Kitabı oku: «Modern Romance March 2019 5-8»

CHAPTER ONE

THE LIGHT IN the wide corridor Ivo Greco walked along was muted, but the priceless tapestries that lined the stone walls provided their own glowing illumination as he moved towards the massive double doors of etched glass at the far end. The doors had to stay closed to maintain the carefully controlled humidity and light to preserve the priceless antiques.

They provided a light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel effect, but it was an illusion. Ivo was not expecting any version of a heavenly vision on the other side because the doors led to his grandfather’s private apartments, to which Ivo had been summoned.

His grandfather had actually sent for him forty-eight hours ago, and people did not keep Salvatore Greco waiting!

While Salvatore was on the record as saying he respected people who stood up to him, the reality was that Salvatore, a man who possessed vast wealth and enormous power, also possessed a very fragile ego.

As an eight-year-old, when Salvatore had taken over the guardianship of him and his brother, Ivo had not understood about egos, but he had quickly realised that it was easy to make his grandfather angry.

It had actually been the day before his eighth birthday when Ivo’s father had decided he could no longer live without his late wife. Ivo had found his father’s body and his grandfather had found Ivo.

Amid the horror of that day Ivo remembered the strength in his grandfather’s arms, the sanctuary they had afforded as he had picked Ivo up and taken him away from the scene that had lived on for years in his childish nightmares.

Even as a young boy Ivo had understood that he owed his grandfather a debt impossible to repay, and this knowledge did not disappear when he realised his grandfather was no guardian angel or superhero but a hard, ruthless man, not always fair and almost impossible to please.

But the fact remained that, no matter what he did, Salvatore was the one who had carried Ivo out of his hell. The debt remained, as did the gratitude burnt deep into his soul by the character-changing events of that day. Ivo had long ago stopped trying to please, even though he knew better than most that the old man hated to be thwarted and just how viciously he could react to any perceived insult, real or imagined. A very good reason why the people that surrounded Salvatore rarely disagreed with him, at least to his face.

Ivo was sanguine about the reception he was likely to receive, more bothered about the necessity of postponing a meeting than the tirade of abuse and invective inevitably waiting for him.

A nerve twitched along his hard jawline as, unbidden, a memory floated into his head; he had not always been so philosophical.

It had taken his brother several minutes to coax him out of his hiding place in one of the warren of attics in the palazzo. He couldn’t remember what he had done to outrage his grandparent but he remembered not believing his brother when he had said, ‘Never show him you’re afraid, then one day you won’t be.’

Ivo pushed the memory away, his symmetrical features hardening; the past was gone.

In his view there were few things more pathetic than people who clung onto memories until they became defined by their past. He saw them everywhere, from the people who became fixated on missed opportunities, old hurts and injustices, to the guy who constantly relived his early successes on the sports field, as if lifting a trophy at twenty defined him. All were so consumed with the past that they missed the opportunities that the future offered.

Ivo’s sights were always fixed ahead, though at that moment it was something in the periphery of his vision that caught his attention.

The suited servant, a new face to Ivo, who had shadowed him since he’d entered the building, almost collided with him as Ivo came to an unscheduled halt. Ivo let the man’s apologies slide off him as, head tilted back, he moved backwards to get the full effect of the glowing Byzantine image on the wall, again nearly falling over the man behind who delivered another flustered apology.

‘New?’

‘I’m not sure, sir.’

The response was perfectly polite but under the surface Ivo could almost feel the anxiety rolling off the man and, after one last glance at the wall, he took pity on him. Turning away, he caught sight of a look of relief on the man’s face; it was that look and not his own anxiety that made him quicken his leisurely pace.

Ivo’s personal spaces were minimalist and uncluttered—functional could still be pleasing to the eye or at least his eyes—but he appreciated beauty and artistic talent in many forms. He would have liked to study this testament to the skill of long-dead artisans for longer. The irony, of course, was that his grandfather would not appreciate the beauty.

Salvatore was a famed collector of many rare and precious objects—jade, art, porcelain—but for him it was all about the acquisition. For Salvatore, the pleasure came from possessing what someone else wanted. He might forget the history of an artwork or the name of an artist, but he had a flawless recall of the price he’d paid for any item and the identity of the collectors he outbid.

