by Day Leclaire
Curled within his dragon arms was a beautiful princess with flowing hair of richest ebony. A princess whose jet-dark eyes mirrored love and adoration for the creature who held her. A princess who looked exactly like his wife. The dragon’s tail wrapped around her, and clinging from his tail was an adorable hatchling. The babe dangled from the very tip by his sharp teeth, a mischievous expression painted across his tiny dragon face.
Stefano.
A memory stirred, something Shayla had said at the suite before they’d been interrupted by the phone call about the mine. He’d just finished offering her the apartment, or a house, or a condo, offering her the freedom he’d have given anything to withhold from her. And she’d said . . . His brow wrinkled in concentration.
She’d said, “What if I told you I don’t want to move? That I want to stay with you. Would you force us to go?” There had been a tremulous smile on her mouth and a look in her eyes . . .
That’s when he knew, knew without hesitation or doubt. And he also knew what he had to do about it.
“What are we all doing here, Draco?” Sev demanded. He poured two cups of coffee before returning to his seat at the Dantes’ conference table. He handed one of the cups to his wife and took a long swallow from the other. “You have the entire family gathered and we’ve been sitting twiddling our thumbs for the past twenty minutes waiting for you to get to it.”
As it turned out, Draco hadn’t flown to Atlanta as planned. It hadn’t been necessary, not with Shayla and Stefano on their way home. Instead, he’d called an emergency meeting of the family. “Then you’ve answered your own question, haven’t you, Sev?” he responded coolly. “You’re twiddling your thumbs.”
“Listen up, smart guy. I have better things to do with my time—”
“No, you don’t.” Draco’s gaze landed on each of them in turn—brothers, sister, cousins, wives, parents, grandparents, before settling on Primo. “There are a lot of issues to resolve, both old and new. And by God, every last one of them is going to be resolved today.”
His brother, Rafe, grinned at his wife, Larkin. “I get chills when he turns all tough and domineering, don’t you?”
“Stuff it,” Draco snapped, but his smile stole some of the sting from his words. He checked his watch, his cell phone, then shot off a quick text message. Behind him the door opened and Juice stepped in.
“They landed almost an hour ago,” he announced in his rumbling basso profundo voice. “Should be here any minute.”
“Thanks,” Draco said. “Help yourself to coffee and take a seat wherever you can find one.”
“Hey, Juice.” Luc greeted his former employee with a huge grin. “What are you doing here?”
The tank-size man swallowed Luc’s hand in his. “Have some information your brother would like me to share with you all.”
No sooner had he helped himself to coffee than the door opened again. Finally. Finally, she’d arrived. Shayla swept into the conference room, her chin set to combat mode. To Draco’s amusement it perfectly matched the tilt of Leticia’s chin.
“Welcome home,” he murmured for her ears alone. He scooped up his son, who pumped his little legs and burbled in baby pleasure. “I’ve missed you.” His gaze fell on Shayla’s grandmother. “Or most of you.”
Leticia sniffed, took one of the empty chairs near his and glared at him. “Well? The least you can do is offer me some tea. It’s been a long flight and though I may not look it, I’m not a young woman.”
“I’ll get it,” Shayla said.
She hadn’t responded to his greeting and he took that to mean there were still a lot of roadblocks between them. Well, he’d see what he could do about knocking a few of them down. As soon as his wife and—heaven help him—grandmother-in-law were seated and supplied with drinks, he began.
“We’re going to start with Leticia Charleston, since most of this is her story.” He fixed his gaze on her and went straight for the jugular. “You’ve had it in for the Dantes since day one. I can understand why you blame us for your bankruptcy, although you and I both know the depletion of your mines was the true culprit. But there’s more, isn’t there? More to your wanting revenge.”
She didn’t bother arguing the point. She simply inclined her head in agreement and said, “It was because of Dominic Dante.”
“Dad?” Sev said, surging to his feet. Anger ripped through that single word and Draco could tell it took every ounce of restraint to keep his cousin from calling Leticia an unforgivable name. Beside him, Primo and Nonna joined hands and shifted closer to one another. “What the hell are you talking about? How could Dad have anything to do with this mess?”
