with the elderly grandfather who’d taken him and his siblings in after his parents had died, he’d also come to realize that the more he shared his opinion on subjects like these, the more people lined up to tell him how cynical he was. As if that was an indictment of his character, or should allow them to dismiss his opinion out of hand. Or as if it should be a matter of deep concern to him, that weird fetish he had for realism.
He’d stopped bothering years ago. Six years ago, in fact.
And the truth was, he cared so little either way that it was easier to simply do as he was asked—in this case, fly across the planet to buy back a pair of earrings that could easily have been sent by courier had there not been so much sentiment attached to them, apparently—than to explain why he thought the entire enterprise was ridiculous. He was vaguely aware that the old man had been sending all the Di Sione siblings off on these pointless quests for what he called his Lost Mistresses, but Dario had been far too busy with this latest product launch to pay that much attention to round nine hundred and thirty-seven of the Di Sione family melodrama.
Surely they’d had a lifetime’s worth already. He’d been sick of it at eight years old, when his hedonistic and undependable parents had died in a horrible, utterly avoidable car crash and the paparazzi had descended upon them all like a swarm. His feelings on the subject hadn’t improved much since.
There was a part of Dario—not hidden very deeply, he could admit—that would have been perfectly happy if he never heard from another one of his relatives again. A part of him that expected that, once the old man passed on, that would happen naturally enough. He was looking forward to it. He would retreat into his work, happily, the way he always did. God knew he had enough to do running ICE, the world’s premier computer company if he said so himself, a position he’d won with his own hard work and determination. The way he’d won everything else that was his—everything that had lasted.
Besides, the only member of his family he’d ever truly loved had been his identical twin brother, Dante. Until Dante had smashed that into so much dust and regret, too. He couldn’t deny that his brother’s betrayal had hurt him—but it had also taught him that he was much better off surrounding himself with people he paid for their loyalty, not people who might or might not give it as it suited them.
Dario really didn’t want to think about his twin. That was the trouble with any kind of involvement with his family. It led to precisely the thoughts he spent most of his time going out of his way to avoid.
He’d assumed that if he performed this task for his grandfather the way the rest of his brothers and sisters were supposedly doing, they could all stop acting like any of what had happened six years ago and since was Dario’s fault. Or as if he shared the blame for what had happened in some way, as he’d been the one to walk away from his marriage as well as his relationship with Dante. He hadn’t exactly asked his brother to sleep with his wife during what had been one of the most stressful periods of his life. And he refused to accept that there was something wrong with him that he’d never forgiven either his brother or his wife for that, and never would.
They’d let him twist in the wind, the two of them. They’d let them think the tension between them was dislike, and Dario had believed it, too busy trying to sort out what to do with the company he and Dante had started and whether or not to merge with ICE, which Dario had thought was a good idea while Dante had opposed it. All that mess and tension and stress and sleeplessness to discover that the two of them had been betraying him all along...
Here and now, in Hawaii of all places, Dario thought the only thing wrong with him was that he was still paying any kind of attention to anything a member of the Di Sione family said, did or thought. That needed to stop.
“It will stop,” he promised himself between calls, his voice a rasp in the Range Rover’s quiet interior. “As soon as you hand the old man his damned earrings, you’re done.”
He drove through the business district of Kahului, then followed the calm-voiced GPS’s directions away from the bustle of big-box stores and chain restaurants clustered near the airport toward the center of the island. He soon found himself on a highway that wound its way through the lush sugarcane fields, then up into the hills, where views even he had to admit were spectacular spread out before him. The Pacific Ocean gleamed in the summer sun with another island stretched out low in the distant water, green and gold. The old volcanic West Maui Mountains were covered in windmills, palm trees lined the highway and exuberant flowers in shockingly bright colors were everywhere, from the shrubs to the trees to the hedges.
Dario didn’t take vacations, but if he did, he supposed this would be a decent place for it. As he waited for another call to connect, he tried to imagine what that would even look like. He’d never lounged anywhere in his life, poolside or beachside or otherwise. The last almost-vacation he’d taken had been an extreme sports weekend with one of Silicon Valley’s innumerable millionaire genius types. But since he’d landed that particular genius and his cutting edge technology after they’d skydived down to a killer trail run in Colorado, en route to some class-V rapids, he didn’t think that counted.
Even so, he certainly hadn’t been lounging around that weekend out west, contemplating the breeze. He’d always worked. Maybe if he hadn’t been working so hard six years ago, he’d have seen what was coming. Maybe he’d have seen the warning signs between his brother and his wife for what they were instead of naively assuming that neither one of them would do such a thing to him...
Why are you dwelling on this old, boring nonsense? He shook his head to clear it.
The road headed out along rocky cliffs that flirted with the ocean, then turned to packed red dirt, and Dario slowed down. He was listening to one of his engineers when his cell signal dropped out, and he sighed, scowling at the GPS display that showed he still had quite a distance left to go.
He didn’t understand why anyone would live out here, this far from the rest of the world. He knew the current owner of his grandfather’s earrings was the kind of wealthy man as well known for his eccentricities as the family fortune he’d augmented considerably throughout his lifetime, but this was taking things a little bit far. Surely a paved road wouldn’t have gone amiss.
But then, Dario loved New York City. He liked to be where everything was happening, all the time. Where he could walk down streets as busy at 4:00 a.m. as they were at four in the afternoon. Where he could be anonymous on the street and then recognized instantly when he walked into a favorite restaurant. He didn’t understand all this lonely quiet, no matter how pretty it was out here. He didn’t get what it was for. It appeared to allow entirely too much room for maudlin contemplation.
Then again, his idea of relaxing was closing a new deal and bolstering his stock portfolio. Things he was very, very good at.
Dario passed a tiny little country store that was the only sign of civilization he’d seen in miles and continued down the dusty, winding, rutted track at the base of the looming mountain. There were old, intricate stone walls and stretches of green pasture to his left, climbing up the steep side of the mountain, and wilder-looking fields to his right that gave way to rocky cliffs each time the road wound its way around again.
He felt as if he was on a different planet.
“Only for you, old man,” he muttered.
But this was the last time Dario planned to extend himself, even for Giovanni. He’d had enough family for one life.
Without any cell service he was left to his own dark thoughts, which Dario preferred to avoid at the best of times—the way he’d been doing for at least the last six years, thank you. He shut off the AC and lowered his windows, letting that same mysterious breeze
