LITMIR.BIZ

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to do? Get showered and dressed and head back to work?

      Sit in her hotel room biting her nails and wondering if Nico would take her out on her last night in Rome?

      She was far too easy where Nico was concerned. The sum total of their dating history was having a drink together.

      ‘Nico,’ she said. ‘Tonight, I would like—’

      ‘Aurora, stop.’

       Just stop.

      He looked at the endless missed calls and the frantic texts, and knew that if he had been able to choose he really would have preferred to be alone for this moment.

      ‘Pronto?’ he said into his phone.

      Aurora heard for the first time a slight shake in his strong voice as Nico asked when. And if anyone had been with him. And if his father had been in pain when he passed.

      She started to cry.

      When he’d ended the call Nico did not speak. Aurora went up on her knees and pressed herself into his back, wrapping her arms around him and crying and kissing his neck. Not in a sensual way. This time she was the tender one. But though she held him, it was Aurora who shed the tears.

      Nico did not know how to.

      ‘Your mother took him lunch,’ Nico said. ‘Then called for the doctor to come quickly. It was peaceful, the doctor said.’

      She moved around him so she sat facing him, on his lap, her legs wrapped around his body. She tried to read his face, to measure his pain, but it was blank.

      ‘I shouldn’t have come away this week,’ Aurora cried. ‘I knew he was weak…’

      Her tears were genuine, for she had both loved and hated the old bastard. Loved his wit and his humour and his proud ways. Hated that his hands had put bruises on her beautiful Nico, and she detested the insults that had been hurled from his mouth.

      ‘I need to get back,’ Nico said.

      He prised himself out of her arms, but they sprang back.

      ‘Soon.’

      ‘Now,’ Nico said, and stood so she slid off his lap.

      He went towards the bathroom and she followed, but he closed the bathroom door in her face.

      She stood there with the thick wood between them.

       Geo was dead.

      Panic thudded in her chest.

      She opened the drapes, and although Rome looked the same, as she turned naked from the French windows the bedroom did not. There were rumpled sheets and discarded clothes and the scent of sex in the air.

      Aurora saw the chaos she’d brought to him.

      He had returned to this.

      She dressed. It seemed wrong to be pulling on a red dress when Geo was dead, but she had a black one back at the hotel she could change into.

      Aurora wanted to help, and so she thought about what Marianna would do—she would pack, of course, except Nico had not even unpacked.

      ‘What are you doing?’ he asked as he came out of the bathroom with a towel around his waist to the sight of Aurora going through his wardrobe.

      ‘Finding a black suit…’

      ‘I can manage.’

      ‘And a black tie…’

      ‘Aurora, go back to work—get on with your job.’

      ‘Work?’ She swung around and looked at him aghast. ‘How selfish of you! Do you really think we can all carry on working now? We have lost someone too.’

      ‘Cut me some slack, Aurora. I’m not thinking straight.’

      He was hanging on by his fingernails even as she turned away in that red dress with tears streaming down her face. It dizzied his mind.

      Where the hell was the calm wife from their game? The one who’d pour him a drink and leave him to spend these first moments on earth without his father alone.

      Where was the demure woman who would accept his silence and lack of outward grief?

      He would like to take Aurora back to bed, right now. To close the drapes and to weep.

      ‘Oh, Nico…’

      She was crying again and, frankly, he would have liked to join her.

      ‘Aurora, go back to the hotel. I am going to make some phone calls and then I will be flying back to Silibri.’

      ‘I’ll go and pack.’ Aurora nodded. Now her phone was ringing. She saw that it was Pino, but did not answer. ‘They will all have heard and be wondering what to do.’ She looked from her phone to Nico. ‘Shall I meet you back at the hotel?’

      ‘Sorry?’ He really was not thinking straight. ‘Why?’

      ‘Nico, we will be returning to Silibri with you, of course.’

      ‘Aurora, what you guys do is up to you—but I need to get back now.’

      ‘So do we scramble to get a flight and the cuccette while you fly in your big plush helicopter alone?’

      He sighed, defeated. ‘Of course not.’

      His driver offered condolences, and in the hotel lobby stood Marianna, looking grim. There too were the Silibri contingent, all dressed in black.

      ‘No one is better prepared for death than a Sicilian,’ Aurora commented.

      Even in grief she could still make him smile.

      ‘Royalty travel with black outfits too,’ Nico pointed out.

      ‘Not always,’ Aurora said, and Nico gave a soft laugh.

      She disappeared and returned fifteen minutes later, showered and changed, wearing no make up, and he could tell there had been a fresh batch of tears.

      Those stunning locks had been washed and her hair was now pulled back in a severe low bun. Her dress was black, as were her shoes, and those gorgeous legs were encased in black stockings.

      Yes, these Sicilians were more prepared for death than the Queen of England. And none of them had ever been in a helicopter, which meant there were a lot of shouts and nervous laughter as they took off.

      The Silibri contingent had been to Rome but now they were returning.

      And they were bringing their Nico home.

       CHAPTER NINE

      ‘CONDOGLIANZE…’

      One by one they took his hand and kissed his cheeks, but all Nico wanted was for this day to be over and then never to have to return to the place that had brought him so much grief.

      As the last member of his family, Nico stood alone. There was just this line-up to get through, he told himself. And then his duty would be almost done.

      There was to be a small gathering back at the house and then he could return to Rome.

      ‘Le mie più sentite condoglianze,’ Pino said.

      ‘Thank you for all you did for him,’ Nico said.

      Aurora was just a couple of people down the line. Soon her hand would find his.

      ‘Condoglianze,’ Francesca said. ‘Nico, he is at peace.’

      ‘I know—thank you.’

      Where was his

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