enraptured. Giovanni had known about her! He’d known the whole time that he had a daughter, but had refused to acknowledge the fact until he knew he was going to die.
“Isn’t it amazing how death can make people want to right past wrongs,” she mused. At Rafael’s scornfully raised eyebrows she elaborated. “It was guilt, you see. He knew all the time that I existed, yet he’d done nothing to contact me. He obviously didn’t want to disrupt his cushy lifestyle by admitting my existence to the world.”
“Giovanni wasn’t like that. He wasn’t a coward. He would never have shirked his responsibility.”
“So you say , and yet he knew he had an heir he’d never bothered to find. How do you explain that?” She stared at Rafael defiantly.
Rafael couldn’t. He didn’t know any of the details. By the time Giovanni had told him his fantastic story, his mind had become confused with fever. Rafael had asked for details, anything that would help verify Giovanni’s amazing claim.
Giovanni, however, didn’t know enough, and if he did, he couldn’t recall at the time. The old man had mumbled about a woman he’d loved a long time ago. A grave mistake, he’d called it. But there was a child. A daughter. He didn’t know her name.
“What was the woman’s name?” Rafael had pressed urgently, sensing time was running out.
But Giovanni had only shaken his head. “English rose,” he’d whispered. “My pure English rose.”
H e’d gripped Rafael’s hand. “Find her,” he’d rasped, the pneumonia making it difficult for him to breath. “Find my daughter and make her my heir.”
Then he’d fallen into a restless sleep. The following day Rafael had altered the will and given it to Giovanni to sign. The man had been so weak at that point his signature was barely legible.
The next day he’d succumbed to the infection and died. Rafael had been at his bedside. He’d never mentioned the woman or his daughter again.
To be honest, Rafael was completely confused as to why Giovanni had chosen now to divulge this important information. Surely it was a conversation they could have had at anytime over the last twenty years. But Giovanni had obviously had his reasons, and Rafael had to respect that.
The thought had crossed his mind that perhaps Giovanni was delusional by that stage and didn’t know what he was saying. Rafael still had the old will in which he was the sole benefactor of Giovanni’s fortune. The full twenty million would go to him. How easy would it have been to simply destroy the new will and quietly inherit his mentor’s fortune? But Rafael couldn’t do that to the man that had saved his life, schooled him and then nurtured him into the adult he was today. So instead, he had to be content with his half of the money. Ten million dollars was nothing to scoff at and Rafael, who at one stage in his life had not even a penny to his name, was immensely grateful.
What he wasn’t so grateful for was the impossible task of locating the missing heir to the Albertosi fortune. He studied the beautiful woman in front of him. She’d had him going there for a minute with her stricken expression and visible grief. But then she’d turned on him and demanded to know about the inheritance. An amateur’s mistake. A true conman , or in this case woman , would have let it go for a few days, knowing he’d make enquiries. Then , if her story checked out, he’d have to go to her.
“Look, I don’t know why Giovanni suddenly decided to leave half his fortune to an illegitimate daughter,” he finally said. “It may, as you pointed out, be guilt, but it’s more likely a sense of obligation on his part. Like I said , Giovanni was an honourable man. I knew him well. He wouldn’t run away from a problem like that.”
“A problem?” Anna spluttered in disbelief.
Okay, bad choice of words. Rafael sighed. This was getting messier by the second. “Do you see my problem , though ? ” he insisted. “