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status quo, I intend to disabuse you of the idea before we touch down in Rome. I will not have my parents made any more upset than they already are.”
    Unfortunately that would probably be unavoidable, but Callie decided now was not a good time to tell him so. Instead, choosing her words carefully, she said, “I don’t take pleasure in inflicting unnecessary pain on anyone, Paolo. It’s not my style.”
    “My father will be particularly glad to hear it. My mother is suffering enough. He won’t tolerate you, or anyone else, adding to her misery.”
    Ah, yes! The refined, reserved, decidedly suspicious Signor Salvatore Rainero thought all he had to do was snap his fingers and the rest of the world would gladly leap to accommodate his wishes.
    Well, Ermanno hadn’t, and nor was Callie about to do so. Not that she relished heaping more grief on the Raineros who were unquestionably suffering greatly, but they weren’t the only ones with rights.
    “Just so that we understand one another, Paolo, I won’t be bullied, not by you or your father. I have just lost my only sister—”
    “And I, a brother. That should not make us enemies.”
    “It seems not to make us friends, either, all your talk on the phone about my being family notwithstanding.”
    “There is family, and then there is family, Caroline. You would be making a mistake to interpret my words as being anything more than an attempt to offer you comfort and sympathy at a time when you need both. My loyalty, first, last and always, lies primarily with my blood relatives.”
    Goaded beyond caution, she shot back, “So does mine. Whether or not you like it, the twins are related as closely by blood to me as they are to you Raineros, and I promise you, I’m not about to take a back seat on your say-so. Far from it, Paolo. I intend to take a very active role in my niece’s and nephew’s future.”
    His jaw tightened ominously. Fixing her in a glance so lethal that she shivered, he said softly, “Then I was mistaken. We are indeed fated to be enemies—and you should be aware that I make a formidable foe, my dear. Ask anyone who’s ever crossed me, and they’ll tell you I take no prisoners.”

Chapter Three
    I N CONTRAST to the bright day outside, the Rainero family crypt was dim, and terribly, terribly cold. The kind of cold that seeped into a person’s bones. A dead cold. Even if the sun had been able to penetrate the thick stone of the outer walls, its heat would have been rendered ineffectual. Not even raging fire could touch the vault’s smooth, thick marble floor and interior walls. They were impervious.
    For Callie, this final part of the funeral proceedings was the most difficult to bear. The church in Rome had been filled with people, with human warmth and emotion. The swell of the organ, the scent of incense, the flowers, the ritual of prayer and hymns—they’d spoken of hope, of eternity. But here, on Isola di Gemma, with only the immediate family and a priest present, the finality of death hit home with a vengeance.
    The small gathering of mourners formed a semicircle. Beside her, somber in a black suit and tie, Paolo stood with his head bent and his hands clasped at his waist.
    Next to him, his mother wept silently, the tears running unchecked down her face. Her hands cupped the shoulders of the grandchildren in front of her, keeping them close, letting them know they were not alone.
    Salvatore Rainero completed the group, his face unreadable, but Callie knew, if it had been left to him, she would nothave been included in this final ceremony. Ever since her arrival at the Raineros’s Rome apartment, he had remained civil, but distant.
    Nor had he been the only one. The children had greeted her with faces shuttered with pain and eyes downcast.
    “Hello,” she’d murmured, her heart breaking for them. “Do you remember me?”
    “You’re our aunt from America,” Gina replied politely, “and Mommy’s sister.”
    “That’s right. She