A Deal for the Di Sione Ring

by Jennifer Hayward

  “I live here. When am I going to see my child?”

  She gave him an even look. “You live on your jet. Even if I was in New York you’d rarely be home. You can come to Paris just as easily.”

  He pushed a hand through his hair. He didn’t like the idea of her being an ocean away, and it didn’t all have to do with the baby. “You don’t have to work, regardless of what we do.”

  “I want to.” Her gaze held his. “All of this, everything you’ve given me, has shown me how much I want this. To stand on my own two feet. To go after my dreams and make my father proud. It won’t be easy with this baby, but I’ll make it work.”

  Reluctant admiration cooled his ire. “Why don’t you just stay?” he said softly. “Don’t throw away the life you’ve started to build. We’ll find you your own place.”

  “Because you’re here.” Her mouth quivered with the admission. “Because I love you. You know I do. It would kill me to see you with other women because I know how it feels to have something so perfect now. To know I can have that with you. And I can’t settle for anything less.”

  His heart stopped in his chest. He inhaled, tried to pull a breath in. “Mina—”

  “Let me go,” she said softly. “Let me be the gladiator you taught me to be.”

  He wished in that moment he had never taught her that damn analogy. That she didn’t have the strength to walk away, because he didn’t have the guts to stop her. Not when the price was opening himself up to all the pain the world had to offer. To the disillusionment in Mina’s eyes when she discovered how empty he really was inside.

  “Okay,” he said. “I’ll have the Grand contact you. When is your flight?”

  The shattered look in her eyes almost unmanned him. “It’s a red-eye tonight. I was going to take a cab. There’s no need for you to drive me.”

  Tonight? A sharp stab of pain lanced through him. “I’ll drive you,” he said roughly. “Tell me when you’re ready.”

  Traffic was surprisingly light for a weekday evening. They got to the airport in record time. Nate pulled the car up in front of the busy departures entrance and got out to help a pale Mina with her luggage.

  “Are you sure you’re fit to travel?”

  “I have the medicine the doctor gave me in my purse.” Mina reached up to press a kiss against his cheek, looking so small and vulnerable it was all he could do not to haul her against him and forbid her to go. “I’ll text you when I get to Celia’s.”

  Don’t let her go. A voice inside his head said it would be the biggest mistake he ever made. But the survival instinct in him was stronger. He opened his mouth to say something, anything, but she was already turning on her heel and walking away.

  She did not look back.

  He got into the car and watched her disappear into the terminal. Thought about that day she’d opened up the door to him in Palermo, a vision in white in her beautiful wedding dress. His for the taking. How he wasn’t man enough to claim the gift that she was.

  * * *

  Nate finished his second Scotch in the quiet, oppressive confines of the penthouse and considered a third. Splayed out in his favorite chair, his eyes on the New York skyline, he tried to block out the delicate scent of Mina’s perfume still lingering in the air. How her presence seemed to be everywhere. In his head. In his heart.

  When the valet had asked after her tonight upon his return, he’d just looked at him dumbly as if the young college student had asked him why the moon was yellow.

  He was in love with her. Had been for weeks. He who didn’t even believe in the concept of the word. Or perhaps, more accurately, rejected it for what it had come to symbolize. Pain, rejection, heartache.

  The emptiness he felt now was different from the constant, recurring version of it that had characterized his life. The knowledge that perhaps he could be whole if he had Mina made it particularly acute. Because he had been happy with her for the first time in his life.

  He’d embarked on this three-act play of a marriage with her with the caveat it wasn’t real. It was all about the end goal—a ring for his grandfather to make him happy in his dying days, and a new life for Mina. When, in fact, everything about them had been real.

  Instead of facing the truth—instead of facing his feelings for Mina head-on—he’d decided to allow the story to run to its inevitable conclusion. Hoping he’d never have to make a conscious decision, an admission about how he felt about his wife.

