CHAPTER ONE

      ‘YOU’RE NOT GOING to like what I’m about to say.’

      The very second Stefano had called his son and told him that he needed to speak with him as a matter of urgency, Theo had dropped everything and taken the first flight over to Italy, to his father’s enormous estate just outside Rome.

      Stefano De Angelis was not a man given to drama, and both Theo and his brother, Daniel, had spent the past five years worrying about him. He had never really recovered from the death of his wife, their mother, Rose. The power house who had built a personal fortune from scratch had collapsed into himself, retreating to the sanctuary of his den, immune to the efforts of both his sons to pull him out of his grief. He had continued to eat, sleep, talk and walk, but his soul had departed, leaving only a physical shell behind.

      What, Theo thought now, was he about to hear?

      Cold fear gripped him.

      ‘Have you asked Daniel as well?’ He prowled through the huge sitting room, idly gazing through the window to the sprawling lawns, before finally taking a seat opposite his father.

      ‘This situation does not concern your brother,’ Stefano returned, his dark eyes sidestepping his son’s piercing green ones.

      Theo breathed a sigh of relief. If Daniel hadn’t been likewise summoned, then at least a health crisis could be discounted. He had been tempted to phone his brother on the back of his father’s summons, but had resisted the impulse because he knew that Daniel was in the throes of a balancing act: trying to close a major deal and a minor love affair at the same time.

      The deal, his brother had confided several days ago, when he had called from his penthouse apartment in Sydney, was a walk in the park compared to the woman who had been making noises about taking what they had ‘one step further’, and didn’t show any promise of retreating without putting up a fight.

      ‘So tell me... What am I not going to like to hear?’ Theo encouraged.

      ‘As you are well aware, son...’ Stefano’s hooded dark eyes gazed off into the distance ‘...things have not been good with me since your mother died. When my beloved Rose went, she took a big part of me with her.’

      ‘Of us all.’

      ‘But you and your brother are young. I, on the other hand, am an old man—and you know what they say about old dogs and new tricks. Perhaps if her death hadn’t been so sudden... Perhaps if I had had time to get used to the idea of her absence...’ He sighed. ‘But this is not why I called you here, Theo. To moan and complain about something that cannot be changed. I called you here because during the time that I was...shall we say mentally not present, certain unfortunate things took place within the company.’

      Theo stilled. His keen eyes noted the nervous play of his father’s entwined fingers. His father was the least nervous man he had ever known.