“As much as we need.”
As soon as the words passed her lips, she felt a little apprehensive. What would Freddie think if he knew she was walking in the moonlight with her handsome, wealthy boss after drinking wine with him for hours, and that she was asking him questions about his private life? Telling him they had all night to talk?
A soft breeze whispered through the cypresses. Lillian looked up at the starlit sky and pushed thoughts of Freddie from her mind. That’s what he did when he was working. He pushed her from the room and from his mind. Go away, he said, without ever actually speaking the words.
“It’s a rather sordid tale,” Anton said. “The truth is . . . I only go back to London to visit my mother and sister, and I plan it when my brother’s not there.”
“Oh dear,” Lillian said. “What happened between you and your brother?”
“Where do I even begin?” Anton exhaled heavily. “At the beginning, I suppose. My brother and I built a company together. We were equal partners, but when it became more profitable than either of us ever imagined it would, he took advantage of a situation when I had to step back from the daily operations. I was sick for a while.”
“Oh. What was wrong?”
“Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.”
“I’m so sorry. That must have been awful. Are you okay now?”
“Yes, I’m a lucky survivor, fully recovered. But during that year, my brother pretended to be looking out for my best interests. I couldn’t work, so he offered to buy out my half of the business so that I could focus on my recovery and pay medical bills. It seemed like a fair offer. It was a lot of money, more than I ever dreamed the company could be worth, and I honestly thought he was being overly generous, propping me up when I was at my lowest, so I took the money. As soon as the contract was signed and I no longer had any ownership or authority, he sold the company for ten times the amount he paid me. I found out later that he had been brokering the deal for months while I was sick. He knew what it was really worth when he made the offer to get me out of the picture.”
Lillian slowly shook her head. “That was a terrible thing to do. You must have felt very betrayed.”
“Yes. It was my sister, Mabel, who found out the truth. She learned it from my brother’s wife, who spilled the beans about how he had been keeping me in the dark the whole time, quite intentionally.”
“Do you ever speak to him now?”
“No. He divorced his wife and moved to New York with his millions. Now, he does nothing but live the high life in a penthouse apartment and sails on his yacht with a bunch of Wall Street types. It’s not my idea of a good time, but it was what he always aspired to. I think he knew that I would have turned down the offer to sell the company if I was still involved, and he just wanted the fast cash.”
“What sort of business was it?” Lillian asked.
“Computer technology. He was the business manager, while I was the math geek. He sold the software I developed to IBM, which cut me out of the industry with a noncompete clause. I didn’t even realize that that was buried in the contract when we dissolved the partnership, so it was my own fault. I should have had my own lawyer looking out for my interests, but I trusted my brother and the lawyer who handled our business affairs. He told me it was a good deal and that I should take it, but he knew all along about the offer from IBM.”
“Couldn’t you have fought that?” she asked. “It sounds almost like fraud.”
“I probably could have,” he replied, “but at that point, I just wanted to leave all that greed for the green stuff behind me and get back to . . .” He paused, as if he wasn’t quite sure how to explain it.
“Back to the land,” Lillian said, matter-of-factly.
“Exactly.”
They reached the end of Cypress Row, where the chapel came into view. The bell tower was silhouetted against the moon.
“Look at that,” she said. “It’s so magical. I don’t blame you for wanting to live here.”
He nodded. “I was here on holiday with my wife and spotted an advert in an estate agent’s window in Montepulciano. I’ll never forget that day. After what my brother did to me, I had ten million pounds burning a hole in my pocket, and the Maurizio family was desperate not to sell to one of their corporate competitors, so I thought . . . why not?”
Ten million pounds?
“Your wife was keen to buy a winery?” Lillian asked, fighting to recover from her astonishment.