‘I meant what I said,’ her father snarled.
‘So did I,’ Micha responded. ‘You won’t be paying for a single part of this wedding.’
Micha took a step closer, enough to feel the warmth rising from Maria’s body, the fluttering of her pulse at her jaw, from where she turned her head ever so slightly, to hear him berate her father.
‘Luca, let me be very clear. I will never allow you to drip your poison into my family ever again. You may be present, you may observe, but you will never speak to Maria again unless she wishes it. You will not contact her, unless she wishes it. As for our child? Again, any contact will be on Maria’s terms.’
‘Or what, Rufina?’
‘Luca, I will sever Gallo Group in half if I must just to get rid of you.’
‘You wouldn’t dare,’ Luca said, stepping back in shock.
‘Try me. I’ve gone head to head with your father. And trust me, you are not him.’
Maria’s shocked inhale echoed between them, as Micha stared into the eyes of his future father-in-law. Oh, he wasn’t naive. He knew that Maria’s father would want to retaliate. He may even try. But Micha learned a long time ago that there was only one way to deal with a spoilt, talentless, insecure Gallo like Luca. And that was to knock him down hard and fast.
Luca clenched his jaw and glared back, anger reddening his cheeks unpleasantly. Eventually he pushed past his daughter and went back into the dining room.
Maria held herself taut for just a moment more before releasing her breath in a shudder.
And in that moment, he’d never hated a Gallo more. All the fight, all the defiance, the power and the determination that had pushed Maria to such dizzying heights at the Gallo Group had fled when confronted with her father’s rejection. Something he understood in a way that Maria would probably never realise. Because he’d had that kind of relationship with Gio. Oh, he was their grandfather by blood, but for all of Gio’s complicated and sometimes bigoted beliefs, the man had been like a father to him and he’d never wanted to let him down. Not once. And especially not when he’d been seventeen.
Hauling himself back to the present, Micha held out his arm for Maria to take, all the while wrestling with the fierce anger coursing through his veins, blocking out the sounds of spluttering outrage that Luca Gallo had left making. He led Maria back to the room where the rest of the Gallos waited, the whispers and gossip far too much for him to permit now that the lines had been drawn.
He showed Maria to her seat, and then bent to whisper to his mother that he was arranging a taxi to take her back to his home. He pulled out his phone and messaged his assistant to come and meet his mother and make the necessary arrangements. He didn’t want her there for what he was about to do.
He felt Maria’s questioning gaze on his, but he didn’t have the time or the capacity at that precise moment to explain. All the words he wanted jumbled on his tongue, anger making him rash, and he couldn’t afford to be either rash or incomprehensible.
Silence had fallen over the room as he pulled his mother’s chair out for her and escorted her to the door where his assistant was already waiting. Maria’s father returned to the room shortly after with a face that was both shocked and furious and Micha wanted to laugh. He hadn’t seen anything yet.
He’d always known what the Gallos thought of him. He’d known that Gio had used the threat of leaving the family company to him as a whipping post for his family, a threat to keep them all in line. But they had grown even more greedy, their avarice increasing in line with the profit of Gallo Group. They were a monster, a cancer, and they had to be stopped.
It was one thing to turn on him, but to turn on her? On Maria? On one of their own?
How had Gio not stepped in to stop this kind of thing? Micha knew she’d had to work hard to get even the smallest amount of respect at Gallo Group, but this? The way that they picked on her, ignored her, treated her? Gio should have stopped it. Her father should have damn well done it, but he was the worst of them. And Antonio? What had he been doing all the time she had been treated like this? Fury bit into his soul and clung on.
He returned to the table, where, rather than taking his seat, he gripped the back of the chair and stared down the length of the table. He caught the concerned gaze that Antonio sent his fiancée’s way, half rising from his chair, but Ivy pressed him back down and he felt a rush of affection for Antonio’s English wife, a woman who had seemed to understand him more than the people in this room who had known him nearly his entire life. He waited until every single gaze in the room was on him, before starting.
‘I understand some of you here may be under the impression that I was little more than Gio’s thug,’ he said with a shrug. ‘I understand why, so there are no hard feelings. I also understand that it will have taken some time to acclimatise to the unexpected terms of Gio’s last will and testament that installed me as the new CEO. So, I’m going to take this opportunity to clarify a few things.
‘You have all grown a little too comfortable with the levels of disrespect and unprofessionalism. And that stops here. There will be no more whispers, snide comments, disparaging remarks and back stabbing. Neither professionally nor personally. Both you and Gallo Group are hovering on the brink of an abyss. If you continue down this path,’ he warned, ‘it is you, not me, that will lose everything. I don’t care what you think of me, frankly, as long as you keep it to yourselves.
‘But Maria?’ he said, letting loose some of his anger into his tone. ‘She is my fiancée and as of tomorrow, she will be mywife. And if any of you dare to treat her with anything less than the respect that she deserves as a member of your family, or mine, or professionally given the amount of revenue and work that she brought to Gallo Group—something that far outstrips the total combined income garnered by every single person at this table—then know this… You will be cut off. You will be removed from the board of governors, your shares will be dissolved and you will be banned from family events forthwith.’
Gasps of shock littered the table. Wide eyes stared back at him, and the moment the whispers started, he punched his fist into the table. The jump of cutlery and glass rippled out into surprised silence.
‘And if anyone,’ he pressed on, ‘would like to know whether I have the authority to do this, please allow me to direct you to Alberto, the lawyer handling Gio Gallo’s estate. You are welcome to try and challenge this, but I assure you, it will fail. Now, my fiancée and I have an early start in the morning, so you may all leave,’ he said, gesturing to the door.
The moment that ‘What?’ and ‘You’ve got to be joking’ started, he punched the table again, and once again shocked the Gallos into silence.
Micha turned his attention to Luca, and locked eyes with the man who would have to leave first if any of them were going to do as commanded.
Slowly, Luca pushed his chair back from the table, seething with anger and resentment, not even bothering to spare a glance at his daughter, who had sat through Micha’s pronouncement, with her gaze straight ahead—the only person who hadn’t flinched when he’d struck the table. And honestly, as her father left the room, slowly followed, one after the other, by the remaining family members, he didn’t know whether to be impressed or concerned by her self-possession.
Maria forced herself to uncurl her fingers as she breathed through the pounding in her chest.
He’d stood up for her.
