Wearing The De Angelis Ring. Cathy Williams

hooded dark eyes gazed off into the distance ‘...things have not been good with me since your mother died. When my beloved Rose went, she took a big part of me with her.’

      ‘Of us all.’

      ‘But you and your brother are young. I, on the other hand, am an old man—and you know what they say about old dogs and new tricks. Perhaps if her death hadn’t been so sudden... Perhaps if I had had time to get used to the idea of her absence...’ He sighed. ‘But this is not why I called you here, Theo. To moan and complain about something that cannot be changed. I called you here because during the time that I was...shall we say mentally not present, certain unfortunate things took place within the company.’

      Theo stilled. His keen eyes noted the nervous play of his father’s entwined fingers. His father was the least nervous man he had ever known.

      ‘Unfortunate things...?’

      ‘There has been some substantial mismanagement,’ Stefano declared bluntly. ‘And worse, I am afraid. Alfredo, my trusted co-director, has been involved in large-scale embezzlement which has only recently been drawn to my attention. It’s a wonder the press hasn’t got hold of it. The upshot, Theo, is that vast sums of money—including most of the pension funds—have been hijacked.’

      Theo sat back, his lean, handsome face revealing nothing of what was going through his mind.

      It was a problem, yes—but a serious one? Not really. At any rate nothing that he couldn’t handle.

      ‘If you’re worried about the man getting what he deserves, then you can leave that to me,’ Theo asserted with cold confidence, his sharp, analytical brain already formulating ways in which payback could be duly extracted. ‘And if you’re worried about the lost money, then likewise. It will be nothing for me to return what’s been misappropriated. No one will ever know.’

      ‘It’s not that easy, Theo.’

      And Theo knew that now they were approaching the heart of the problem—the reason why he had been summoned.

      ‘I would never ask either you or Daniel for financial assistance!’ Stefano glowered, his fighting spirit temporarily restored as he contemplated the unthinkable. ‘You boys have made your own way in the world and my pride would never allow me to run to either of you with my begging bowl...’

      Theo shook his head in frustration at his father’s pride—which, he had to concede, both he and Daniel had inherited in bucketloads. ‘It would not have been a question of—’

      ‘I’m afraid I went to Carlo Caldini,’ Stefano said abruptly. ‘There was no choice. The bank was not an option—not when there was a significant chance that they would turn down my request. If that had happened, then the business... Well, what can I say? Everything your mother and I built would have been thrown into the public arena to be picked over by hyenas! At least with Carlo we can keep this between us...’

      Theo pressed the pads of his thumbs against his eyes.

      Carlo Caldini had once been his father’s closest friend and now, for longer than he could remember, was his fiercest adversary. The fact that he had seen fit to go to Carlo for help threatened to bring on a raging headache.

      There was absolutely no doubt that whatever his father was going to tell him Theo was not going to want to hear it.

      ‘And what’s his price?’ he asked, because there was no such thing as a free lunch—and when the lunch was with a sworn enemy then it was going to be the opposite of free.

      Exorbitant was the word that sprang to mind.

      Stefano fidgeted. ‘You’re not getting any younger, Theo. You’re thirty-two years old! Your mother dearly wished that she would see one of you boys settled... It wasn’t to be...’

      ‘I’m not following you...’

      ‘All of this unravelled over eight months ago,’ Stefano said heavily. ‘During that time it proved impossible to repay the loan. It’s been an uphill struggle just picking apart the extent of the losses and dealing with Alfredo...’

      ‘And you kept it all to yourself!’

      ‘There seemed little point in worrying you or your brother.’

      ‘Just tell me what ruinous interest rates Carlo has imposed and I’ll deal with it.’

      ‘Here is the part you may not like, son...’

      ‘I’m all ears.’

      When it came to money there was nothing Theo couldn’t buy, and naturally he would pay the bill without complaint—although he was furious with his father for thinking it necessary to seek help outside the direct family circle.

      Pride.

      ‘As you know, Carlo has a daughter. An only child. Sadly there were to be no sons for him.’

      Even in the thick of disclosing what he knew his son would not want to hear Stefano couldn’t quite conceal the smugness in his voice, and Theo raised his eyebrows wryly. He had never known what had caused the enmity between his father and Carlo, but he suspected that the lifelong grudge stemmed from something ridiculously insignificant.

      ‘What has that got to do with anything?’ he asked, frankly bewildered at the tangent his father had taken.

      ‘Alexa... I think you may have met her... Or perhaps not... Well, it seems that the girl is not yet married, and Carlo...’ Stefano shrugged. ‘He is saddened at that—as I would be had I had a daughter... So part of the repayment schedule—which, in fairness to that sly old fox, is more lenient than at any bank—is that you help him out of his predicament with Alexa. In other words, Theo, I have promised him your hand in marriage to the girl...’

      * * *

      Alexa glared down at the outfit her mother had laid out for her to wear.

      Something ‘suitable’ to meet a man she had no wish to meet, far less marry. A wildly ridiculous frothy dress in startling blue that swept down to the ankles with a plunging neckline and an even more ridiculously plunging back.

      She was to be paraded in front of Theo De Angelis like a sacrificial lamb.

      She wanted to storm out of the house, head for the nearest port and take a boat to the opposite end of the world—where she would hide out for maybe ten years, until this whole ludicrous situation had been sorted out.

      Without her involvement.

      At first, when her father had sat her down and told her that she was to be married to a De Angelis, she had thought that he was joking.

      An arranged marriage? In this day and age? To a son of the man with whom he had had a stupid, simmering feud for thirty-five years? What else could it have been but a joke?

      That had been a week ago—plenty long enough for her to discover that her father had been deadly serious.

      ‘The poor man is in serious financial trouble.’ Carlo Caldini had opened up to her in an attempt to pull at her heartstrings. He had looked at her with a sad expression and mournful eyes. ‘True, he and I have not seen eye to eye over the years...’

      ‘All thirty-five of them, Papà...’

      ‘But in the end who else does one turn to but a friend? I would have done the same in his position...’

      Alexa had been baffled at this show of seemingly heart-wrenching empathy, but if her father had deemed it fit to rush to the rescue of a man he had spent over three decades deriding, then so be it. What did it have to do with her?

      Everything, as it had transpired.

      She had been bartered like a...a...piece of meat!

      She adored her father, but she would still have dug her heels in and point-blank refused had he not pulled out his trump card—in the shape of her mother.

      Cora Caldini, recovering from a stroke, was