Ingrid looked down at her husband, fighting the panic she had felt every minute since they’d received the diagnosis six months ago. She had told herself he would beat the cancer. Beat it like he had beaten everything and everyone his whole life as he built a shipping empire from a humble boat repair shop.

But her ability to deny reality was constrained, in the end, by the evidence of her own eyes. She could scarcely recognize the bald, shrunken, hollowed-out man in the hospital gown, his life dripping out as steadily as the medicine drip from the IV in his arm. He had the best care that money could buy.

It wasn’t enough.

When they had married back in ‘99, he had been a ridiculously robust 60. Sure, he’d looked like he could have been her father, and that had caused plenty of talk. Plenty! But he’d actually been old enough to be her grandfather. Even in his late seventies he’d been healthy, ruddy and strong. Maybe not a bull in the bedroom anymore, but she’d never cared about that.

The marriage had been an arrangement of sorts. He was virile, rich, had an eye for the ladies; she was gorgeous, dirt poor, and more than willing to use the former to solve the latter. Transactional souls who refused to see the arrangement as tawdry, they’d both gotten exactly what they wanted.

She was fond of him, of course, and God knows, she’d miss the intensity, the magnetism, with which he’d set the world on fire wherever he went. How many times had she seen a jolt of energy electrify a room full of people the very instant he walked in? She’d hitched her fate to a shooting star, and damned if she hadn’t enjoyed the ride.

But if that ride was about to end, she needed to secure her future course while she still could affect the meteor’s terminal trajectory. She would approach that task with the same pragmatism and lack of sentimentality that had characterized their relationship from the start.

Taking the seat beside his bed, she asked, “You feel as bad as you look?”

Caesar turned his head — amazing how much energy that took! — and looked at the stunning woman who had been his child bride. Foolish vanity, his friends had said, with many a head shake. The memory still brought the ghost of a smile to his thin lips nearly a quarter of a century later. The bastards had all been so pickled with envy they’d probably pissed lime green for months!

Well, that was then, and this was now. He knew her well enough not to expect sentimentality. “Only if I look like three-week-old buzzard bait.” His voice was thin and raspy, as dessicated as the rest of him.

“About right,” she agreed. “Did you sign the papers?”

“Francis gets the business, when and if you decide he’s ready?”

“Caesar. I love our son as much as you do. But I’m not blind, and neither are you.”

“Nothing wrong with his brains.” Caesar was trying not to talk much. It hurt. And it hurt worse to hear what his once-strong voice had become.

She shook her head impatiently. “How many times have you told me? ‘You can hire brains. You can’t hire guts.’”

“You don’t think he’s got guts?” He wanted to be angry, but it took too much energy. And besides . . . .

“You want me to say it? I won’t. But he’s just a nice boy. Likely turn into a nice man. What does all that nice get you, in your business?”

“Nowhere.” He couldn’t very well deny that, since she’d learned that particular aphorism from him. He tended to overuse it.

“Well, then,” she said, as if his admission settled it.

“No provision for Ottavio?”

“That’s nonsense and you know it,” she responded, exasperated. “He gets a good round sum as an inheritance— enough to be a playboy indefinitely, if that’s what he wants.”

“But no role in the business.”

“He can start his own business, with the money you’ll leave him! Look, you’ve been more than generous to him from the day you took him in. He’ll have no legitimate cause for complaint. You call him your son, and you’ve treated him like one, even if you never formally adopted him.”

Caesar surreptitiously pressed a call button with the hand he had buried under the sheets. He was exhausted, and he had neither the time nor the energy to continue this particular conversation. As a nurse bustled in, he overrode Ingrid’s protests at having her time curtailed. “Don’t worry so much. I reviewed the papers. And yes, I signed them. I understand Francis as well as you do.”

She rose from her seat, a feeling of immense relief momentarily unsettling her. “You do? I mean, you did?” Finally — finally!!! she thought, exultant. I will get my chance! And I’ll show them all, see if I don’t!

Caesar gifted his beautiful wife with the best smile he still could manage. “I understand you, too, wife. I know what you’re capable of!”

That was enough to get him a last kiss. Then she was gone.

The bastards won’t be jealous any more, he thought with his usual sense of irony.

The nurse gave him a stern look. “Okay, I need you to rest. Two hours, minimum.”

“I’ve got an eternity of rest coming up. And I’ve got two more people I absolutely have to talk to first.”

“Mr. Trentino, we’re trying very hard . . .”

He cut her off. “I know that. Keep trying — for just long enough for me to have two more conversations. Then you can stop. Okay?”

She seemed to deflate, all too aware that however hard they tried, death was in the room and it would not be long denied. “Your funeral, Mr. Trentino.”