“Sev, please,” Francesca murmured, tugging her husband back into his seat. “Let’s hear her out.”
Leticia waited until the room fell silent again. “He flew out to meet with my husband, oh, decades ago it must have been. But William wouldn’t receive him. Told him to go away. He didn’t, of course.” Her lips drew together in an annoyed moue. “None of you Dantes ever did what you were told and he was no different.”
“Grandmother,” Shayla said with a sigh. “You do notice we’re a bit outnumbered here. Please try for just a shred of tact.”
“Let them do their worst,” she snapped. Her eyes swept the assembled group and she returned hostile look for hostile look. “Dominic had the unmitigated gall to approach me. He claimed we stole away one of his top designers, a woman named Cara Moretti. He demanded I return her.” Leticia’s eyes flashed. “As if she were a piece of furniture or a ring he’d misplaced. I told him to go straight to the devil. If he couldn’t keep good help, how was that my problem?”
The name dropped like a stone among the Dantes. “There must be more to the story than that, Leticia,” Draco insisted. “You don’t swindle an international company out of millions of dollars because of unmitigated gall.”
She gave an elegant shrug. “Dominic swore he’d get even with us. I simply laughed at him. Charlestons was in its heyday back then. Our two businesses were locked in fierce competition. Why would I give you Dantes anything or anyone who might tip the scales in your favor instead of mine?”
“Did you tell your husband about Dominic’s demand?” Primo asked heavily.
“Good gracious, no. Why in the world would I? William had a hair-trigger temper. I felt it best to simply let the matter rest.” She took a dainty sip of her tea, added a second packet of sugar and slowly stirred. “We liked Cara, even though she came to us pregnant and unmarried. She worked for us for a number of years and then moved on.”
Nonna pushed back her chair and stood, her face a mask of grief. “I will wait elsewhere,” she announced, her accent heavier than Draco had ever heard it. Then it failed her altogether and she switched to Italian. “The baby. He is an innocent. He has no place here. I will take him in the other room with me so this does not touch him.”
The instant the door closed behind Nonna and Stefano, Draco demanded, “What happened after that?”
Leticia sighed. “The years slid by and you Dantes grew more powerful, thanks to your lock on the fire diamonds. When you entered the international market, I could see the end, even though William remained blind to it. We struggled on. And then . . .”
When it was clear her grandmother couldn’t go on, Shayla supplied the next piece of information to the group. “Grandpa had his heart attack,” she said. “It was fatal.”
“Yes,” Leticia whispered. “It was right after we discovered the mines were depleted. The discovery came as a terrible shock. I’m sure the news caused his heart to fail. His death, combined with the issue with the mines, threw Charlestons into chaos.” She spared Draco a brief look. “I begged my son to take over, but you were correct in your analysis. Stefan didn’t possess what it took. He simply didn’t have the drive or ambition necessary to run Charlestons. We were teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. If we went under it would all be gone. The business, the beautiful jewelry, the cars and parties and lifestyle. We
’d even lose the mansion.”
“What did you do?” Draco asked, though he suspected he knew and threw a look of sympathy in Sev’s direction.
Her chin wobbled and it took her a moment to continue. “I swallowed my pride and approached Dantes. I had my family to consider, to put ahead of my own dignity or embarrassment.” She clenched her fingers around her napkin. “So, I made an appointment with Primo.”
“I never met with you, Letty,” Primo instantly denied. “You know I would have helped if we had.”
“Perhaps if your son hadn’t taken the appointment in your place this would have all gone down far differently.” She closed her eyes briefly, aging before their eyes. “But Dominic did take the meeting, claiming it was at your insistence. It must have been just weeks before his death, near the time of my own son’s death.”
“What happened at the meeting?” Draco asked gently.
Tears trickled down Leticia’s cheeks. “I begged for mercy. Begged for time to reorganize. I had the crazy idea that maybe I could turn Charlestons around.”
