bank accounts, everything!’
‘It is the way these things work.’ He was callously unrepentant. ‘As you will find out yourself, no doubt, when your moment arrives.’
Was this how he had treated her mother on that final confrontation? Was this the reason why she never really recovered her self-esteem? How could she have loved this man? How could she have not seen through him?
‘You make me feel sick,’ she breathed.
‘Don’t take the high moral ground with me, signorina!’ he suddenly barked at her. ‘For here you are, living with a man who makes you the scornful talk of all Milan!’ His face was hard again, his accent cold and his opinion of her set in stone. ‘Think before you speak, whether you would prefer me to announce to the world that Marco Bellini’s mistress is Anton Gabrielli’s bastard daughter! And the Mirror Woman is actually her cheap slut of a mother!’
She slapped him—hard. For which part she wasn’t sure, but the hand flew out when he insulted her mother. Standing there facing each other, both emanated intense dislike, and she did not feel even a small hint of remorse for that slap. His hand came up to cover his cheek and his eyes burned vows of revenge on her.
‘I heard what Isabella Bellini did to you last night,’ he said. ‘The whole gallery was buzzing with talk of the incident.’ And he smiled that thin smile again when she turned white. ‘Do you think you will still be here if this situation ever becomes public?’ he posed. ‘Do you think because you can lay claim to a father worth as much as the Bellinis they will turn a blind eye to what you actually are?’
‘How can you stand there and preach over me when your own sins are staring right at you?’ Antonia gasped. ‘And why come here at all, if you don’t care if I speak out? You have a wife. Don’t her feelings count for anything?’
‘My wife is dead,’ he said. ‘You cannot hurt her. But I can most certainly hurt your present position here in this place of luxury if you dare to make our connection public.’
‘But I don’t understand why you should think I’d want to!’ The whole thing had become so bewildering, she couldn’t follow his logic at all.
‘I don’t,’ he said. ‘I merely wanted to be sure that you understand your position here. For you don’t have one.’ He made the point plain. ‘I am no use to you as a lever towards marriage to Bellini. In fact I am most probably your biggest danger to that goal. But I am willing to accept you possess a certain right to lay embarrassment at my doorstep,’ he conceded. ‘And, bearing in mind that one day in the future Bellini is going to tire of you, I accept I owe you some—incentive to keep your silence about me when that time comes.’
‘I want you to leave,’ she announced, beginning to shake on the inside.
‘This is not your home to order me out of,’ he replied, and at last his thin lips did what she suspected they had been wanting to do since he arrived here and twisted into bitter dislike. ‘Just name your own figure…’
Staring at him, she realised he’d had the absolute gall to reach into his inside pocket and take out his cheque-book! He was expecting to pay her off! Anger returned, and she was glad to feel it rise up inside her because it saved her from bursting into tears.
He was standing there with book and pen, waiting for her to say something. So she did. It was really too irresistible not to. ‘Everything you’re worth,’ she announced, then folded her arms and watched his face turn to plastic. Money, it seemed, was all-important to him. Oh—and his reputation, she added, since he really couldn’t cope with the idea of having a twentyfiveyearold mistake come back to haunt him!
Irritation flashed across his face. ‘I don’t think you understand—’
‘My own worth?’ she put in. ‘Or how much you are worth signor?’ She took delight in watching him stiffen. ‘Well, let me put that question straight before there is any more confusion here. You are worth precisely nothing to me—capisce?’ She even used Marco’s way of saying it. ‘So you may write on your cheque “I give my illegitimate daughter Antonia Carson exactly nothing!”’ Her eyes flashed with disgust. ‘Now excuse me,’ she said, and turned and left the room.
If Marco had been there to watch her do it, he would have recognised the move as Antonia showing her contempt.
But Marco wasn’t here. And neither did she intend to be by the time he arrived home. If her own father could view her like that, what hope did she ever have of gaining the respect of anyone while she continued to stay with Marco?
She had to go—and right now, she decided. Before Marco had any chance of convincing her otherwise! And the saddest thing was she knew he could do it. One word, one touch, and she was as weak as a kitten where it involved him.
Carlotta was hovering in the hallway. Her face looked concerned, which made Antonia wonder if the housekeeper had overheard what had been said in the sitting room.
But, ‘Will you see Signor Gabrielli out for me, please?’ was all Antonia said to her. Then walked past her and into the bedroom…
At about the same time that she was confronting her father, Marco was confronting his own across the desk in the family library. All around them stood the results of centuries of time-honoured collecting. The house itself was a national treasure. And out beyond the window spread a whole valley strung with the vines which made the wine the Bellini name was as famous for as its centuries-old corporate leadership.
‘I need your support,’ Marco was saying grimly. ‘I have no wish to feud with my own parents, but push me and I will.’ It was both a threat and a warning.
‘You are expecting me to dictate to your mother?’ the older man asked, then released a laugh of fond derision. ‘Sorry, Marco. But I am too sick and too wise to accept the task.’
But he wasn’t as sick as Marco had expected to find him. ‘You’re looking better,’ he remarked—perhaps belatedly.
‘Thank you for noticing.’ His father thought it belated too. In height, in looks, in every way there could be, Marco was his father’s son. But a few months ago a virus had sucked the life out of Federico Bellini. By the time the doctors had managed to stabilise him he had halved his body weight, lost the use of one lung and damaged his heart, liver and kidneys.
‘New drugs,’ the older man dismissed with the same contempt with which he had always treated the medication which kept him living. ‘Who is this woman your mother sees as such a threat that she publicly offends her?’
Subject of his health over, Marco noted. It was his father’s way. It would be Marco’s way, given the same circumstances. ‘You know who she is,’ he sighed. ‘She’s been living with me for the last year.’
‘You mean you’re still with the same one?’ Federico pretended to be shocked, but Marco wasn’t taken in by it. Though he did allow himself a wry little smile of appreciation for the thrust. ‘No wonder your mother is in a panic.’
‘It isn’t her place to panic.’
‘Then I repeat,’ his father incised, ‘who is she?’ And the accent was most definitely on the who.
Dipping his hand into his inside pocket, it was not a chequebook that Marco retrieved, but a photograph, taken at his best friend’s wedding. He dropped it on the desk in front of his father. Federico picked it up, studied it.
‘Your good taste has never been in question,’ he drawled.
‘But—?’ Marco prompted.
‘I might have been out of circulation for the last year, but I have seen the painting,’ Federico said. ‘She has an exquisite body and sad eyes.’ The photograph came back across the desk.
Odd, Marco noted, that when he could have challenged that comment with the truth he did nothing of the kind.
Because