Page 4 (1/2)

CHAPTER ONE

CESARE SABATINO FLIPPED open the file sent by special delivery and groaned out loud, his darkly handso his disbelief

There were two photos included in the file, one of a nubile blonde teenager called Cristina and the other of her older sister Elisabetta Was this faeneration? Cesare raked long brown fingers through his luxuriant black hair, frustration pu lean line of his powerful body He really didn’t have ti day What was his father, Goffredo, playing at?

‘What’s up?’ Jonathan, his friend and a director of the Sabatino pharmaceutical empire, asked

In answer, Cesare tossed the file to the other man ‘Look at it and weep at the ly sane relatives,’ he urged

Frowning, Jonathan glanced through the sparse file and studied the photos ‘The blonde’s not bad but a bit on the young side The other one with the woolly hat on looks like a scarecrow What on earth is the connection between you and so family?’

‘It’s a long story,’ Cesare warned him

Jonathan hitched his well-cut trousers and took a seat ‘Interesting?’

Cesare grimaced ‘Only moderately In the nineteen thirties ean Sea Most of randmother, Athene, was born and raised there But when her father went bust, Lionos was sold to an Italian called Geraldo Luccini’

Jonathan shrugged ‘Fortunes rise and fall’

‘Matters, however, took a turn for the worse when Athene’s brother decided to get the island back into fahter and then chose to jilt her at the altar’

The other man raised his brows ‘Nice’

‘Her father was so enraged by the slight to his daughter and his faly complex will’

‘In ay?’

‘The island cannot be sold and the two young women in that file are the current owners of Lionos by inheritance through their h e between a Zirondi and a Luccini descendant and the birth of a child’

‘You’re not serious?’ Jonathan was amazed

‘A generation back, e to the h I would point out that he genuinely fell in love with her Luckily for us all, however, when he proposed she turned him down and married her farmer instead’

‘Why luckily?’ Jonathan queried

‘Francesca didn’t settle for long with the farmer or with any of the men that followed hi face grim, well aware that his laid-back and rather naive father could never have coped with so fickle a wife