CHAPTER ONE
‘IAMSORRY, Nicky, but I have no choice. Yourpapacannot walk with that leg of his in agesso, or whatever you want to call it. Yourmamais in a state. She needs me.’
With a mountain of work to get through, a pile of reports to sign off and a delicate, monumental deal which had been months in the making nearing its long-awaited conclusion—not to mention a six-year-old daughter who was about to start her summer holidays—Niccolo Ferri had looked at his aunt two evenings before, as she’d stood there with her suitcase packed and the taxi driver all but blowing his horn in the circular courtyard of his London mansion, with something approaching horror.
Yes, his fatherhadhad a fall, foolishly swerving through the streets of Rome on a moped Niccolo had warned him not to get, but why on earth did that mean his aunt, here in London, suddenly needed to rush off in the guise of Florence Nightingale? To the best of his knowledge, his aunt had precisely zero medical qualifications.
He had telephoned his mother on a daily basis ever since his father had been sent flying off his moped three days previously, and Anna Ferri had certainly not sounded like a distraught woman in desperate need of her sister’s help.
Indeed, she had rejected his offer to have round-the-clock nursing installed in their villa in Tuscany without bothering to hear him out.
So, what had changed in the space of twenty-four hours, necessitating his aunt’s hasty and ill-timed departure?
‘I need you here,’ he had said. ‘Annalise begins her summer holidays tomorrow and there’s no way I’m going to be able to find someone to stand in at such short notice. I might be able to throw money at an agency, but I doubt they’ll be able to conjure up a suitable candidate from thin air.’
‘I would not dream of leaving you in the lurch, Nicky.’ His aunt’s words had oozed with a level of soothing piety that had had every antenna in his body quivering with suspicion. ‘I have just the lady for you.’
He had conceded because he’d simply had no choice. He had huge respect and fondness for his aunt, his mother’s only sister and a force of nature who had spent years travelling the world. She had descended every so often on their tiny eighth-floor flat, sometimes to stay for weeks at a stretch, bringing with her the tantalising scent of adventure, of possibilities of other lives lived in places that weren’t poky flats in rundown estates.
As a child, Niccolo had watched his mother’s face light up every time Evalina had wafted through that front door, had watched his father relax, laugh out loud, shed some of the concerns that seemed to dog his daily existence.
Where his parents had led a dutiful life, Evalina had thrown herself into travel with the gusto of someone permanently hellbent on having a good time. She was outgoing, engaging, and with a streetwise sharpness that allowed her to wheedle her way into jobs wherever her wandering feet had happened to take her.
Of course, over time, the stars had faded from his eyes and he had realised that where his parents’ lives were reduced and constricted through lack of money, his aunt, likewise, had ended up travelling down the same path even if the scenery on the way had been slightly different. He had watched his father work all the hours under the sun, yet, without the required university degree, never finding the voice to make a case for moving up at the family-owned garage where he worked, where kith and kin counted for far more than innate talent and unexploited brains.
Where the right accent got the plum jobs. As a hard-working immigrant, his father had slaved away for years until, three years previously, his heart had decided that the stress was just a little too much, and it had decided to warn him that a change of direction might be a good idea. The help Niccolo had offered the minute he’d started making serious money—always declined because of pride—had finally been accepted because the stakes had been so much higher.
And while his father had slaved away his mother had done her bit, cleaning other people’s houses and, at one point, walking other people’s dogs.
They were both humble and had never asked for much, and their reward? They had received precious little.
Were they in love? Yes. Were they happy? Yes—they enjoyed one another’s company and relished the small pleasures in life.
Was that enough for him?
A thousand timesno.
And his aunt? So vivacious, so beautiful in her prime, independent and clever...
Yet eventually, in her late fifties, as her exciting nomadic life had drawn to its inevitable close, where had she been left? Without the degree? The diploma? Without any connections whatsoever?
Where had all that excitement led?
To a life without any sort of security, financial or otherwise.
Watching them all as he’d grown up, Niccolo had absorbed learning curves he hadn’t even been consciously aware of.
Innately gifted academically, he had known what had to be done and he had worked. At eleven, he had been accepted on a scholarship to a prestigious boys’ private school and he had seen, over the years, where power and wealth and privilege got a person in life. He had seen how people who had a mere fraction of the talent and sharpness of his own father had prospered because they had had the right education, the right background, found the right foothold, could hold their own and blag their way through situations with confidence.
Not always, of course, but often enough for him to have understood the importance of that ladder that led to those glass ceilings waiting to be broken. By him.
He had recognised that what money and power bought wasn’t just the house and the holidays. Money and power bought freedom from insecurity, and that had been instructive because what he had seen in his own home had been insecurity. Love had been there, close family ties had been there, but as far as he was concerned they were blighted by the nagging worry about what tomorrow might bring.
He had determined from an early age that he was never going to have to worry about tomorrows.
He had been sought-after following his stellar career at Oxford, but he had chosen the least promising of the companies headhunting him, the one where he could make the biggest mark because it was failing the fastest, and he had spent three years turning it around. From day one, he had asked for shares and just a fraction of the salary he’d been offered. By the time he left, his shares were worth a fortune and he had then moved to diversify every penny he had made, dipping fingers into pies and taking risks in acquisitions that no one would have dared. But Niccolo had had the Midas touch. Everything had turned to gold, and with that gold he had been in the fortunate position to save his parents, and his aunt, from insecurity and those uncertain and frighteningtomorrows.
And if he’d made one error of judgement...