“I do hope you’ll come. Now, I need to see my son Ottavio.”

She nodded, defeated. “He’s outside.”

Just a few minutes later, a young man walked in and stood at the foot of the bed. Short black hair, dark eyes, and a powerful, compact frame. He said nothing, waiting for the padrone to speak.

The dying man looked at him with eyes that were still clear and cold. The eyes of a hawk above his great beak of a nose. “Ottavio. Tell me you’re clever enough to have found out what your step-mother’s been plotting.”

The young man’s face was closed and guarded, as always. “Of course. But I know you’d never do that to Francis.”

“No concerns on your own behalf?”

“I was taking care of myself before you pulled me off the streets in Rio. I haven’t lost the knack.”

Caesar grunted, whether in annoyance or approval was hard to say. But the hard young man would not elaborate further simply to fill the silence.

The moment stretched, but Caesar no longer had the luxury of waiting people out. “What do you think I should do?”

“What does it matter? You’ll do what you want. You always have.” Ottavio hid his thoughts. You took me in because you thought you needed an heir, and at fifty-nine you’d given up hope of getting one. I didn’t ask for your help.

The old man’s predator eyes had daunted Ottavio as a child . . . had pushed him to excel, to succeed, to become a man worth noticing in Caesar’s cutthroat world. But Ottavio wasn’t daunted any more, nor was he worried. He knew how much Caesar doted on his natural son, the miracle child that had come after his surprise marriage to his scandalously young and startlingly beautiful fourth wife. The old man would never go along with his bedmate’s plan.

“You’re wrong, you know,” Caesar said softly. “And Ingrid is right. Francis isn’t ready . . . and he may never be. I can’t possibly leave him in control of the firm. Ingrid, on the other hand, is extremely capable.”

For the first time, Ottavio showed real emotion. “You son of a bitch.” His eyes were daggers; his voice hard and low. “You’d do that to him? To Francis? Do you think that stone-cold entrepreneur you married will ever give him control, once she has it?”

To Ottavio’s intense annoyance, Caesar chuckled. “Of course not. I told her I signed the papers she drew up, and I did. But I switched her position and yours.”

“You . . . what?”

Caesar was delighted to see that he had finally managed to out-think the devious, fiendishly resourceful child he had rescued and raised. “Just like she said, I’ve been incredibly generous since I took her in, and the amount she’d thought to set aside for you will be ample for whatever she chooses to do next. She could run the business easily, but you’re right. She’d never turn it over to Francis.”

Ottavio was incredulous. “And you think I will?”

“I think you might. And if you don’t, it’ll be for the right reasons.”

“Might?” Ottavio couldn’t keep his anger in check. “You’re willing to leave Francis with ‘might?’”

Caesar suddenly looked exhausted. “Yes, I am. I know you’ll run the business well. I think you’ll turn it over to Francis. . . . when and if he can handle it.”

“And if I don’t?”

“He has a permanent, salaried seat on the board of my charitable foundation. He won’t starve.” Again, Caesar pressed his call button. "What more can I do?"

“What more? Jesus! You can trust him, that’s what!”

Caesar gave him a last, hard look. “I’m trusting you.”

After the nurse escorted Ottavio out, she tried one more time to get Caesar to rest. He simply shook his head wearily and said, “Francis.”

When the nurse was gone, he let his eyes close, just to rest them. Just for a moment.

It was with an almost titanic struggle that he forced them to open again, only to find Francis already by his side, holding his hand. He had no idea how much time had passed. Judging by the sandpaper grit feeling in his eyes, it must have been hours.

The harsh hospital light made his son’s red-gold hair seem like spun gold. He looked so much like his mother. Everywhere except the eyes. Those soft, warm eyes. So full of compassion . . . . God alone knows where those came from!

He tried to speak, but his mouth was too dry. He forced himself to swallow, then said “Francis. We . . . need to talk.”

His son smiled . . . a heartbreaking smile filled with warmth and caring. “It’s all been said, Father. Everything that matters. You can relax now.”

Caesar shook his head, or tried to. It barely moved. “No, you need to understand . . . about the business.”

“That’s not important right now.” Francis raised his father’s hand and kissed it tenderly. “I love you, whatever happens. That’s all that matters. That’s all that ever mattered.”

The old man wanted to shake him, make him listen. Make him understand why he’d given the power to Ottavio. But the words wouldn’t come. Despite the lights, the room was getting steadily darker. He could barely make out his son’s face . . . his beautiful, beloved face. Before the darkness took him, he managed a whisper so soft that Francis almost missed it.

“Perdonami, tesoro. Ti amo.”

~o~O~o~
The light knock on the door came at 1:30 in the morning, as expected. “It’s open,” Francis called softly.

Ottavio entered, closed the door behind him, and held out his hands.