Once through the doors and into a brighter corridor, thanks to massive windows that revealed breath catching views of the Tyrrhenian Sea that glittered turquoise in the Tuscan morning sun, Ivo turned to his shadow.

‘I think I know my way from here.’

The man hesitated; clearly Ivo’s words clashed with his instructions. He began to bluster but his protests trailed away as Ivo’s dark level stare held his, and after a moment he tipped his head and faded away. Ivo’s grandfather’s private apartments were situated in one of the older parts of the building, taking up all of one of the iconic twelfth-century square towers built by an ancestor. The massive metal banded door to the study was open and Ivo walked straight in. He was prepared; even so he experienced a moment’s disorientation as he stepped over the threshold, feeling as if he’d stepped through some time portal or onto the set of a futuristic film. He almost reached for the designer shades tucked into the pocket of his suit jacket, the antiseptic white and chrome was that dazzling.

Five years earlier his grandfather had ripped out the antique panelling along with the books that had once lined the walls, and the decor was now sleek and modern. Efficient, as his grandfather had said as they’d watched the monitors being mounted on the wall, the only thing left from the past the antique desk that dominated the room.

A half-smile flickered across Ivo’s wide sensual mouth as he recalled the occasion he had casually admitted that he missed the old room, inviting further scorn when he had added he actually liked the smell of musty old books. This had apparently confirmed his grandfather’s suspicion that Ivo was a sentimental fool.

Ivo had accepted the insult with a careless shrug of his wide shoulders, aware that if Salvatore had believed either of these things he would not have given him control of the IT and Communications division of Greco Industries, although given was perhaps the wrong word. When the grand gesture was made his grandfather had not anticipated the role would have any permanence.

His gratitude at the time had been genuine even though Ivo had known that it had been intended as a wing-clipping exercise—the unspoken but universally acknowledged expectation had been that the young upstart would fail; indeed he was meant to fail, publicly.

But Ivo had defied those expectations, denying his grandfather the opportunity to ride to the rescue. A source of frustration to a man who liked to be in control.

And so far, Ivo had been allowed a free hand.

Was that about to change?

He was not given to paranoia but neither was Ivo a believer in coincidence, and the timing of this peremptory summons, coinciding as it did with the ink drying on the new global merger he had negotiated, had raised a few warning bells. Was it significant that this merger would mean the IT division was no longer the poor relation of Greco Industries but able to challenge the leisure, property and construction arms of the company, and even make the jewel in the crown, Greco’s media division, look over their shoulder?

So far Salvatore had been content to bask in the reflected glory of his grandson’s success but maybe that was no longer enough. Was he about to announce he wanted to be more hands on?

Ivo approached the possibility with more curiosity than trepidation. Considering the fact Salvatore was a control freak, this scenario had always been a possibility and Ivo had already decided that, rather than surrender his control, or even share it, he would walk away.

Just looking for an excuse, Ivo?

His dark brows twitching into a frown that drew them into a straight line above his masterful nose, he ignored the sly voice in his head as he cleared his throat.

In reality he knew he would never walk away from his duty, any more than his grandfather had walked away from him. Ivo was not his father, or his brother.

‘Morning, Grandfather.’

Close to eighty, Salvatore Greco remained an imposing figure. There was nothing fragile or infirm about his upright stance, but as he turned to face his grandson Ivo found himself thinking, for the first time in his life, that his grandfather was old.

Maybe it was the morning light shining directly on the older man’s face as he turned, revealing the depth of the lines that grooved his forehead and etched deep the furrows carved from his nose to the downward-turning corners of his thin mouth.

The line of silent speculation vanished the moment the older man began to speak, as did pretty much every other thought. There was definitely no hint of age or softness in his voice as he delivered his announcement.

‘Your brother is dead.’ He took his seat in the high-backed chair behind the massive antique desk that still dominated the otherwise minimally furnished white room, pausing only to straighten the line of meticulously sharpened pencils before he continued to speak.