  Except Mina had called his bluff. He might have taught her how to be a warrior, but she had taught him survivors like them had to fight their inner battles, too. Disarm the defenses they’d constructed to have a chance at a future that transcended their past. In that, she was way ahead of him.

  She had given him precious months with Giovanni, had taught him to acknowledge his feelings would not destroy him—they would free him. And yet he had let her walk away. As if he could exist without her now. Hell. He scowled and reached for the bottle.

  He had the cap off before he stopped, screwed it back on and picked up the phone.

  “Nate.” Surprise edged Alex’s voice. “What’s up?”

  “Can we meet for a drink?”

  “Now?”

  “Now. Tomorrow. Whatever works.”

  A pause. “Sure. You want to meet at that new place in the Ritz?”

  Thirty minutes later, he was sliding into a chair opposite his elder brother in the upscale bar that overlooked Central Park.

  “Nate.” Alex nodded at him in that measured way of his.

  “Alex.”

  As dark-featured as he was, with the same designer stubble and hard edge, the resemblance between the two of them was unmistakable. But it went deeper than the cosmetics—right down to their personalities, which tended toward the moodier side of the spectrum.

  Alex moved his gaze over Nate’s rumpled shirt and hair. “You look like you could use a drink.”

  “Might as well continue my momentum.”

  His brother flagged a waiter and asked for a bottle of Scotch. A wary silence followed.

  “Thank you for coming,” Nate said at last. “How did your mission for Giovanni go?”

  “I have the painting. And a princess.”

  “A princess?”

  “A long story. The painting—the portrait—Giovanni sent me to retrieve is of Lucia, the exiled queen of Isola D’Oro. A very intimate painting of her.” Alex shook his head. “But why Giovanni wanted it...it makes me wonder, might he have a whole past we know nothing about?”

  Nate frowned. “While I was in Sicily I had a PI do a search for the Di Sione family. There is no trace of Giovanni. Not only in Livorno, nowhere in Italy.”

  Alex nodded. “Maybe we’ll find out the truth now that Giovanni has all the pieces of the puzzle back. You managed to retrieve yours?”

  “Yes, the ring. Mina noticed an inscription on the ring. ‘Mistress of my heart—BA.’”

  The waiter arrived with the Scotch. Alex paused, taking this in before he poured them both a hefty portion.

  Alex frowned. “Who is BA?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “I have a feeling,” Alex said, tipping his glass against Nate’s, “you asked me here to talk about more than Giovanni.”

  Nate took a long swallow of Scotch, set the glass down and lifted his gaze to his brother’s. “Mina’s pregnant.”

  Alex’s eyes widened. “Congratulations... I think.”

  “I want to know about Benito,” Nate said abruptly. “What kind of a father was he? What kind of a man was he?”

  “Deeply flawed.” His brother sat back in his chair and brought his Scotch with him. “He and Giovanni had issues we were never privy to. My father refused to work with him at Di Sione Shipping. He started business after failed business Giovanni ke
pt funding but nothing ever stuck.”

  “His partying and drug habits didn’t help, I’m sure.”

  Alex nodded. “My mother cleaned herself up. Exchanged her drug and alcohol habit for a shopping addiction. But we were never a family. Neither of them had any interest in being parents. The nannies raised us.”

  All the pieces started to lock into place in Nate’s head. Why all his siblings had struggled so much.

  “You’re afraid you won’t be a good father,” Alex speculated, his gaze narrowing on his. “Because you never had one. Because my father was the man he was.”

  “Isn’t that the way it goes?” Nate rasped, lifting his glass to his lips. “Lead by example...”

  “Except you have a mother who loves you, something we Di Siones never had. Someone who inspired you to reach for your dreams, who shaped you into the man that you are. Your name is the key to entry to any boardroom on this planet, Nate, and yet I think the big chip you carry around on your shoulder affects your self-perception.” He pointed his glass at Nate. “I should know, I carry one myself.”

