Chapter Eleven
Chapter Eleven
E nzo R ossetti stalked through the foyer of Gallo Group headquarters in Rome, utterly unaware that he was retracing Erin’s earlier footsteps, four weeks to the day. The soothing tones of rose gold and cream had no impact on the furious Italian whatsoever.
Nothing had dulled the edge of his frustration. Ever since Erin had left, despite his words, Gio Gallo’s name had been an earworm in his mind and despite all his intentions to ignore the man’s foolish interference in his life, Enzo couldn’t let it alone.
A member of Gallo Group staff pointed him towards an elevator with doors open and waiting. He’d always known about Gio Gallo. When he’d been younger, he’d looked for any piece of information he could find about the ruthless, determined man who had cut Enzo and his mother from his life.
Harsh words to describe his grandfather, but no less true.
Gio had severed all financial, emotional, and legal connections between him and his daughter because he had disliked her choice of husband.
Whether the man had been right about Luca Rossetti or not, that Gio Gallo had chosen to abdicate his responsibilities as a father, as a grandfather, was unnatural .
And feeling an unusual spurt of pride for his mother, Enzo was pleased that she had defied Gio’s overly zealous rule. She wasn’t the only one—there was apparently a cousin who had also been disinherited five years ago for exactly the same crime.
Marriage.
So why on earth had Gio sought to engineer his ?
Was he, in his dotage, finally regretting his actions? Enzo scoffed. He doubted it.
But whatever his reasoning, why had he chosen Erin?
The latter, of course, was irrelevant and he told himself as he rose to the uppermost floor of the impressive building that he didn’t care. He stepped out into a small but luxurious waiting room where an assistant sat behind a large ornate desk, attacking a keyboard with alarmingly red nails.
‘Please take a seat,’ she said without deigning to look up or even pause whatever war she was waging.
He barked out a laugh.
‘ No, grazie ,’ Enzo replied, walking straight over to the large doors bearing his grandfather’s name, opening them and continuing on into the room.
The old man who was sitting behind the desk was much smaller than Enzo had imagined.
The research he’d done had given Enzo the impression of height and width.
But Enzo’s fury began to ebb at the sight of slight shoulders and papery skin.
Despite that, there was nothing aged about his gaze.
The warning there was bright, clear, and fiercely intelligent.
‘This is a rather impetuous start to our relationship,’ Gio Gallo observed.
‘We don’t have a relationship,’ Enzo hit back.
Gio shrugged as if his objection was irrelevant.
‘Coffee?’
‘Black.’
Gio stared back at him as if that were unnecessary information, as if no one worthy of his time would take it any other way.
Enzo didn’t want or need any more coffee, but it might be better to have something to occupy his hands so that he couldn’t throttle the old man.
And just like that, all his plans, his carefully constructed verbal attacks burned to ash in his mind and he was left with only one question. The question that had driven him here, despite his absolute conviction that he would have nothing to do with any of them ever again.
‘Why did you do it?’
‘I thought you would make a good match. She is perfect for you,’ Gio replied without shame or prevarication; no denial or pretence as to not knowing what they were talking about. Enzo could respect at least that much. But the answer?
Enzo scoffed. Perfect?
‘Why did you do it?’ he asked again. Because despite his words, Gio had not answered the question.
Gio glared mutinously at him and Enzo glared back, finally dropping the mask of the careless playboy who would have thrown his hands up into the air and given up, made a joke, laughed it off.
‘Ahhh. There you are,’ Gio said.
Enzo refused to be unnerved by his words, or insight into his personality, instead clinging to the silence that Gio would fill eventually. They always did.
‘Did she get to meet you? The real you?’ Gio asked.
Enzo clenched his teeth together.
‘Mmm. I thought she might. She’s really quite an amazing young woman.’
Something about the proprietary way he spoke of Erin grated on him painfully.
‘ You marry her then.’
Gio smiled at that. A near laugh. Apparently, that was as far as the man got to humour.
The assistant brought in two espressos and left just as quickly and quietly.
‘That’s not part of the plan.’
‘What plan? No games. No mysterious manipulations. Why do all this?’
‘Because you are family.’
‘Certainly not legally,’ Enzo pointed out.
‘My issues with your mother should never have involved you and for that I am regretful. I...made a mistake. And you paid for it. You appear, by your itinerant ways, to still be paying for it.’
Not sorry. Not at fault. He would have gone mad growing up with this man in his life, Enzo was sure. But still...there was an acknowledgement there that threatened to soften him, to ease his anger.