Ivo didn’t notice a tremor in his grandfather’s voice as he stared blindly ahead, and the words just rolled over him in a meaningless jumble until one sentence made itself heard above the loud static hum in his head.

‘I will need you to take care of this personally, you understand?’

Ivo fought his way through the swirl of churning emotions that made their physical presence known in the fog in his head and the constricting band that felt like steel around his chest before he spoke.

‘The funeral?’ It still didn’t seem possible—would it ever? Bruno—nine years his senior...what did that make him? Thirty-eight? How did anyone die at thirty-eight?

Outrage at the thought elicited a mind-calming burst of rage followed swiftly by denial. It had to be a mistake. Yes, that was it, some awful mistake. If his brother was dead, he’d know.

His grandfather’s eyes narrowed fractionally as his lips compressed in faint irritation at the interruption.

‘Their funeral was last month, I believe.’

The words ricocheted around in Ivo’s head. He needed to sit down. His fingers clenched his knuckles white against the leather armrest...he was sitting down. He had been walking around functioning as normal for weeks while his brother was dead. How could he not have known, not have felt something? He tipped his head in a sharp motion of denial and cut across his grandfather, who was speaking again.

‘Last month?’

His grandfather looked at him without speaking before he reached for the stopper on the crystal decanter that sat on the desk and glugged some of the amber liquid into one of the glasses that sat beside it on the silver tray.

The full glass scraped on the desk as he pushed it towards his grandson.

Ivo shook his head, not mistaking the action for empathy; he had accepted years ago that his grandparent was incapable of that. Emotional responses were, in Salvatore’s eyes, weaknesses to be studied and exploited. It was not coincidental that Ivo was famed for his unreadable expression. What had begun as a self-protective device was now second nature.

‘You said their?’ Ivo’s brain was starting to function, but he was not sure if that could be classed as a good thing. The sense of loss had a physical presence; he could feel it at a cellular level in a way he’d sworn never to feel anything again. As he’d coped alone after Bruno’s desertion, the realisation that he could not count on anyone else had required he closed off the part of himself that made him vulnerable to such painful feelings. And now, the unfamiliar dormant feelings had exploded into painful life, blurring his normally sharp-edged wits.

‘The woman was with him.’

‘His wife.’ Ivo emphasised the word as an image flashed into his head, probably not even accurate.

He’d only met the woman his brother had walked away from his own family for once, and that had been fourteen years ago. Her eyes probably hadn’t been that blue, but the memory of that vivid colour had stayed with him even after the resentment towards Samantha Henderson had faded. Samantha was, after all, responsible for robbing Ivo of the big brother he had worshipped and the future he had dreamt of.

Not immediately, Bruno was coming to get him, he had promised, tears on his cheeks as he, Ivo, had begged his brother not to leave. How long had it taken him to realise that Bruno was never coming back?

Fool, mocked the derisive voice in his head as he thought of his younger self waiting, believing. Bruno had said what Ivo had wanted to hear. In truth, he’d never intended coming back for him; he had deserted him.

The people in Ivo’s life had a habit of doing that: first his father, then Bruno. A person who invited that sort of pain and disillusion had to be a fool, and Ivo was no fool.

In a world obsessed with pairing people off, he had learnt that, far from being a deficiency, being alone was a strength. He never intended to be in a position where someone else had the power to inflict that sort of pain. He was not looking for love; love exaggerated men’s weaknesses, left a man less than whole.

To this point it hadn’t been difficult to avoid the infection of love, any more difficult than walking away from sexual encounters. The compartments in his life remained unpolluted by love, but loyalty was another thing.

His grandfather never demanded love but he did demand loyalty and Ivo considered he had earned it. The only person who had ever been there for him was Salvatore; a man who didn’t pretend to be something he wasn’t. The old man was a devil, but he didn’t hide behind a saint’s mask.

Bruno had been his favourite grandson.

His heir.

Ivo, who’d worshipped his brother, had been fine with that.

There had always been an expectation that Ivo would one day rebel, and, growing up, his occasional failures, while not going unpunished, were almost expected. It was whispered that he was like his father; that he had inherited the same weakness.