Draco lifted an eyebrow. “So you were going to try and run the company, after all?”
Her cup rattled against the saucer. “All right, yes. You were right. Again. I decided to take the reins. But I needed time, time Dominic wouldn’t give me. He told me it was because I wouldn’t help him with the Moretti matter, even though that was long past. For him, it might as well have been yesterday. He was cruel. Terribly cruel. He laughed at our plight. He said . . .” She set her tea down on the conference table with such force the porcelain sang in protest and buried her face in her hands. “He said if I couldn’t afford to feed my family then perhaps I should apply for welfare and put Shayla in foster care.”
For a proud woman it must have been the ultimate slap in the face. Draco spared his grandfather and his cousins a swift look. They weren’t taking the information well. He could see anger and resentment in some faces, a flat-out refusal to accept the story in Marco’s. But Primo’s expression proved the most telling. Not only did he accept Leticia’s version of events, but he also felt compassion for her plight.
Draco pushed on. “I don’t understand something, Leticia. Surely my uncle knew someone at Dantes had hired your son, Stefan, to run the design department at our New York office?”
She lifted her head and fought for control. “I have no idea. If I had learned of my son’s defection from Dominic, it would have crushed me. If he’d known, I guarantee he would have rubbed it in my face, so I suspect he hadn’t been told at that point. After my meeting with him, I salvaged what I could. Then Stefan was killed and—”
She broke off, but everyone sitting at the table could see the emptiness and despair. And maybe, just maybe, they began to understand why she’d sought revenge.
Shayla broke the silence. “My grandmother’s here to return the money you paid for the mines.”
Her grandmother released a slow sigh. “I always knew I’d have to.”
“You did.” Sev drawled out the words, a caustic edge to his voice. “Really?”
Leticia shot to her feet. “Don’t you dare look at me with your father’s eyes, Severo Dante, and presume to know what happened or what I would or would not have done. Of course, I’m returning the money. Taking it was no more than a coup, an act of defiance.”
Draco lifted an eyebrow, impressed despite himself. “Like when American Plains Indians would touch their enemy during battle to prove their bravery.”
Leticia nodded. “Exactly. I knew you’d eventually realize the shaft containing the fire diamonds was an aberration. Not that it matters.” She swept a hand through the air as though brushing aside a pesky mosquito and resumed her seat. “You’d have discovered soon enough the sale wasn’t even legal. How could it be when I don’t own the mines?”
Shocked silence greeted her statement. “If you do not own the mines, then who does?” Primo demanded.
“Shayla does.” Draco dropped the information like a stone into a puddle. Varying reactions splashed from face to face, from unholy amusement to stunned disbelief, Shayla’s the most stunned of all. He took her hand in his, lending her his strength. And he took heart in the fact she let him. “Juice?” he prompted.
Juice regarded Shayla with sympathetic kindness. “The minute you married Draco, the mines became yours. You would have been informed as soon as the lawyer notified you.” He shot Leticia a look containing a grudging hint of respect and, possibly, admiration. “Would it be an accurate statement to say you may have been a trifle lax about informing the lawyer of your granddaughter’s marriage?”
“Grandmother, is this true?” Shayla whispered. Hurt and confusion vied for supremacy.
“I would have notified him. Eventually.” Irritation sounded in Leticia’s voice. “Needless to say, I wasn’t in any great hurry to bother with such a trifling detail when I had more immediate concerns in need of my attention.”
Draco shot her an ironic look. “In other words, you didn’t want the news to leak too soon or you wouldn’t have had the pleasure of watching the ants scurrying around when you kicked over the anthill.”
“See? You understand perfectly.”
“The scary part is, I do.” He allowed honed steel to gather in his words. “But what I find unforgivable is you kept Shayla and me apart in order to prevent us from marrying. And all to carry on the Charleston name. All so my wife wouldn’t come into her inheritance too soon. If we married the hand wouldn’t have had time to play out, would it?”