‘She reached out to me,’ Gio said, his piercing gaze pinned on Enzo.
‘Erin?’
Gio arched an eyebrow.
‘Your mother,’ he clarified.
Enzo blinked.
‘We talked.’
‘Good for you,’ Enzo said, knocking back the espresso and preparing to leave. This wasn’t going as he’d wanted and he knew when to cut his losses.
‘You are a strange combination of both of your parents,’ Gio observed.
‘You don’t get to say that.’
‘You are stubborn like your mother, and a coward like your father.’
‘How dare you!’
The accusation roared from deep within Enzo to a place he’d rarely visited.
‘I don’t really have the luxury of time, or small talk, so I will do us both the favour of getting to the point,’ Gio said cryptically. ‘Unlike your mother, who clung desperately to whatever it was she wanted, you seem intent on throwing it all away. I’m guessing that’s your father’s influence.’
Shock whipped through Enzo like lightning. He wanted to argue, but he couldn’t. He wanted to shout, but nothing came out. For a moment, they just stared at each other, as all the walls and barriers Enzo had used to protect himself began to crumble.
‘No small talk, huh?’
‘No, boy. No small talk. You cannot continue to live your life surfing the edges of everything you want.’
‘I’m more than you think, old man.’
‘Oh, yes, I know. I know about the secret investment company, the admittedly impressive wealth. You get that from me, by the way.’
‘ Madonna mia ,’ Enzo exclaimed in frustration.
‘It’s not a life. What you had. What you thought you enjoyed,’ Enzo said. ‘You ran away from anything permanent in your life and I wanted you to experience someone you couldn’t shuck off so easily.’
‘She would have left the moment she got what she wanted,’ Enzo pointed out bitterly.
‘I believed she would change her mind.’
Enzo shook his head, speechless at the man’s presumption, hurting and furious that she hadn’t changed her mind. That she hadn’t stayed.
‘I believed that she was someone who wouldn’t abandon you or leave you,’ Gio insisted.
‘You had to pay her!’ Enzo yelled, his anger loud and furious in the stillness of the room as he ripped open the wound that hid in his heart of hearts.
Because he’d wanted Erin to be that woman.
He’d wanted Erin to love him and not leave him, or abandon him.
He’d wanted her to love him for himself, without conditions, strings, or bribes. Because damn it, he’d fallen for her.
‘You should know that she dropped her claim on the publishing company,’ Gio announced, probably aware of the impact it would have.
‘What?’ Enzo asked, shock tensing every muscle in his body.
‘She told me to keep it. She chose you.’
‘When?’
‘Does it matter?’
Very much.
Not waiting for an answer, Gio pressed on. ‘I received an email two weeks ago. Would you like to see it?’
Yes.
‘No.’
Three weeks ago? That was before the party. That was before...
Gio checked his watch.
‘I have a meeting.’
Enzo was being dismissed and entirely unsatisfied by his encounter, wanted to argue.
‘I—’
‘We are done here. For now. I would...’ And for the first time since meeting his grandfather, Enzo sensed the smallest glimmer of vulnerability. ‘I would like to continue to meet. Occasionally. When you are in Italy.’
Enzo glared at his grandfather, his world seesawing around him, and unsure whether to lash out or cry out. He swallowed.
‘I don’t know.’
‘Well, let me know when you do. You may leave.’
Enzo stood there for a full minute, but not once did his grandfather look up or acknowledge him. On the way out of Gio’s office, he thought he saw an IV stand, with bags, half hidden behind the door that gave him pause.
‘Get out,’ Gallo commanded, having noticed his hesitancy.
And oddly enough, Enzo bowed to his grandfather’s authority. Because for the first time since Erin had left, the little voice that had told him he had made a mistake had become a shout.
Erin looked out at the grey, windswept beach, so different from the near tropical colours of the Amalfi coast, and shrugged into her coat and scarf.
An unseasonal cold snap had descended, fitting Erin’s mood better, but she couldn’t tell whether she felt better or worse to be so far removed from what she’d shared with Enzo.
She’d spent a week or so miserably haunting the small flat in London she’d rented after finishing university, but she’d needed to come home . Being in Italy and France had made her realise how much she’d missed it. Not London, but Falmouth. How much she’d missed her mother.
Arla Carter had left her alone for nearly two days before sitting her down at the beaten-up dining table with a cup of tea, nearly as strong as coffee, and told her to ‘spill’.