  Nate blinked. Absorbed his brother’s words. “When I reached out to you when I started at Di Sione, I thought we had a lot in common, you and I. But you blew me off. Acted as if I wasn’t fit to breathe the same air as you.”

  “It was difficult for me,” he conceded. “You were a reminder of that night...the night my parents died. Of my own failure. To you. Keeping you a secret might have been easier for me but I’m sure it was hell on you. Seeing you there...watching my grandfather attempting to atone for my sins was difficult.”

  Nate shook his head. “I was never comfortable with that. I think his vaulting me ahead in the company was Giovanni’s way of making up for the past. But I never wanted it.”

  “I know. But I couldn’t handle it then. I was young and anger was a lot easier to feel than guilt. Hell, it still is.”

  Nate was silent for a long moment. “I’m sorry,” he said finally, “that it worked out that way.”

  Alex shook his head. “It’s me who should be apologizing. You reached out to me when you needed an ally and I wasn’t there for you. I regret that now. I regret a lot of things.”

  Nate sat back and absorbed the epiphany that had just transpired. How everything you thought you knew was, in fact, not so clear-cut. That life had layers you had to burrow through to find the truth. How his self-perception was indeed flawed.

  “Life is complex,” he said. “Relationships are complex.”

  Alex lifted his glass in a toast, a cynical smile curving his lips. “Welcome to the Di Siones. The most dysfunctional clan on the planet.”

  Something shifted inside of Nate as he touched his glass to his brother’s. A hope, perhaps, that the future could be different.

  “When do I get to meet Mina?”

  “I’m not sure that’s going to happen.” He set his glass down and flicked his brother a glance. “She’s on a plane to Paris as we speak.”

  “You want to talk about it?”

  “You got all night?”

  His brother nodded toward the Scotch. “Why do you think I got a bottle?”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  MINA FIGURED GLADIATORS were allowed to cry if they had a really, really good reason for it.

  Walking away from the man you loved while he stood there and watched you do it seemed worthy enough, particularly when the end of your affair had driven home how very deluded you were. How the emotions you’d been so convinced the man in question felt for you had been nothing more than a display of honor on his part, the very same honor he’d been demonstrating from the beginning. And weren’t you stupid to have thought it was more than that?

  She had done the right thing, she told herself on the long flight from New York to Paris on which she’d miraculously been upgraded, her husband’s influence no doubt. She had tried to see the practicality of remaining married to Nate that last week with him, putting her head down at work and burying herself in her assignments. But watching Nate struggle to pretend he was happy about becoming a father and permanent husband when it was so clearly anathema to him had been too painful to stand.

  She would get over Nate in time. But if she’d stayed, he would have claimed more and more of her soul every day, until he’d had all of her. Until it would have been impossible for her to leave. Both of them would have begun to hate each other for what they wanted and could never have.

  She thought she’d pretty much gotten herself together by the time Celia picked her up at the airport and drove her home to her beautiful, old apartment in the heart of Paris. But after her best friend had demanded a full recap, the tears had started anew.

  “Don’t waste any more time on him,” Celia had stated in that blunt, very French way of hers. “Men are like seasons. They come and they go. I have my book club this week. Read the book, enjoy some good gossip and it will be all better.”

  Mina read the book, lounged on Celia’s sofa and ate copious amounts of cheese and crackers to keep the nausea at bay. By the time the book club was assembled in Celia’s tiny salon on Monday, crowded into every remaining space, she was doing a better job at hiding her heartbreak.

  Brigitte, the last remaining member of the group, was arriving late from a work event. When the buzzer went off at seven, Celia opened the door, still talking, her words dying on her lips when she saw who it was. The blood drained from Mina’s face.

  “This is a book club,” Celia said to Nate, recovering faster than Mina did. “No men allowed.”

  Nate blinked. “What book are you reading?”

  “The Age of Innocence.”

  “Can’t help you there.” He pointed the bouquet of fresh flowers he held at Mina. “I was hoping I could take you for dinner.”

