of them, made such a statement it was the duty of his younger siblings to support him—just as he had always supported them during the years of their shared childhood when they had suffered so much.
On this occasion, though, Rocco, their younger brother, had been granted a leave of absence from his family duty as he was on honeymoon, and Alessandro had thought that he was going to get away with not going in view of the buy-out negotiations he was involved in with another airline. But Falcon’s ironic sending of the formal invitation together with a letter of reminder made it plain that he expected Alessandro to be there.
He and Falcon would be the only two of their father’s sons to attend, with Rocco away. Antonio, their younger half-brother, would not be there. He was dead, killed in a car accident, as a result of which their father, who had loved his youngest son with far more emotion and intensity than he had felt for his eldest three all put together, had developed a terminal heart condition from which he was not expected to survive for more than a year at best.
Only his own brothers could know and understand why Alessandro felt so little sorrow at the thought of his father’s demise, since they had all shared the same childhood. It was Antonio their father had loved, not them. No one had loved them. Not their mother, whose death after Rocco’s birth had meant that she had not been there to love them, and certainly not their father.
Alessandro gazed towards the window, not seeing the view of Carlton Gardens that lay beyond it but seeing instead the dark shadows of Castello Leopardi, and the room where he had lain staring into the darkness after his father had mocked him for crying for his dead mother.
‘Only a fool and a weakling fool cries for a woman. But then that is exactly what you are—a worthless second son who will never be anything other than second best. Remember that when you are a man, Alessandro. All you will ever be is second best.’
Second best. How those words had tortured and haunted him. And how they had driven him as well.
But it had not been his first-born, Falcon, whom their father had loved beyond reason. It had been Antonio, the only child of their father’s second marriage to a woman who had been his mistress for years, who had humiliated and shamed their own mother with their father’s help. Antonio—sly, manipulative, well aware of the power he’d had over their father’s affections and how to make use of it to his own best advantage—had not been liked by any of his three half-brothers, but Alessandro acknowledged that he’d probably had more reason to dislike him than either of his siblings.
He might have distanced himself now from the boy he had been—the child who had grown up being told by his father that his only role in life was to play second fiddle to his elder brother, a spare heir in case anything should happen to Falcon—but the scars from having grown up always feeling that he had to justify his existence and prove that he was of value were still there.
On the day of his seventh birthday party, after some childish quarrel with his half-brother during which Antonio had started mimicking their father, taunting him by telling him their father loved him the best, he had retaliated by saying that he was the second eldest.
Their father had told spoken to him coldly. ‘You are a second son—conceived so that if necessary you can take your elder brother’s place. You as yourself have and are nothing. A second son is of no account whilst there is a first-born. Think about that in future, when you attempt to place yourself above your youngest brother, for God knows I wish with all my heart that he might have been my only son.’
Strange the powerful effect that words could have. His father had meant to humiliate and shame him for daring to stand against the favouritism he showed to his youngest son; he had wanted to cow him and make him feel inferior. But his cruelty had had exactly the opposite effect, burning into Alessandro a determination to forge a life for himself that had no reliance on the Leopardi name or his father’s influence.
Instead of becoming a part of the old feudal world of his father and family history, Alessandro had turned towards the new, modern world, where a man was judged on his business acumen and his personal achievements. He had adopted his mother’s family name instead of using his own, and that name was still proudly displayed on the fleet of aircraft that had earned him his billionaire status—even though these days he was secure enough in what and who he was to answer to both Leopardi and Avanti.
He had proved beyond any kind of doubt that he had no need of his father’s help or his father’s name, and in fact it now amused him to see the frustrated lack of understanding in his father’s expression when he adapted so easily to being addressed as Leopardi, instead of reacting angrily and rejecting its usage as he had once done.
But then his father never had understood him and never would. It was easy for Alessandro to accept the name now, because he no longer needed it to identify himself. In his estimation he was now a first amongst equals—more than an heir-in-waiting, and certainly more than any poor second son.
And yet, as Falcon had so succinctly reminded him when he had discussed the coming celebrations with him, he was still a Leopardi, and so far as Falcon was concerned that meant he still had a duty to the family.
Alessandro bore a grudging respect for his elder brother, but their relationship was shadowed by their childhood, by their father—and by the memory of Sofia.
But it was over a decade now since he had deliberately challenged Falcon in every way he could, engaging his elder brother in a power struggle, a battle to prove himself, which had ultimately resulted in them pitted against one another for the same woman—a struggle which Falcon had ultimately won.
Alessandro’s frown deepened. He was not an insecure twenty-six-year-old desperate to prove himself any more. He was an adult, successful and confident, with no need to prove anything to his elder brother. Or to himself.
But wasn’t it the truth that part of the reason he was so reluctant to attend tomorrow night’s celebrations was because of those two words on the invitation: ‘and guest’?
His pride insisted that he could not attend the celebratory ball without a partner, a fact his father would see as a sign of failure, and yet at the same time he knew that if there had been anyone in his life at the moment, sharing his bed, he would not have wanted to take her. Because he was afraid of a repeat of the humiliation he had experienced with Sofia. Alessandro knew that his reaction was irrational.
He knew too that by letting that irrationality take hold he was creating a self-perpetuating ogre within his own psyche. Perhaps his father had been right after all, he derided himself contemptuously. Perhaps he was a coward, and second rate.
At twenty-six he had been so proud to show Sofia, a model he’d met in Milan at a PR event—off to his elder brother, driven in those days by a single-minded determination to prove that far from being second best he could come first.
He had been flattered when Sofia had flirted with him. She had been older than him, twenty-eight to his twenty-six, and although he hadn’t realised it then she had already been past the prime of her modelling career, and searching for a rich husband. Any rich husband, just so long as he was gullible.
It was easy for him to recognise now that what he had mistaken for love on his own part had merely been lust, and he knew too that he had much to be grateful to Falcon for. He had shown him just what Sofia had been—after all she was on her third husband now. Falcon had told him afterwards that the reason he had seduced Sofia away from him had been to show him exactly what she was, to protect him as it was his duty as the elder brother to do.
Without their father’s love and protection it had been on Falcon’s shoulders that the duty of
