losing your mother...’ She closed her eyes and shook her head. When she opened them to look at Elena, sadness emanated from them. ‘Do you know much about your parents’ marriage?’
‘Not really.’ She attempted a smile. ‘I know they met when my mother was on holiday in Italy.’
Agnes returned the smile. ‘They did. It was love at first sight for them both. They were smitten with each other. I had never seen Hilde so happy.’
‘I’m sensing a “but” coming.’
Her aunt grimaced. ‘Your father is a very possessive man. He couldn’t bear to let her out of his sight. He hated her talking to other men.’
‘He didn’t...?’ She couldn’t bring herself to say the words.
‘Hit her?’ Agnes supplied. ‘No. Never. But he never thought twice about beating up any man who disrespected her or who your father felt was getting too close to her. Hilde was a very gentle woman—it upset her very much.’
Elena couldn’t think of anything to say to that. This was a side to her father she had never seen.
‘I am telling you this so you can understand how your father became the man he is now,’ Agnes said gently. ‘They were happy. They loved each other very much. When your mother died...’ She tapped the side of her head. ‘I don’t think he ever got over it. He threw a protective cloak around his children and hardened himself to the rest of the world. He loved his boys but you were always the apple of his eye. He doted on you. You were a fighting tomboy but you have your mother’s gentle heart. I don’t think your father could bear for you to see him as less than perfect.’
Elena put her hand to her throat and closed her eyes.
Trying to forget thoughts of disloyalty, and trying to think dispassionately about Gabriele when all she wanted to do was spend the rest of her life crying, she took a deep breath and mentally counted off some indisputable facts.
She ran the European division. It was the division where nothing creative happened. It was an outpost for selling stock. Nothing more. All the meat and bones of her father’s company was conducted in Asia and South America. She had never travelled to either continent. She was kept ignorant of whatever happened there.
Alfredo Mantegna had been her father’s best friend. When Alfredo had emigrated with his family to open his car empire to the North American market, her father had used Alfredo’s new contacts to expand his own empire.
Her father no longer had any business dealings in North America.
A decade ago, her father and Alfredo had merged the overlapping parts of their two business entities into a new business that they owned fifty-fifty. The headquarters were based in Brazil, where her own father had plenty of businesses and where Alfredo had none. That business was proven to have been used as a front for fraud and money laundering. The trail had led to the Mantegnas.
Even through her loathing of Gabriele she could not believe he would be involved in something like that. Gabriele’s mother...
Is he in prison yet?
Elena clamped a hand over her mouth and swallowed back the rising nausea.
‘It is natural to want to see only the best in the people we love,’ Agnes said in a quiet, sympathetic voice. ‘You and your father have always been exceptionally close. If your father was behind it I am certain he would do everything in his power to protect you from it.’
‘I need to talk to him, don’t I?’ Elena whispered.
Agnes nodded and reached across the table to take her hand. ‘I suspect you’re the only person who could ever get the truth from him.’
Elena blew out a long breath of air.
She’d buried her head in the sand for long enough.
She needed to speak to him face to face, now, before Gabriele and Carlos went to the FBI. If they hadn’t already.
* * *
Her father answered his phone after the first ring and, while he hesitated at first, agreed to her request to meet her in Sweden.
He arrived at Agnes’s cabin the very next day.
That he was still at liberty soothed her. It meant Gabriele knew his evidence wasn’t strong enough, or the FBI had discounted it, or Carlos had changed his mind about being a turncoat.
She greeted him at the door and was immediately engulfed in a huge embrace.
‘It’s been many years since I’ve been in this house,’ he said as she led him to the kitchen, where Agnes had laid out lunch for them. Clearly ill at ease, he craned his neck at every turn, looking at everything. ‘What brought you here?’
‘I wanted to see Aunt Agnes,’ she said. ‘Don’t worry—they’ve gone out. It’s just you and me.’
‘Mantegna’s not with you?’
She shook her head, taking a seat. ‘I’ve left him.’
He paused, staring hard at her, then a smile spread across the tension-strewn face. ‘If I had known that I would have brought champagne.’
She didn’t respond, taking the lid off the casserole dish. Even if he’d magically produced a bottle of champagne she felt too heartsick to drink.
She didn’t think her heart would ever beat normally again.
Why couldn’t she forget him? Why was it that every time she closed her eyes, all she could see was Gabriele? After everything he’d done, why did she ache so much for him?
You would have done the same if you were in his shoes. If someone had destroyed your family the way Gabriele believes your father destroyed his, you would have stopped at nothing for revenge.
She would never have hurt an innocent though.
He didn’t know you were innocent.
‘So you have seen the light,’ her father said, nodding his approval. ‘I told your brothers, I said, “Don’t worry about Elena, she’s a good girl, she knows where her loyalty lies.”’
She ladled some casserole into a bowl, holding it tightly to stop her shaking hands from spilling the hot liquid onto the table.
‘Gabriele’s loyalty is to his father,’ she said, choosing her words with care.
Something flickered on her father’s face.
And in that moment all her doubts crystallised and the truth came crashing down on her.
It was all true. All of it. Everything Gabriele had said. All true.
‘Elena?’
She looked into her father’s concerned face, the room swimming, darkness seeping into her pores, infecting her blood.
The truth was what her heart had been telling her for weeks but she had been too wilfully blind to see.
*
