paused, and Marco knew he was not relishing the task set before him.
Sierra sat with her hands folded in her lap, her chin held high, her gaze direct and yet giving nothing away. Her face looked like a perfect icy mask. ‘Could you please tell me what they are, Signor di Santis?’ she asked when di Santis seemed disinclined to continue.
The sound of her voice, after seven years’ silence, struck Marco like a fist to the gut. Suddenly he was breathless. Low, musical, clear. And yet without the innocent, childish hesitation of seven years ago. She spoke with an assurance she hadn’t possessed before, a confidence the years had given her, and somehow this knowledge felt like an insult, a slap in his face. She’d become someone else, someone stronger perhaps, without him.
‘Of course, Signorina Rocci.’ Di Santis gave another apologetic smile. ‘I can go through the particulars, but in essence your father left the bulk of his estate and business to Signor Ferranti.’
Marco swung his gaze to her pale face, waiting for her reaction. The shock, the regret, the acknowledgement of her own guilt, the realisation of how much she’d chosen to lose. Something.
He got nothing.
Sierra merely nodded, her face composed, expressionless. ‘The bulk?’ she clarified quietly. ‘But not all?’
At her question Marco felt a savage stab of rage, a fury he’d thought he’d put behind him years ago. So she was going to be mercenary? After abandoning her family and fiancé, offering no contact for seven long years despite her parents’ distress and grief and continued appeals, she still wanted to know how much she’d get.
‘No, not all, Signorina Rocci,’ di Santis said quietly. He looked embarrassed. ‘Your father left you some of your mother’s jewellery, some pieces passed down through her family.’
Sierra bowed her head, a strand of dark blond hair falling from her chignon to rest against her cheek. Marco couldn’t see her expression, couldn’t tell if she was overcome with remorse or rage at being left so little. Trinkets, Arturo had called them. A pearl necklace, a sapphire brooch. Nothing too valuable, but in his generosity Arturo had wanted his daughter to have her mother’s things.
Sierra raised her eyes and Marco saw that her eyes glistened with tears. ‘Thank you,’ she said quietly. ‘Do you have them here?’
‘I do...’ Di Santis fumbled for a velvet pouch on his desk. ‘Here they are. Your father left them into my safekeeping a while ago, when he realised...’ He trailed off, and Sierra made no response.
When he realised he was dying, Marco filled in silently. Had the woman no heart at all? She seemed utterly unmoved by the fact that both her parents had died in her absence, both their hearts broken by their daughter’s running away. The only thing that had brought her to tears was knowing she’d get nothing more than a handful of baubles.
‘They won’t be worth much, on the open market,’ Marco said. His voice came out loud and terse, each word bitten off. Sierra’s gaze moved to him and he felt a deep jolt in his chest at the way she looked at him, her gaze opaque and fathomless. As if she were looking at a complete stranger, and one she was utterly indifferent to.
‘Is there anything else I need to know?’ Sierra asked. She’d turned back to the lawyer, effectively dismissing Marco.
‘I can read the will in its entirety...’
‘That won’t be necessary.’ Her voice was low, soft. ‘Thank you for my mother’s jewels.’ She rose from the chair in one elegantly fluid movement, and Marco realised she was leaving. After seven years of waiting, wondering, wanting a moment where it all finally made sense, he got nothing.
Sierra didn’t even look at him as she left the room.
* * *
Sierra’s breath came out in a shudder as she left the lawyer’s office. Her legs trembled and her hands were clenched so tightly around the little velvet pouch that her knuckles ached.
It wasn’t until she was out on the street that her breathing started to return to normal, and it took another twenty minutes of driving out of Palermo, navigating the endless snarl of traffic and knowing she’d left Marco Ferranti far behind, before she felt the tension begin to unknot from her shoulders.
The busy city streets gave way to dusty roads that wound up to the hill towns high above Palermo, the Mediterranean glittering blue-green as she drove towards the Nebrodi mountains, and the villa where her mother was buried. When di Santis had rung her, she’d thought about not going to Sicily at all, and then she’d thought about simply going to his office and returning to London on the very same day. She had nothing left in Sicily now.
But then she’d reminded herself that her father couldn’t hurt her any longer, that Sicily was a place of ghosts and memories, and not of threats. She’d forgotten about Marco Ferranti.
A trembling laugh escaped her as she shook her head wryly. She hadn’t forgotten about Marco; she didn’t think she could ever do that. She’d simply underestimated the effect he’d have on her after seven years of thankfully numbing distance.
When she’d first caught sight of him in the office, wearing an expensive silk suit and reeking of power and privilege, looking as devastatingly attractive as he had seven years ago but colder now, so much colder, her whole body had trembled. Fortunately she’d got herself under control before Marco had swung that penetrating iron-grey gaze towards her. She had forced herself not to look at him.
She had no idea how he felt about her seven years on. Hatred or indifference, did it really matter? She’d made the right decision by running away the night before her wedding. She’d never regret it. Watching from afar as Marco Ferranti became more ingrained in Rocci Enterprises, always at her father’s side and groomed to be his next-in-line, told her all she needed to know about the man.
The road twisted and turned as it climbed higher into the mountains, the air sharper and colder, scented with pine. The hazy blue sky she’d left in Palermo was now dark with angry-looking clouds, and when Sierra parked the car in front of the villa’s locked gates she heard a distant rumble of thunder.
She shivered slightly even though the air was warm; the wind was picking up, the sirocco that blew from North Africa and promised a storm. The pine trees towered above her, the mountains seeming to crowd her in. She’d spent most of her childhood at this villa, and while she’d loved the beauty and peace of its isolated position high above the nearest hill town, the place held too many hard memories for her to have any real affection for it.
Standing by the window as dread seeped into her stomach when she saw her father’s car drive up the winding lane. Fear clenching her stomach hard as she heard his thunderous voice. Cringing as she heard her mother’s placating or pleading response. No, she definitely didn’t have good memories of here.
But she wouldn’t stay long now. She’d see her mother’s grave, pay her respects and then return to Palermo, where she’d booked into a budget hotel. By this time tomorrow she’d be back in London, and she’d never come to Sicily again.
Quickly, Sierra walked along the high stone wall that surrounded the estate. She knew the property like her own hand; she and her mother had always stayed here until Arturo called them into service, to play-act at being the perfect family for various engagements or openings of the Rocci hotels that now graced much of the globe. Her mother had lived for her husband’s summons; Sierra had dreaded them.
Away from the road she knew the wall had crumbled in places, creating a gap low enough for her to climb over. She doubted her father had seen to repairs in the last seven years; she wondered if he’d come to the villa at all. He’d preferred to live his own life in Palermo except when he needed his wife and daughter to play at happy families for the media.
She stepped into the shelter of a dense thicket of pine trees, the world falling to darkness as the trees overhead shut out any remnant of sunlight. Thunder rumbled again, and the branches snagged on her silk blouse and narrow skirt, neither a good choice for walking through woods