place wasn’t the showpiece he’d expected from a man with Leo’s style credentials, but a family home.
Simone rubbed her hand on Leo’s back as he sat at the table.
He looked up at her in a way that made Rocco want to avert his gaze.
Leo’s expression so full of love and adoration that it was like he was intruding on a private moment.
‘I’ll get you some drinks,’ Simone said, kissing Leo gently on the lips. It wasn’t passionate, just a quiet intimacy, but it had the same impact as if someone had thrust their hand into his chest and torn out his heart.
He’d had that once, and more. Then he’d thrown it away.
‘What do you want, brother?’ Leo asked. His tone was a taunt, but Rocco understood. Whilst Leo wouldn’t have needed it, Rocco had sent a copy of the DNA test to him. He’d deserved the confirmation and vindication, and the ability to use it however he saw fit.
‘You need to believe me. I had no idea. My parents didn’t say anything.’
‘That I can accept. When I told you, you looked like you’d seen a ghost.’
His life had been changed forever. Though, had Leo not confronted him he would never have met Lily, and that was something he could never regret.
‘I’ve been trying to get in touch with you. You’re a hard man to pin down.’
‘I’ve been on my honeymoon. Simone deserved my undivided attention. You weren’t going anywhere. But you didn’t come here to talk about my life,’ Leo said. ‘And I’m unsure how happy I am to have you in my home.’
The thing was, Rocco had come to talk about Leo’s life in some ways. Their past was inextricably entwined.
‘Your reaction’s fair. All I can do is make amends. I have an offer for you.’
Leo cocked his head. Clenched his fists on the tabletop. ‘Buying me off?’
‘Righting wrongs. You were a child. What was done to you and your mother was unconscionable. My father has agreed to acknowledge you publicly, if that’s something you want.’
That was one non-negotiable in his discussions with his parents. It had been difficult for his father to bear after years of enmity, but Leo deserved it. He hadn’t asked to be born. He hadn’t deserved to be rejected.
In the end it was also one of Rocco’s stipulations to begin tentative steps in repairing the relationship with his mother and father.
‘Never. I’m my mother’s son. Her name is all I’ve needed. Your father’s acknowledgement is meaningless. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of thinking it was important to me.’
Rocco nodded. ‘The offer remains. Any humiliation to bear is all his.’
‘Is that all you came to say?’
‘No. I’m proposing a cash settlement with no strings. A payment for the money that should have been owed your mother, to support you, with interest. Plus a bonus. We can talk about the numbers.’
‘I don’t need your money, Silvestri,’ Leo’s voice was a low hiss of warning. It was nothing less than he deserved.
‘I know. Money is a blunt instrument that doesn’t repair the damage done, yet you’re still owed.
That’s the price my parents will pay if they want me to really speak to them again.
If they want to …’ He hesitated. The disclosure was large, all encompassing, and told to a man who was still, for all intents and purposes, his enemy.
‘ …If they want to see their grandchild.’
Leo frowned. ‘Should I congratulate you?’
Rocco shook his head. He deserved nothing, he was utterly unworthy. ‘It’s taught me something. Your story, of triumph over adversity. Our father should have been proud of you and your achievements. That’s what a parent should feel about a child, not make an enemy of them and for that, I’m sorry.’
‘An apology, from the man who’s supposed to be unapologetic.’
Lily had said the same. It was like a knife driven deep inside. Leo wouldn’t realise and therefore would never be able to take satisfaction from the pain inflicted by those few words. But it forced him to be open, vulnerable even though every shred of his being fought against it.
‘When I was a child, I always wished I’d had a sibling. I’d ask my parents why I didn’t have a brother or a sister. Whatever you may think of me, one of my greatest regrets is that an adult’s poor choices meant we never had the chance to know each other growing up.’