  Dinner? He had somehow materialized in Paris and wanted her to go to dinner with him? She stared at the man she’d cried too many tears over, dark and dangerous in jeans and a leather jacket.

  Swallowing hard, she found her voice. “I’m afraid I’m not in the market for a knight in shining armor.”

  His gaze speared hers. “How about a man who deeply regrets watching the best thing that’s ever happened to him walk out of his life? Who wants to replay this from the beginning, this time for real? No one saving anyone, Mina, no Hollywood reenactments, just the raw, unadulterated truth.”

  Her breath caught in her throat. The girl beside her set her paperback down. “This is better than the book.”

  “You don’t want him,” the beautiful blonde on her other side murmured, “I’ll take him.”

  That brought Mina to her feet. She collected her wrap from the sofa and crossed the room to Nate on legs that felt like spaghetti. He’d missed a button on his shirt, heavy dark stubble covered his jaw and the slightly askew, spiky hairstyle he wore looked a bit...undone.

  Her heart squeezed. Nate handed the flowers to Celia with his most charming smile. “Would you?”

  “Oui,” she said curtly, giving him a long look. “You hurt her. I hurt you.”

  Nate captured Mina’s hand in his in the car that sat waiting for them at the entrance. Guard your heart, she told herself. You haven’t heard what he has to say yet. But the tense, hard line of her husband’s jaw kept her palm in his. She had never seen Nate nervous. Ever.

  They pulled up in front of the Grand Paris a short time later. A trademark glass elevator sent them swishing to Nate’s rooftop penthouse. Nate guided her out onto the terrace where a table was set for two, a sparkling view of Paris as a backdrop.

  Mina sank down on one of the sofas in the lounge area, her gaze on her husband’s tense face. “What did you mean by us ‘replaying this from the beginning’?”

  He sat down beside her. “You forgot ‘the raw, unadulterated truth.’”

  “Nate...”

 
He expelled a breath. “When I was five I asked my mother why I didn’t have a father like all the other kids I knew. She told me mine had another family—that he loved me very much, but he couldn’t take care of us both. I accepted that with the innocence of a five-year-old, but I kept asking when he was going to come visit. Eventually I stopped when he never came.

  “The night my mother took me to my father’s house was the first time I’d met him. I was wary, excited, curious—every emotion in the book. I had this picture of him in my head. Then he opened the door, took one look at my mother and me and told us to get off his property.”

  She laced her fingers through his and squeezed.

  “My mother begged him to listen, to help us. He told her to stop lying. That she was a slut who wanted to take his money with a child that wasn’t his.”

  Her jaw dropped open. “How could he do that?”

  “He wasn’t in his right mind. Anna came to the door, all hell broke loose. My mother was scared. We left and went home. I remember thinking, was he lying, had my mother lied to me? She put me to bed. I could hear her crying. It hurt so much I willed myself to sleep. I woke up in the middle of the night, my bed covered in vomit.”

  She tightened her fingers around his, her heart breaking for him.

  “I’m not telling you this for your pity. I’m telling you this because I watched my mother, the strongest person I know, die that night. She worked two jobs to put food on the table. She kept our family in one piece, but she was never the same person after that. She still loved him.”

  “And you decided you would never make yourself that vulnerable to a woman.”

  “To anyone. I quit school, I worked the streets with a gang. I was headed for a bad place when Alex came and found me. I had a choice to choose the right or wrong path then and luckily I had Giovanni to guide me. I channeled my obsession with proving my father wrong about me into my career. I would become so successful no one could ignore me. But my first year at Di Sione Shipping wasn’t easy. I felt out of my depth. Adrift in a foreign world.

  “Alex and I—we seemed cut from the same cloth. Not the worlds we lived in, of course, but we were both struggling with our pasts—wounded beasts trying to make ourselves into warriors. I approached him one night and asked him out for a beer. He looked at me as if I were nothing.”