Aesia Lrae

The Italian's Son (eBook, ePUB)

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

The stark words stood out against the white paper: "A boy, born yesterday. 3.9 kilos." A message that could have been a cause for joy, but for Luca Montese, it meant his wife had given another man a child, and none to him. It meant the whole world would know his humiliation, which made him curse everyone, starting with himself, for having been blind.

Fear had forced Drusilla to leave him as soon as she learned she was pregnant, six months earlier. When Luca came home that day, he had found a note in which she confessed that there was another man, that she was pregnant, and that he shouldn't try to pursue her. Nothing more. She had taken everything he had given her, down to the last diamond and all her haute couture dresses. He had pursued her with a vengeful fury through a battery of expensive lawyers who sent her a divorce settlement that left her with nothing but what he had already taken.

It irritated him that the lover was so poor and insignificant that he was beyond the reach of his revenge. It would have been a pleasure to ruin a wealthy businessman like him, but a hairdresser... That seemed an insult. Now they had a beautiful boy, and he had no children. Everyone would know it was his fault their marriage had been sterile, and they would laugh. The thought nearly drove him mad.

Three floors below was Rome's financial center, a world he had cunningly made his own. His employees owed him everything, his rivals feared him, but now everyone would laugh.

He folded the newspaper in half, with hands that were not those of an international financier, but those of a worker. Just like his face, with a rotundity that had little to do with his features and more

with the sparkle in his eyes. That, along with his tall, broad-shouldered figure, attracted many women who gravitated toward power. Physical power, financial power, power of all kinds. Since the breakup of his marriage, he hadn't lacked companionship.

He treated them well, according to their tastes, was generous with gifts but not with words or feelings, and broke up with them abruptly when he realized they didn't have what he was looking for. Although he couldn't say what it was, he only knew that he'd had it once, a long time ago, with a girl with vibrant eyes and a big heart.

He barely remembered the boy he had been then, full of impractical ideas about lasting love, neither cynical nor greedy, and who believed that both love and life were good, a foolishness that had been cruelly taught to him.

He forced himself to return to the present, considering that dwelling on past happiness was a sign of weakness, and he always cut through weakness as ruthlessly as he did everything else. He strode down to the parking lot where he kept his Rolls Royce. Although he had a chauffeur, he liked driving it himself, considering it his personal trophy, proof of how far he'd come since his days with a chauffeur-driven cart that needed repairing all the time. Try as he might, he couldn't erase the image of her laughing as she handed him the wrench. Sometimes she'd crawl under the car with him, and then they'd kiss and laugh like mad.

As he drove toward his country villa, he thought perhaps he had been a little crazy, believing that such joy would last forever. It hadn't.

He erased her memory from his mind again, but this time she seemed to be there beside him as he drove in the dark, tormenting himself with memories of her charm, her kindness, her tenderness. He was twenty, she was seventeen, and they had both believed it would last forever. Then he thought that perhaps it could have been.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: WHITEHEAD AESIA LRAE
• Erscheinungstermin: 14. Oktober 2025
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9798232115234
• Artikelnr.: 75664231