He regarded me with derision. “Your mother must have been a real proper southern lady, sleeping with the boss.”

His sarcasm grated on my nerves, and I returned to the task of digging through the pile of papers on the floor. “Please don’t insult my mother. She was a good woman.”

“Oh, I’m sure,” he replied as he rose to his feet and looked around at all the clutter. “Maria, I need a drink. Would you fetch me a vodka martini? Grey Goose if you have it. And make it a double.” He let out a sigh. “I need to self-medicate.”

Maria glanced at me with a look of apology. “Would you like something?”

“No, thank you.”

She stepped around a crate full of empty wine bottles as she made her way toward the door.

“Bring it in a proper martini glass!” Connor shouted after her. “Three olives!” He squatted next to me, and his mouth curled into a sinister grin. “I must be my father’s son, because I like my martinis like I like my women. Dirty. Really dirty.”

I knew he was just trying to get a rise out of me, but I had no intention of taking the bait. “Do you mind?”

“I’m just teasing.”

“And I am not amused.” I got to my feet and found another box on a shelf to sort through.

“Fine. Be like that.” He turned and dug through a dusty pile of magazines.

We worked in silence until Maria returned with the drink on a small tray. She walked carefully to keep her balance as she inched around a stepladder to deliver Connor’s martini.

“Thank you, Maria,” he said. “You are the cat’s meow.” He picked up the drink, sniffed it, and took a sip.

Maria passed me on the way out. “Eight o’clock?” she whispered. “Come around to the back.”

I nodded.

Connor sat down on an old ottoman splattered with different colors of dried paint and sipped his drink. “Did she invite you to dinner?”

“Yes.”

He sighed. “I’m trying not to feel heartbroken that she didn’t invite Sloane and me, considering how she used to mother us when we were kids, but I suppose her loyalty has always been with the person who writes her paychecks, whomever that may be.”

I chose to ignore him.

“Don’t worry about us, though,” he added, stirring his martini with the toothpick and olives. “Sloane and I have dinner reservations in town. Don’t get me wrong. The food’s great here. That lady in the kitchen does a bang-up job with pancakes.”

“Her name is Mrs. Dellucci,” I informed him.

“Dellucci. Good to know. Very important information.” Connor sat back and watched me move a heavy box from one stack to another.

“We should lay out some ground rules here,” he said. “If either of us finds something, we should share it. Don’t stick it in your pants and make off with it.”

I said nothing as I ripped open another box.

“I’m getting a read on your mood . . . ,” Connor added. “What I’m hearing is this: Share it? Screw you, Connor Clark.”

“I never said that.”

“No, but you’re thinking it, and I can’t blame you. It’s certainly what I’d be thinking.”

“No doubt,” I replied, “but you and I are nothing alike.”

He chuckled at that. “Maybe not today, because all this must seem very surreal to you—the big Italian villa, the wine business, truckloads of cash in the bank. But wait until you start spending that cash. Trust me, you’re going to enjoy it far more than you ever imagined, and you’ll do just about anything that’s necessary to hold on to it.”

“Is that what’s happening here?” I asked. “You’re going to do whatever’s necessary? Should I be worried?”

Connor laughed softly as he downed the last few drops of his martini and sucked the olives off the toothpick. “Where to next?” He looked around.

I dug an old wallet out of a box and searched through it, but it was empty.

“You’d be surprised,” Connor said, “how money can make people do terrible things.”

“Not me.”

“No?” He moved a little closer. “Tell me then, sweet sister Fiona. What are you going to do with this inheritance if fate rules in your favor? Are you going to sell the winery and donate the proceeds to charity? Use the proceeds to go on humanitarian missions to Africa? Cure cancer? Save the whales?”

All I could do was shake my head at him.

“You must have thought about something you want to spend the money on,” he said. “Come on. What’s on your bucket list?”

I glanced at a yellowed brochure for a symphony performance in Rome that happened years ago and set it aside. “I’ll spend it on my father. The one who raised me, I mean.”

“Why would you do that?”

“Because he’s a quadriplegic, and he needs constant care.”

My response was met with silence. It was the first time my half brother, Connor, had seemed the slightest bit flustered. “You didn’t mention that.”

“You didn’t ask.”

Connor cleared his throat and shifted uneasily. “Was he born like that?”

“No, it was a spinal cord injury. It happened before I was born.”

Connor chewed on his bottom lip, and it was obvious that he was uncomfortable. People often were when it came to my dad. They stared at us when we went places.

“What happened?” Connor asked.

“He was hit by a car. Here in Italy, actually.”

Connor bent to look at something on the floor, his hands resting on his thighs. “Wow. Now I understand why dear old Dad never let us walk to town. Not a lot of sidewalks around here.”

“And lots of twisting, turning roads,” I added.

We worked for a while in silence until curiosity got the better of me. “So what was Anton like as a father?”

“Oh, you know . . .” Connor stumbled over a box on the floor. “Basically, your everyday, garden-variety tyrannical monster.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Sounds like I didn’t miss out on much.”

“Lucky you. You got the gain without the pain.”

I regarded Connor with a frown of concern. “Was he really that bad?”

He shrugged. “Oh, I don’t know. I didn’t spend much time with him after he and Mom divorced. But that’s why I got cut out of the will, apparently. If only I’d known it would come back to bite me in the ass. I would have done my duty. I would have come here and played the part of devoted son.”

“No pain, no gain,” I said.

“Hardy har har,” Connor replied. He finished searching through a shoebox and tossed it aside. “It wasn’t all my fault, though. Do you know that song ‘Cat’s in the Cradle’?”

“Yes.”

“Well, Dad was basically Harry Chapin. My mom wanted to move back to the US, but he wouldn’t budge. He chose his winery over his family. So why should we come running when old age slowed him down and he finally wanted to spend time with us?”

“What about the women?” I asked. “I thought they divorced because of your father’s affairs. My mother being one of them.”