Italian Tycoon, Secret Son

‘I know he does.’

The car was ready to take them on the short journey. She fell into the back and reached for him, kissing him eagerly.

‘I’m leading you there,’ she whispered, ‘and here, if that’s where you want to go.’

‘Mmm,’ he said.

‘Renzo?’ she said as a disturbing dread rose in her. ‘Renzo? Oh, no, I don’t believe this. It can’t be happening.’

But it was happening. Renzo’s eyes were closed and his head slumped forward.

‘Are you daring to fall asleep?’ she demanded, outraged.

‘No,’ he said, hastily opening his eyes.

But they closed again at once. He was dead to the world.

CHAPTER EIGHT

WHEN they reached the house, Renzo was just about able to walk inside.

Teresa appeared immediately, looking relieved when she saw him.

‘All right, stop fussing,’ he said mildly.

‘I’ll stop fussing when you’re safely in bed.’

‘Can you manage the stairs?’ Mandy asked.

Luckily there was no need. A lift had been installed to take him to his bedroom, one floor up. He leaned against the wall, eyes closed, while Mandy regarded him with outrage. Her whole body was singing with the excitement only he could bring her, and now he couldn’t bring matters to a conclusion. She could happily have wrung his neck.

When they reached his room, he fell on the bed with a sigh, and was out like a light.

‘Goodnight,’ she said stormily. ‘Goodnight!’

Teresa was waiting for her, beckoning Mandy into the room opposite Renzo’s.

‘It’s late,’ she said. ‘You stay here tonight. He needs you.’

Mandy smiled. Teresa was making a takeover bid. She even had a snack ready and waiting, with English tea, perfectly made.

‘This is delicious,’ Mandy said.

Suddenly Teresa’s loving exasperation exploded. ‘I warned him, but would he be told? Those pills are very strong and he’s supposed to be careful how many he takes.’

‘Pills?’

‘Before he left tonight he took three times the dose of painkiller that he’s supposed to take.’

‘Three times?’ Mandy echoed, aghast. ‘No wonder he passed out. Should we send for the doctor?’

‘No, he’s done it before and he wakes up eventually, but it’s still dangerous.’

‘But why do it tonight?’

‘He said he had to be at his best.’

‘Yes, in front of all those people-’

‘That’s not the reason and I think you know it.’

She looked at Mandy. Mandy looked away first.

‘I don’t know…what I know,’ she said reluctantly.

‘Now you sound like him,’ Teresa observed. ‘You’re just like each other.’

‘Yes, I think we are,’ Mandy said with a little smile. She ate a cake slowly before saying, ‘You’ve been with him all his life, haven’t you?’

‘Most of it. Gina, his mother, couldn’t cope, so they employed me.’

‘She couldn’t cope with one child? Did she have a job, as well?’

‘No, she was a lazy cow, thought life revolved around her. When things got difficult she left. You said he told you about that?’

‘Just that he came home and found her gone.’

‘I’ll never forget that day. He’d done a picture of her at school and he wanted to show her. He went all over the house searching, but she wasn’t there. She’d left a note for his father, but there was nothing for him. He cried for three days.’

‘How could any woman do that to a little boy?’ Mandy asked, horrified. ‘Didn’t she love him at all?’

‘I don’t think so,’ Teresa said reflectively. ‘It sometimes happens that a woman can’t love one of her children, although she loves the others. She married very young and had him when she was only sixteen. I think she blamed him for the loss of her youth.

‘When she’d gone to live with her new man, she didn’t even like Renzo visiting her. There were always excuses. Once he was supposed to be going on holiday with her and her new family, but on the very morning she rang up to say it wasn’t “convenient”.

‘He was twelve years old by then, and I’ll never forget his face when he heard. I thought he’d cry, but he didn’t. He just turned a ghastly pale colour, then his eyes went dead.

‘I was so angry that I went to see Gina and gave her a piece of my mind, but she just said she’d send him a holiday present.’

‘And I’ll bet she didn’t,’ Mandy said angrily.

‘Oh, yes, she did, but it would have been better if she hadn’t. It was a big parcel that looked exciting. He tore the wrapping off, so eager and happy because she’d actually remembered him.’

‘What was inside?’

‘A photograph. A family photograph. It showed Gina and her new husband with their children. She’d written on it, “Love from Mamma” but all Renzo saw was that she loved those children as she’d never loved him.’

‘But how could she do anything so cruel?’ Mandy exploded.

‘Because she’s selfish and stupid,’ Teresa snapped contemptuously. ‘It wouldn’t cross her mind to think how an abandoned child would feel at the sight of her with the children who’d replaced him.’

Mandy dropped her head into her hands, anguished for the pain of the rejected child, and the man he’d become.

‘After that he seemed to toughen up inside. I suppose he needed to. It was the only way to cope. But I was sorry too, because he changed, began to protect himself.

‘He threw himself into school, succeeded at everything, especially athletics. When he was old enough to go away alone, he joined expeditions in the mountains-skiing, climbing, bobsleigh. He won a host of trophies. Look at this.’

Teresa went to a cupboard by her bed, drew out a large album and laid it before Mandy. Leafing through it, she saw again the Renzo she’d known two years before, beaming with victory, a triumphant young hero, usually with a female companion.

‘That looks familiar,’ she said. ‘The first time I met him-’

She described the night Renzo had burst into her room, escaping an indignant husband, and Teresa roared with laughter.

‘That’s him,’ she said. ‘Things like that were always happening, but it wasn’t his fault. He was so handsome and delightful. All the girls loved him.’

‘Did he love them?’

‘Not really. He believed that women would always betray men. I think he was infatuated once or twice, but then he always ended it quickly. He was nice about it, let them down gently, but it was final. His barriers were well in place.’

‘Barriers,’ Mandy said thoughtfully. ‘When I knew him first I would never have thought of that in connection with him. He seemed so open to life, to people.’

‘But that is the barrier,’ Teresa said. ‘Nobody can get past it to know what he really