Page 8 of Innocent's Wedding Day with the Italian

‘For about thirty seconds.’

‘That long?’ she mocked.

‘I had no way of knowing how you would react. Without Claflin Diamonds there would be no Beresi. I was not prepared to risk losing control of it to someone who taught small children for a living and knew nothing of business. If it wasn’t for my investment and the partnership we formed, there wouldn’t be a business and your grandfather would have been buried in a cardboard box.’

‘You went to his funeral? I didn’t even know he was dead until this morning.’ And she couldn’t understand why his death made her feelanything. Ray Claflin was nothing but a malevolent name to her.

‘Your grandfather arranged his own funeral before he died,’ Enzo said tightly. ‘He forbade me from telling you about his condition or notifying you of his death. I was the only mourner. He did not want anyone else to attend. By the end of his life he was a man haunted by many demons.’

‘Whatever demons he had, I’m sure he deserved them.’ Rebecca could not comprehend how a parent could disown their own child for the crime of falling in love.

Aware she was derailing herself from her interrogation, she looked back at Enzo, battling to keep her features stony. ‘Why didn’t you tell me about the inheritance when he died? You were his executor.’

Having been appointed executor in her parents’ wills meant Rebecca knew more about the role than she could ever have wanted. She’d been meticulous about her duties, not because she was a meticulous person—she wasn’t—but because it was a distraction from a grief that had made it hard to breathe.

She’d only learned to breathe properly again when a tall, dark, gorgeous Italian had swooped into her life.

Fighting hard to keep the tempest brewing inside her quelled, she added, ‘You had a legal duty to tell me of my inheritance.’

The business shares were only a part of it. Rebecca inherited everything else from her grandfather outright. She had no idea what that everything else was worth, and nor did she care. She didn’t want any of it... Apart from the Claflin Diamonds shares. Those she found she wanted very much.

‘I had a duty to tell you within three months of probate,’ he agreed. ‘Probate was granted three weeks ago.’

‘Drag the process out, did you?’

‘Yes.’

‘I bet you were tempted to destroy the will.’

He smiled grimly. ‘It was a non-starter—without a legally valid will, the English laws of intestacy would have taken effect and as his closest living relative, you would have inherited everything anyway, including his share of the business. I had no proof he’d promised me those shares, only my word.’

‘Which wasn’t worth the paper it was written on,’ she supplied.

‘Esattamente.’

‘But if you hadn’t learned that destroying the will scuppered all your chances of getting your sticky mitts on the shares, you would have shredded it?’

‘I told you, I looked into every eventuality and scenario.’

She smiled serenely. ‘He stitched you up like a kipper.’

His forehead furrowed in confusion.

She leaned forwards, her smile widening as a lightness cleared her brain. ‘Stitched you up like a kipper. It means he played you. He promised you his shares of the business but then put a condition on it with a set time limit that should have been impossible to fulfil.’ Would have been if Enzo hadn’t played her so well. ‘Non-fulfilment of the condition meant the shares transferred into the hands of someone else—moi—and you lost. On top of that, as he’d put you in charge of fulfilling his wishes, your failure to comply meant you would have been in charge of your own failure.’

He acknowledged this truth with a small but sharp nod.

If Rebecca wasn’t the pawn in this sick game between two rich men, she would have found her grandfather’s underhand methods against Enzo hilarious. It was nothing less than he deserved, something her grandfather must have thought too, else why play such a trick on him? ‘He must have had one warped sense of humour to play you like that.’

‘I never saw it when he was alive.’

‘Were you close to him?’

It was only because she was watching him so studiously for signs of lies that she caught the flicker of emotion on his face. ‘Yes.’

‘And he did the dirty on you? Ouch.’ Yes.Hilarious.If her heart wasn’t still packed with the weight of her own emotions, she’d be holding her sides with unrestrained glee.

Handsome features taut, he poured himself another drink.

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