The Surprise Conti Child. Tara Pammi

from his heart attack a month ago.

      Luca and his grandfather would have killed each other a long time ago, if it wasn’t for him. And he was tiring of playing the referee among his family members.

      He had begun when he was fourteen and at thirty-five, he was still doing it.

      “We’re too old for you to be arranging alliances for us, Nonno,” Leandro finally said into the cutting silence. “I will not marry again. And—”

      “Ordering me to,” Luca interjected, “marry any woman is cursing the poor woman. Even one with steel balls like Sophia Rossi.”

      Something glinted in Antonio’s eyes. “The only choice is which one of you will do it.”

      “Or what, Nonno?” Luca spat the words. “You will cut Leandro and me out of this...venerable Conti empire?”

      Luca’s tone made it clear it was anything but.

      Because Luca’s creative genius and Leandro’s cutting-edge business practices over the past decade was what made Conti Luxury Goods a coveted designer label in Italy, and worldwide over the past three years.

      That Antonio threatened them like this...it didn’t bode well.

      “I will inform,” Antonio continued, “your sister that she’s not a Conti, that she...is the product of your mother’s shameful affair with her driver. I will disown Valentina publicly.”

      A filthy curse erupted from Luca’s mouth, a fitting one while ice-cold fury filled Leandro’s veins.

      He had learned all through his life that Antonio would do anything for their family’s business and knowing the kind of reckless, irresponsible, brutally selfish man his father had been, Leandro had even understood it.

      But this was low, for a man Leandro respected, even liked sometimes.

      Neither he nor Luca would let anything touch Valentina.

      He swallowed the fury rising through him, and adopted an almost amenable expression. “Your heart attack has made you irascible, Nonno.”

      “You cannot persuade me away from my course, Leandro. I let you bring Valentina here...your mother’s shame,” he spat the words, “I even accepted her as my own, but do not think—”

      “You love Valentina, I’m sure,” Luca roared. “I thought you a better man than our father.”

      Antonio flinched. Apparently, even he couldn’t stomach being compared to his son Enzo. “I accepted Valentina because that was Leandro’s price to let me mold him for the Conti empire.”

      Luca turned to Leandro, disbelief in his eyes. “This is why you always let him rule your life?”

      Leandro shrugged. “It was not a sacrifice, Luca. Snatching away the helm of the company from our father’s hands, ousting him from the board of directors, marrying Rosa, they were all things I did because I wanted to. That I could protect Valentina’s innocence was extra.” He turned to Antonio, letting him see his anger for the first time. “Luca and I have put Conti on the global map, something even you hadn’t dreamed about. What more could you want?”

      “I want an heir to my dynasty.” Understanding glinted in his eyes but Leandro refused it. “Enzo was an utter failure as a son, as a husband, as a father, but even he gave me heirs.” Even the growl that fell from Luca’s lips didn’t detract Antonio. “This marriage to his daughter will silence that backstabbing Salvatore. Two birds with one rock.”

      Leandro shook his head. “This is not the way—”

      “What choice do I have?” Antonio’s voice loomed loud in the room. “You refuse to consider marriage and you...” Distaste robbed the old man of his words as he turned to Luca. “You change women like you change clothes.

      “Death is not far for me, Leandro. I will not leave this world on the risk that Luca and you might be the last of the Contis.”

      His desk phone rang and Antonio picked it up.

      Frustration raging in his veins, Leandro turned to Luca.

      Both Luca and he had learned early enough in life that Antonio had a will of steel. He had built Leandro both into a weapon against his own son, their father, even as it broke his own heart. Whether he loved Valentina or not, he wouldn’t back down from carrying out his threat.

      “Luca—”

      “Leandro, haven’t you done—”

      The loud click of the phone hitting its cradle punctured the silence and both of them turned to Antonio.

      “It seems there is no choice.”

      Luca was the first to react. “What do you mean?”

      “Salvatore Rossi’s daughter has decided only one of you will do for marriage.”

      Thunder whooshed in Leandro’s ears.

      “She wants you, Leandro.” His look toward Luca was withering. “Apparently, she is smart enough to reject the Conti devil.”

      Luca’s glittering black gaze, so much like their father’s, turned to Leandro. A half smile played on his lips, and yet, Leandro had the sinking feeling that something else, something other than relief, hounded his brother. “Once again, the burden of this family falls to you, Leandro.”

      With that, he left the study.

      In the ensuing silence, they could hear the noise from the veranda. Valentina’s rapid words, along with laughter in between.

      Valentina, who was all they had left of their mother...

      “I begin to see the wisdom in the mode of life Luca has chosen. And the delirious freedom of hating you and this name and this...dynastic ego of yours...” With each word, his voice rose, fury pummeling him.

      With shaking hands, he picked up the bottle of wine, the first that had been bottled at their Tuscan vineyard almost two decades ago, and thought of smashing it against the wall.

      “Leandro...” Antonio’s low entreaty only spiked his temper. Because of course, Antonio loved him. It hadn’t been unconditional, true, but Antonio had been everything to the little boy who’d been shattered by his father’s volatility.

      But Leandro didn’t throw it, didn’t give in to the baser urge.

      Leandro didn’t believe in giving in to indulgent fits of temper, into foolish hopes that things were different, into thinking of his wants and needs before his duty or his family’s well-being.

      He didn’t believe in being weak.

      Only once in his life had he done that. Only once in his life had he lost control to the emotional turmoil that his father, and even Luca sometimes, seemed to feed on. In that moment, he had betrayed everything he stood for.

      Even now, it wasn’t Rosa’s features he saw when he took himself in hand, when he had to appease his body’s needs without seeking out dirty satisfaction in some strange woman’s arms. He saw dark brown eyes, unflinchingly honest and hotly aroused, trembling pink lips, eager hands...

      Shaking at the hold the memory had on him, and his body, Leandro put the bottle down.

      “Another wife, Antonio? You have turned me into cattle.”

      Antonio looked tired. “To make the Conti name respectable again at all costs, to do everything that Enzo ruined, this was your choice, Leandro.”

      Leandro nodded. “Tell Salvatore that I will marry Sophia as soon as he pleases.”

      He had been alone far too long anyway. A marriage for the sake of children—he had nothing against that.

      * * *

      Memories of that long-ago summer crashed through Alexis as she stared at the majestic Villa de Conti, glittering against the night sky. The magnificent towering gates