Ivo had heard the whispers, gritted his teeth and determined that he would prove them all wrong. It was not news to him that his father was weak, because only a weak man would take his own life and leave two motherless sons behind because he couldn’t live without the woman he loved.

His mother must have been special, Bruno always said she was, but Ivo didn’t really remember his mother at all. He didn’t allow himself to remember his father; instead he despised him.

For his brother it had always been different—he was the golden boy. Not easy—the bar had been set high for the heir to his grandfather’s empire and failure was not tolerated, and he’d lived up to expectations, which was perhaps why, when he’d finally challenged Salvatore, the consequences had been so extreme.

Salvatore had already had a bride picked out for his heir. It would be a profitable union, as the woman was the only child and heir of a man almost as wealthy as the Grecos and with an equally proud lineage, which for his grandfather was almost as important. He was fond of speaking of bloodlines and pointing out the proof that the Grecos, who could trace their bloodlines back centuries, were among the elite of Europe.

Ivo had been fifteen when his brother had walked away to be with the woman he loved. He’d finally realised when the brother he idolised had not returned for him that the whispers had been wrong all along. Ivo hadn’t been the one who had inherited their father’s weakness; Bruno was the one that couldn’t live without the woman he loved.

But Bruno could live without honour, and his little brother.

His older brother had betrayed him but, even so, Bruno had been living out there somewhere, some place cold and bleak, a Scottish island, but now he wasn’t.

It didn’t seem possible.

‘Nobody informed you?’ He pressed a finger to the groove between his dark brows, struggling to make sense of what he was hearing.

His grandfather’s bushy brows lifted. ‘Obviously I was informed, by your brother’s solicitor. Oh, and the woman’s sister sent a letter, handwritten,’ he added with a contemptuous snort. ‘Barely legible.’

Ivo shook his head and felt anger separate itself out from the multi-layered raw emotions churning in his belly. Tangled as they were with the irrational guilt he refused to acknowledge, the physical effort of keeping the toxic mixture in check sent fine tremors through his lean body.

‘You knew?’ A muscle along his jaw clenched and quivered as the old man simply shrugged in confirmation, feeding the flame of fury inside him. He could feel it building. None of his feelings showed on his face but there was ice in his voice when he pressed his point. ‘And you did not see fit to share that information with me, until now?’

There was the slightest edge of defiance in Salvatore’s voice as he met his grandson’s eyes and bit out, ‘What would have been the point, Bruno?’

The muscles along Ivo’s jawline quivered. His grandfather seemed unaware of what he had called him, his heavy eyelids lowered over dark flame-lit eyes.

‘It did not occur to you that I might want to go to the funeral?’ Would he have...? Well, he’d never know now, he concluded with bitter irony.

‘No, it didn’t. You had your closure all those years ago when he stopped being your brother, and...’ Eyes that held no expression flickered as he scanned his grandson’s face. ‘You’re not a hypocrite.’ He arched a brow, his lip curling in mild mocking contempt as he threw out the challenge. ‘Are you?’

Ivo’s head came up slowly, his almond-shaped dark eyes resting without expression on his grandfather’s face. The surge of colour that had highlighted the slashing curves of his razor-edged cheekbones had receded. The normal vibrant olive glow had been overwhelmed by a waxy pallor that gave his features the sepia cast of an old photo; his features were utterly still. Only the nerve spasmodically clenching to the right of his clamped bloodless lips a sign of life.

He shook his head in an attitude of someone expecting to wake up. ‘Bruno contacted me eighteen months ago. He wanted to meet up.’ Ivo, staring blankly into middle distance, did not see the look of anger that crossed his grandfather’s face. He was too consumed with the guilt clawing low in his belly.

‘You met up with him?’

Ivo turned his head, the bleakness in his eyes profound. If the love he’d felt for his brother really had died when he hadn’t come back, should he be feeling this sort of pain now?

Pushing the question away, he took a deep breath and squared his shoulders. A man took responsibility for his actions. ‘No, I didn’t.’

A decision that he might never forgive himself for now. His brother had reached out and he had rejected him, and why? Because he had carried the anger and resentment of a youth into adulthood, because he wanted to punish Bruno?