Sandra Marton - The Orsini Brides

The computer hummed.

Or maybe it was the woman on the aisle. It was hard to tell.

The computer booted. The screen came alive. Wasting no time, Anna searched for and found the file she needed. Clicked on it and, hallelujah, there it was, the most recent document, a letter from Prince Draco Marcellus Valenti to her father.

The name made her snort.

So did the letter.

It was as stiffly formal as that ridiculous name and title, wreathed in the kind of hyperbole that would have made a seventeenth-century scribe proud.

One reading, and she knew what the prince would be like.

Old. Not just old. Ancient. White hair growing from a pink scalp. Probably growing out of his ears, too. She could almost envision his liver-spotted hands clutching an elaborate cane. No, not a cane. He’d never call it that. A walking stick.

In other words, a man out of touch with life, with reality, with the modern world.

Anna smiled. This might turn out to be interesting. Anna Versus the Aristocrat. Heck, it sounded like a movie—

Blip.

Her computer screen went dark.

“No,” she whispered, “no …”

“Yup,” Hannibal said cheerfully. “You’re outta juice, little lady.”

Hell. Little lady? Anna glared at him. What she was, was out of patience with the male of the species … but Hannibal was only stating the obvious.

Why dump her anger on him?

Sure, she was ticked off by what had happened in the lounge, but her mood had been sour even before that.

It had all started on Sunday, after dinner at the Orsini mansion in Little Italy. Anna’s mother had phoned the previous week to invite her.

“I can’t come, Mom,” Anna had said. “I have an appointment.”

“You have not been here in weeks.” Sofia’s tone of reprimand had taken Anna straight back to childhood. “Always, you have an excuse.”

It was true. So Anna had sighed and agreed to show up. After the meal her father had insisted on walking her to the front door, but when they were about to pass his study, he’d stopped, jerked his head to indicate that Freddo, his capo and ever-present shadow, should step aside.

“A word with you alone, mia figlia, ” he’d said to Anna.

Reluctantly she’d let Cesare lead her into the study. He’d sat down behind his massive oak desk, motioned her to take a seat, looked at her for a long moment and then cleared his throat.

“I need a favor of you, Anna.”

“What kind of favor?” she’d said warily.

“A very important one.”

Anna had stared at him. A favor? For the father she pretended to respect for the sake of her mother but, in reality, despised? He was a crime boss. Don of the feared East Coast famiglia.

Cesare had no idea she knew that about him, that she and her sister, Isabella, had figured it out when Izzy was thirteen and Anna was a year older.

Neither could remember exactly how it had happened. Maybe they’d read a newspaper article. Maybe the whispers of the girls at school had suddenly started to make sense.

Or maybe it was their realization that their big brothers, Rafe, Dante, Falco and Nick, had struck out on their own as soon as they could and treated Cesare with cold disdain whenever they visited the mansion and thought the girls and their mother were out of earshot.

Anna and Izzy only knew that one day they’d suddenly realized their father was not the head of a waste management company.

He was a crook.

Because of their mother, they hadn’t let on that they knew the truth. Lately, though, that was becoming more and more difficult. Anna, especially, was finding it hard to pretend her father’s hands were not dirty, even bloody.

Do a favor, for a man like him?

No, she’d thought. No, she wouldn’t do it.

“I’m afraid I’m incredibly busy, Father. I have a lot on my plate just now, and—”

He’d cut her off with an imperious wave of his hand.

“Let us be honest for once, Anna. I know what you think of me. I have known it for a very long time. You can fool your mama and your brothers, but not me.”

Anna had risen to her feet.

“Then you also know,” she’d said coolly, “that you’re asking the wrong person for a favor.”

Her father had shaken his head.

“I am asking the right person. The only person. You are my daughter. You are more like me than you would care to admit.”

“I am nothing like you! I believe in the law. In justice. In doing what is right, no matter what it takes!”

“As do I,” Cesare had said. “It is only that we approach such things differently.”

Anna had laughed.

“Goodbye, Father. Don’t think this hasn’t been interesting.”

“Anna. Listen to me, per favore. ”

The per favore did it. Anna sat back and folded her arms.

“I need to see justice done, mia figlia. Done your way. The law’s way. Not mine. And you are a lawyer, mia figlia, are you not? A lawyer, one who carries my blood in her veins.”

“I can’t do anything about being your daughter,” Anna said coldly. “And if you need an attorney, you probably have half a dozen on your payroll.”

“This is a personal matter. It is about family. Our family,” her father said. “Your mother, your brothers, your sister and you.”

Not interested, Anna wanted to say, but the truth was Cesare had piqued her curiosity.

What her father was now calling “our family” had never seemed as important to him as his crime family. How could that have changed?

“You have five minutes,” she said after a glance at her watch. “Then I’m out of here.”

Cesare pulled a folder of documents from a drawer and dumped them on the shiny surface of his desk. Most were yellowed with age.

Anna’s curiosity rose another notch.

“Letters, writs, deeds,” he said. “They go back years. Centuries. They belong to your mother. To her family.”

“Wait a minute. My mother? This is about her?”

“ Sì. It is about her, and what by right belongs to her.”

“I’m listening,” Anna said, folding her arms.

Her father told her a story of kings and cowards, invaders and peasants. He spoke of centuries-old intrigue, of lies on top of lies, of land that had belonged to her mother’s people until a prince of the House of Valenti stole it from them.

“When?”

Cesare shrugged. “Who knows? I told you, these things go back centuries.”

“When did you get involved?”

“As soon as I learned what had happened.”

“Which was what, exactly?

“The current prince intends to build on your mother’s land.”

“And you learned this how?”

Cesare shrugged again. “I have many contacts in Sicily, Anna.”

Yes. Anna was quite sure he did.

“So what did you do?”

“I contacted him. I told him he has no legal right to do such a thing. He claims that he does.”

“It’s difficult to prove something that happened so long ago.”

“It is difficult to prove something when a prince refuses to admit to it.”

Anna nodded.

“I’m sure you’re right. And it’s an interesting story, Father, but I don’t see how it involves me. You need to contact an Italian law firm. A Sicilian firm. And—”

Her father smiled grimly.

“They are all afraid of the prince. Draco Valenti has enormous wealth and power.”

“And you’re just a poor peasant,” Anna said with a cool smile.

Her father’s gaze was unflinching.

“You joke, Anna, but it is the truth. No matter what worldly goods I have accumulated, no matter my power, that is exactly what I am, what I shall always be, when measured against a man like the prince.”