style="font-size:15px;"> And try as she might to think otherwise, she couldn’t help but wonder if he had been involved in Alfredo’s fraud.
He wouldn’t have set him up. She was certain of that. Not her father.
But what did she really know of his business dealings in South America and Asia? They were kept separate from the division she ran.
And Gabriele’s question of when her father had last visited the US...
She truly couldn’t remember. When she’d been a child he’d made regular trips there, often accompanied by one or other of her brothers, but she could not remember the last time any of them had mentioned a visit there for whatever reason.
Were they afraid to step foot on US soil? And if so, why?
Surely, she reasoned, if the US authorities suspected him of anything they could get an international arrest warrant?
But according to Gabriele, all the evidence was in the basement of the Nutmeg Island chapel, which the authorities couldn’t touch without hard evidence.
How would her father react if she were to ask him for the chapel code...?
God, she loathed herself for doubting him. Hated that she had to bite back the question every time she spoke to him. Hated that she feared his answers.
And she hated that the images of those photos played so greatly in her mind.
There was a whole history between the two families that had been all but erased. All she’d ever seen of it was a blurred outline; all the colour and vitality within the outlines faded into darkness.
And she really hated that it made her wonder what else she’d been kept in the dark about.
MANTEGNA’S HEADQUARTERS WERE located on the outskirts of Florence, in a sprawling complex that covered two square miles of land set in a basin in the Tuscan hills. Elena’s first glimpse was as they drove over the crest of a hill. There it lay beneath them, gleaming in the midday sun.
Gabriele had decided to drive, and he brought the small sports car to a stop so she could admire the view.
Dozens upon dozens of futuristic buildings and hangars were encircled by a testing track. In the centre of it all was the famous electric-blue main building itself, shaped in the diamond Mantegna logo with the silver M dashed across it, its roof shining and glossy under the sun.
Mantegna Cars had manufacturing plants the world over but here was its heart.
‘Have the renovations finished now?’ she asked.
When Gabriele had been halfway through his prison sentence, work had begun, to much fanfare, on expanding Mantegna’s European headquarters to make them his worldwide HQ. It had been a defiant gesture that had told the world Gabriele would not be skulking away and his business would continue to thrive and innovate. Having been unaware of her own father’s involvement—supposed involvement—in the fraud, believing her father to be an innocent bystander in the Mantegnas’ criminality, she’d thought it showed a lack of class.
But you never thought your father was completely innocent, did you? That twisting you experienced in the pit of your belly whenever you heard details of the investigation and the trial were testament to that.
Coldness ran up her spine and she clasped her hands tightly together.
What kind of daughter was she to even consider her father being capable of such a thing?
‘The bulk of it was completed a month ago,’ he said, oblivious to her inner turmoil. ‘We’ve had a few teething problems but nothing major. When we launch the Alfredo next month, everything will work perfectly.’
The supercar that would be a tribute to Gabriele’s father and an event that had the world’s motor press salivating with anticipation.
‘How did you do it?’ she asked in wonder. ‘The boss of one of the world’s greatest car manufacturers goes to prison for fraud and money laundering but instead of your business collapsing around you, it thrives and comes back stronger than ever.’
Gabriele stared out of the window as she spoke. It was a long time before he answered.
‘It helped that my staff believed in me,’ he said quietly. ‘They carried the business during my incarceration. We were all determined to fight back and so were the majority of my financial backers. They believed in my innocence.’
He spread out his hands and nodded at the Mantegna building in the distance. ‘The expansion sent out a message of intent to the world. The launch of the Alfredo will be the pinnacle; proof positive that our cars are the best in the world and that nothing will be allowed to destroy us.’
Elena stared at him with her heart in her mouth.
How did someone inspire such blind loyalty? She had no illusions about her own staff—their loyalty was to their pay cheques. All it had taken was a couple of unfounded whispers from Gabriele for a handful of her father’s banks to call in their overdrafts.
Yet Gabriele’s staff and backers had fought for him.
He set the car in motion again and soon they were walking into the foyer of the headquarters of Mantegna Cars.
The interior of the main building was as futuristic as the exterior, all glass walls and electric-blue furnishings.
Gabriele insisted on giving her a tour of the entire facility, introducing her to scores of people as they made their way through it all. Nothing was off-limits. All of Mantegna Cars’ intellectual secrets were opened up to her in a display of trust she found astounding and also incredibly touching.
Since their jog together, they had found a relative harmony, but, with their wedding celebration party only a day away, her nerves were a tangled mess knowing her father and brothers would be attending.
This was the perfect way for her to forget what the next day would bring.
As Ricci Components made parts for cars, everything was familiar to Elena, and yet refreshingly different, as if she’d been beamed to the twenty-third century. There was little hierarchy either that she could discern, everyone treating each other with mutual respect. There was less of a gender divide than she’d expected too. In the main manufacturing plant there were a handful of women working who clearly weren’t there for decoration or to make tea. It was a nice culture shock to have, especially as Ricci Components tended only to employ women for clerical roles.
She had come to accept that even her own job was clerical. Everything Ricci Components made was manufactured in Asia or South America. The closest she came to the manufacturing process was through imports.
‘Your deputy Chief Engineer is a woman,’ she commented with a shake of her head when they were walking back to the main building.
‘Yes,’ was Gabriele’s reply, as if the matter were so inconsequential it didn’t need discussing.
She wondered if the deputy Chief Engineer had had to fight misogyny