A fierceness burned in Leticia’s eyes, drying her tears and turning the irises an iridescent blue. “I didn’t want you to just lease the mines, but to buy them. To be desperate to buy them. Careless. Hasty in your assessment. To be distracted enough to believe the reports—or rather forgeries—that hit your desk about the viability of the mines.”
“I’m curious. How did you manage that?”
Her mouth snapped closed, warning she’d never reveal the name of those responsible. “Let’s just say I still have contacts in the business,” she finally told him. “And it worked. The reports reassured you while suspicion gnawed. You worried I might decide to sell the fire diamonds to your competitors—once I’d bled you as dry as possible, of course. It forced you to buy the mines outright, and quickly.” She smiled, a cat-dining-on-canary type of smile. “The bottom line is, I finally beat the Dantes. That’s all I ever wanted. To win.”
Fury exploded over Sev’s face and only his grandfather’s restraining hand held him in place. “And now?” Primo asked.
She shrugged carelessly. “Now that the game is finished, you can have your precious money back, less a small brokerage fee.”
“Grandmother!”
“What? I need a new car. It’s not like they’re going to miss fifty thousand or so.”
“Fifty!” Shayla choked.
“That’s quite some car,” Draco said.
Leticia lifted an eyebrow. “Darlin’, I only travel in style.”
He let it go and focused on more important matters. “Now for the final piece of business.”
Leticia frowned. “I don’t know what’s left to be said. I’ve told you everything,” she insisted. “At least, everything I intend to.”
He didn’t argue. He simply held out his hand. “Your wedding ring, please.”
For an instant, he thought she’d refuse. Then she slipped the necklace from around her neck and set it gently on the table. The diamond flashed with unmistakable fire.
Beside him, Shayla stiffened, then jerked as understanding struck. “Oh, Grandmother. What have you done?”
Leticia bowed her head. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. I’m so sorry.”
Shayla’s chin quivered. “I should have made the connection sooner. It’s a fire diamond, but it can’t possibly be a Charleston stone because ours were only recently discovered.” She stared at her grandmother in utter disillusionment. “I always wondered why you stopped wearing Grandpa’s ring. It’s because it’s not his
ring. You arranged the theft of Draco’s fire diamonds, didn’t you?”
“I swear I didn’t. Please, Shayla, you must believe me.” She reached for her granddaughter’s hand, but Shayla pulled back and Leticia’s face crumpled. “But I am culpable because I know who stole them. He was a former employee of Charlestons, Clint Bodine, and I’ll always regret I didn’t report him to the authorities when he told me what he’d done.”
“Why didn’t you?” Draco demanded.
Her hands clenched. “Because he gave me one of the fire diamonds he’d taken, already set in that ring.”
“It is a wedding ring. Why would he give you a wedding ring, Letty?” Primo interrupted. “What happened to the one William gave you?”
“I sold it,” she whispered. “To help pay off our debts. Clint knew what I’d done and gave me this to replace it. I was going to return the diamond, but in the end I didn’t. And for that, I’m truly sorry. And ashamed.”
What a strange woman. She didn’t turn a hair at the idea of swindling Dantes out of millions of dollars. She saw that as justifiable. But keeping a stolen diamond was wrong. Shameful. Draco’s eyes narrowed in thought. “You didn’t return it because it was your safety net, wasn’t it?”
She nodded, exhaustion lining her face. “In case of an emergency.” She reached again for Shayla’s hand in a gesture part plea, part apology. When Shayla took the offered hand, she closed her eyes in blatant relief. “And I suppose, if I’m being brutally honest, it also provided a reminder of all the Charlestons had been through at the hands of the Dantes.”
The meeting broke up then. Primo insisted on speaking to Leticia privately, while the rest of the family went off to discuss what they’d learned. Juice approached Draco on his way out of the room. “I hope I helped, but somehow I suspect I’ve only made matters worse for your family, especially Sev.”
“My cousin and his brothers just need time to come to terms with what they’ve heard. We’ll all help with that.” Draco offered his hand. “Thank you again, Juice. As far as we’re concerned, you’re family and your help is always appreciated.”