“Wirklich?” Axel sounded as though the word was punched out of him.
She snapped her head, watching him as he exchanged a few more words, then ended the call.
She dropped the clothes in her hands and went across to him.
“What happened? Are you okay?” She instinctively set a hand on his shoulder. It was both slumped under a great weight and steely with tension.
“No. Yes. Fine,” he lied as he rubbed his stubbled jaw. “I told Umberto we’re on our way back.” He stood and found the trousers and shirt he’d worn to dinner last night. “Mira said the housekeeper called her because she though Mira was his next-of-kin, but given all of this…” He waved between them. “Mira wasn’t sure. That’s why she called me.”
An arrow seemed to spear into Joy’s chest. She clutched at the pain there.
“I’mnot,” she protested. “Am I?”
“Umberto said there will have to be a will search, and the validity of Otto’s marriage contract is still to be determined by the courts, but as far as he knows, Otto left Vorstoben to me.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
AXEL WAS IN SHOCK. How could he not be? Otto had been reaching retirement age, but he had seemed in good health. This was the last thing Axel had expected to happen.
Which prompted the chilling thought that he had killed Otto himself by taking such an aggressive stance and putting so much pressure on him.
He saw the same self-recrimination in Mira’s drawn face when they came together in Umberto’s office that afternoon. Umberto was freshly shaved, but his hair was rumpled and his tie looked as though he’d already given it a yank from his throat.
It was only the three of them there, all in somber suits behind a closed door while rain buffeted the window.
“This will was in place before Otto learned of Joy’s existence. Forgive me for being blunt,” Umberto said to Mira, “but Otto took the attitude that if he was leaving the company to someone who was not his biological child, he preferred it go to Axel.”
“That’s not news,” Mira said in a strained voice.
“In terms of his other assets, most were acquired during his marriage to your mother and are considered joint property, so he agreed you were entitled to those. We had been discussing other options since he had learned he had a biological child. He had intentions around leaving something to Joy, but as his marriage contract demonstrated, he wanted her to live here and have a firm connection to his life before he made any changes to these arrangements. That’s why he stipulated you should be married to her for a year before he would transfer the shares.” He turned to Axel now. “At this point, your wife stands to inherit nothing. There is room to challenge that with the marriage contract, if you wish to pursue it.”
Did Axel want to enforce the contract and incite more bad blood with Mira so his wife could have a piece of the pie?
“It would muddy things and take time for the courts to make a decision,” Umberto warned. “I expect that would have further negative effect on the company.” The lawyer was nudging them toward accepting Otto’s wishes as they were currently stated.
“I’ll discuss it with Joy.” Axel rubbed his jaw, still unable to fully take this in. He walked out with Mira a few minutes later, both of them silent until they were in the elevator.
“Drink?” Axel suggested.
“God, yes,” Mira breathed.
They walked across the street to the bar in a hotel lobby. It was quiet, being midweek and the hour between the lunch and dinner rush. They ordered, then sat in silence.
“I should have reached out to you sooner. It’s been…” How did he describe these last weeks of a whirlwind marriage and breaking away from a man who, it turned out, had wanted him to have the company he’d been fighting to take? “How have you been? Are you and DeStefano—”
“No,” she cut in with a strained look on her face.
Axel dropped it. He had warned Mira off Rocco years ago, aware that Otto had a grudge against the man. He still didn’t know what that was about, but Mira seemed to have decided Otto’s rival wasn’t her best ally after all.
She nodded a thank-you as their drinks were delivered and took a deep sip from hers.
“When I spoke to the head of the board, he asked what terms I’d set to come back as CEO,” Axel said. The board didn’t know yet that Axel was in line to inherit Otto’s majority share, but he knew for a fact they’d been at panic stations from the moment Axel had left on his honeymoon. Things had been falling apart ever since, growing worse as Mira had gutted the financial ledgers.
“I had a call from him, too,” she said. “They assumed I would be inheriting Otto’s shares and wanted to know if I’d support you as CEO or if I would insist on running the company myself.”
“What did you say?”
“I wanted to tell them the truth. All of it,” she said with embittered weariness. “But I said something noncommittal because I’ve already done enough damage to Vorstoben. None of this is your fault. Or theirs. The company didn’t do this to me. He did. My mother did.” Tears of betrayal came into her eyes, but she blinked them away, chin coming up, gaze pointing out the window.