Francis rose and took them. “It’s done?”

Ottavio nodded. “Official time of death is 12:57. He didn’t regain consciousness after you left.”

“At least his suffering is over.”

“Don’t tell me you feel sorry for him! Do you know what he did to you?” Ottavio was angry . . . . furious, even.

Francis stepped forward and hugged him gently, waiting to answer until Ottavio’s hands rose, almost grudgingly, to rest on her back, their heat immediately penetrating the thin blue silk of her negligée. “Of course I know,” she replied teasingly. “You aren’t the only one with brains in this family!”

Ottavio could not bring himself to meet her eyes, the beautiful almost-sibling that everyone, in their supreme stupidity, insisted on regarding as male. As if genitalia were all that mattered. “I know that, darling! You’re the smartest of all of us. I told him he should trust you!”

She loosened her grip and stepped back just far enough that Ottavio could no longer avoid her level gaze. “Father understood my strengths — and yours. You’ll be fantastic. You know you will.”

“But . . . “

“No ‘buts,’ my love. No doubts. No false modesty. You need to be the padrone now. Or my mother will strangle you with your own intestines!”

Her vivid image caused Ottavio to chuckle ruefully. “She would, too. What I wouldn’t give to be a fly on the wall when she sees how the old man switched her documents!”

Francis smiled, leaned in, and gave him a feather-light kiss. “Better! But . . . don’t be too hard on her, Ottavio. She’s a talented, capable woman who’s never had the chance to be the big honcho. Father cast a long, dark shadow.”

Ottavio nodded grudgingly. There’d been no love lost between Caesar’s winter woman and the child he’d taken in the year before he’d met her. And Ottavio had no doubt as to why the old man hadn’t gotten around to adopting him. “All right. But if she tries to invalidate the documents and seize control of the business, I’m going to have to hit her with everything I’ve got.”

“Everything except malice in your heart,” Francis said softly. “Do what you need to do to protect your inheritance and mine, but don’t, please God, take pleasure from it.”

Ottavio shook his head. “Where on earth did you come from? With Scylla and Charybdis for parents, how did you turn out so perfect?”

“Well . . . there was always your sterling example!”

“Oh, God! Don’t start!”

“Like the time you burned down the dog house, trying to see if it would take off with bottle rockets on each corner. . . “

“I give, I give!” Ottavio was smiling, finally, Frances having found a way to ease the tension that had been tearing at him since his last discussion with the old man. Somehow, she had always found a way.

She had that knack with everyone. “He should have just given you the business,” Ottavio said. “Once I’ve gotten your mother off our backs, I will. I trust you, even if he didn’t.”

She kissed him again, her lips soft and sweet, then stepped back. “Thank you for that, Ottavio. But you aren’t listening. I don’t want it. I don’t have any desire to run a company, much less an ‘empire.’”

It was there, right there. What he had always wanted . . . and what he’d known he’d never have. Known from the day his never-quite adoptive father had brought Francis home from the hospital, a look of pure, paternal rapture lighting his face. Ottavio had hated Francis that day . . . .

. . . But it was the last day he had managed it. It was impossible not to love Francis.

Of course, Ottavio had just seen Francis as a beautiful baby at first, then as a sweet little boy. It took him years to see the girl that had always been there, inside. She was seventeen to his supposedly worldly 24 when his eyes finally opened to that reality. And it took two agonizingly long years after that before they had been willing to even talk about the feelings that had begun to blossom between them.

Seeing her now, with her hair loose, her fine features highlighted by just a touch of makeup, and her nightgown emphasizing the perfection of her slender form, it was hard to believe he’d been blind for so long.

Realizing his life’s ambition meant denying Francis her birthright. It meant ratifying, in some sense, the old man’s judgment of her fitness. Of her worth. How could he do that to this exquisite, caring, intelligent woman? How?

But she wasn’t objecting — she was encouraging him to take it. All he had to do was stretch out his hand . . . .

“I can’t do it without you, Francis. I can’t.”

“You don’t have to. I’m not going anywhere.”

For the first time in his life, Ottavio was grateful that the old buzzard hadn’t adopted him. “Will you marry me?”

“Imagine the scandal!” Her laugh was light, teasing.

“Believe me, I am,” he said with relish. “But you haven’t answered the question!”

She cocked her head to one side, as if considering the matter for the first time. “I’m sure you’re not doing this properly. There are formalities . . . .”

“Witch!” he said, smiling. “Very well!” He dropped down to one knee and captured her right hand in both of his own. Suddenly serious, he said, “Francis Trentino, will you be my wife?”

She gazed into his intense, passionate eyes, her heart bursting with love. “Of course, you splendid creature. I was beginning to think you’d never ask!”

The end.

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