LITMIR.BIZ

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never left Luca’s. “The choice is hers. She can either accept a lump settlement now, or a position in the company. She chose the latter.”

      “This is ridiculous.”

      It was something far worse than merely ridiculous, but Luca didn’t have a word to describe that gnawing, hollow thing inside him that always yawned open at any mention of his father’s sixth and final wife. Kathryn.

      The one who was even now in the larger, more formal library downstairs, crying what appeared to be real tears over the death of a husband three times her age she could only have married for the most cynical of reasons. Luca had seen them trickle silently down her cheeks, one after the next, as they’d all stood about in the frigid air earlier, giving the impression she could not manage to contain her grief.

      He didn’t believe it. Not for a second.

      If Luca knew anything, it was this: the kind of love that might lead to such grieving was rare, exceedingly unlikely and had never made a great many appearances in the Castelli family. He thought Rafael’s current happiness was perhaps the only evidence of it in generations.

      “For all we know, Father found her hawking her wares on the streets of London,” he muttered now. Then glared at his brother. “What the hell will I do with her in the office? Do we even know if she can read?”

      Rafael shifted, the dark eyes that were so much like Luca’s own narrow and shrewd. “You will find something to keep her busy, because the will assures her three years of employment. Ample time to introduce her to the joys of the written word, I’d think. And whether you like her or not is irrelevant.”

      Like was not at all the word Luca would have used to describe what happened inside him at the mention of that woman. It wasn’t even close.

      “I have no feelings about her whatsoever.” Luca let out a laugh that sounded hollow to his own ears. “What is one more child bride—acquired solely to cater to the old man’s ego—to me?”

      His brother only gazed at him for a moment that seemed to stretch on for far too long. The old windows rattled. The fire crackled and spat. And Luca found he had no desire whatsoever to hear whatever his older brother might say next. He’d preferred Rafael when he’d been lost in a prison of fury and regret, he told himself, and unable to concentrate on anything outside his own pain. At least then he’d been a known quantity. This new Rafael was entirely too insightful.

      “If you are determined to do this,” he said before Rafael could open his mouth and say things Luca would have to fend off, “why not set her up with something in Sonoma? She can get a hands-on experience at the vineyards in California, just as we did when we were boys. It can be a delightful holiday for her, far, far away.”

      From me, he did not say. Far, far away from me.

      Rafael shrugged. “She chose Rome.”

      Rome. Luca’s city. Luca’s side of their highly competitive wine business. The marketing power and global reach of the Castelli Wine brand were, he flattered himself, all his doing—and possible in large part because he’d been left to his own devices for years. He had certainly not been required to play babysitter for one of his father’s legion of mistakes.

      His father’s very worst mistake, to his way of thinking. In a lifetime of so very many—including Luca himself, he’d long thought. He knew his father would have agreed.

      “There’s no room,” he said now. “The team is lean, focused and entirely handpicked. There’s no place for a bit of fluff on sabbatical from her true vocation as an old man’s trophy.”

      Rafael was his boss then, he could see. Not his brother.

      And entirely pitiless. “You’ll have to make room.”

      Luca shook his head. “It may set us back months, if not years, and cause incalculable damage in the process as we try to arrange the team around such a creature and what are sure to be her many, many mistakes.”

      “I trust you’ll ensure that none of that happens,” Rafael said drily. “Or do you doubt your own abilities?”

      “This sort of vulgar nepotism will likely cause a riot—”

      “Luca.” Rafael’s voice was not loud, but it silenced Luca all the same. “Your objections are noted. But you are not seeing the big picture.”

      Luca tried to contain the seething thing within that pushed out from the darkest part of him and threatened to take him over. He thrust his legs out in front of him and raked a hand through his hair as if he was languid. Indolent. Unbothered by all of this, despite his arguments.

      The role he’d been playing all his life. He had no idea why it had become so difficult these past couple of years to maintain his profoundly unconcerned facade. Why it had started to feel as if it was more of a cage than a retreat.

      “Enlighten me,” he said, mildly enough, when he was certain he could manage to speak in his usual half bored, half amused tone.

      Rafael did not look fooled. But he only picked up his glass from the antique side table and swirled the amber liquid within.

      “Kathryn has captured the public’s interest,” he said after a moment. “I shouldn’t have to remind you of that. Saint Kate has been on every cover of every tabloid since the news of Father’s death broke. Her grief. Her selflessness. Her true love for the old man against all odds. Et cetera.”

      “You will excuse me if I am skeptical about the truth of her devotion.” At least he sounded far more amused than he felt. “To put it mildly. The truth of her interest in his bank account I find a far more convincing tale, if less entertaining.”

      “The truth is malleable and has little to do with the story that ends up splashed across every gossip site and magazine in existence,” Rafael said, and there was the hint of a rueful smile on his face when he looked at Luca again. “No one knows this better than me. Can we really complain if this time the coverage is not exactly in our favor?”

      Luca wasn’t sure he found his latest stepmother’s obvious manipulation of the press to be in the same realm as the stories Rafael and his wife, Lily—who also happened to be their former stepsister, because the Castelli family tree was nothing if not tangled and bent back on itself—had told to explain the fact she’d been thought dead for five years.

      But he thought better of saying anything.

      After a moment, Rafael continued, “The reality is this. Even though you and I have been running things for years now, the perception from the outside is very different. Father’s death gives anyone and everyone the opportunity to make grand claims about how his upstart, ungrateful sons will ruin what he built. If we are seen to shun Kathryn, to treat her badly, that can only reflect negatively on us and add fuel to that fire.” He set his glass down without drinking from it. “I want no fuel, no fire. Nothing the tabloids can sink their dirty little claws into. You understand. This is necessary.”

      What Luca understood was that this was a directive. From the chief executive officer of Castelli Wine and the new official head of his family to one among his many underlings. The fact that Luca owned half of the company did not change the fact he answered to Rafael. And that none of this sat well with him didn’t alter the fact that Rafael wasn’t asking his opinion on the matter.

      He was delivering an order.

      Luca stood abruptly, before he said things he wasn’t sure he meant in an effort to sway his brother’s opinion. Rafael stayed where he was.

      “I don’t like this,” Luca said quietly. “It can’t end well.”

      “It must end well,” Rafael countered. “That’s the whole point.”

      “I’ll remind you that this was entirely your idea when it becomes a vast and unconquerable disaster, sinking the whole of Castelli Wine in the wake of this woman’s incompetence,” Luca said, and started for the door. He needed to do something. Run for miles and miles. Swim even

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