“What, so you were keeping your eyes on me? Watching me?”

Alexis never answered her.

“Amelia and I searched everywhere for him. He’s the best, and now the refurb will be held up even longer.”

Alexis’s facial expression turned from smug to angry. “You shouldn’t put up with any sexual harassment for the sake of keeping a good painter.”

Katie felt hot fury burning inside her. Alexis was infuriatingly right. She shouldn’t have to take that behaviour no matter how good he was. Still, it was her decision to make.

“You should have minded your own business,” Katie said.

Alexis folded her arms. “This is the thanks I get for protecting you? Okay, the next time I see you being sexually harassed, I’ll just walk away.”

“I wish you would. You don’t need to protect me from anything, Duca. Just mind your own bloody business in future.” Katie poked an accusing finger into Alexis’s chest. “Oh, and you can explain to the Principessa why her decorator walked off the job.”

She turned and marched up the stairs trying to control her anger. Katie wasn’t a disagreeable and angry person, but Alexis always manged to bring out her inner fury.

Bloody idiot.

* * *

Byron was sitting at her old oak desk, a cigar smoking in the ashtray beside her, going through a box of papers. The Debrek solicitors in Venice had forwarded all of the Grand Duchess’s papers. Most were legal and banking documents, but one plain envelope caught her eye.

She took her silver letter opener and sliced the white paper open. What she found was a handwritten letter from Lucia. It began: If you are reading this letter, then I have passed to the other side…

There was a knock at the door. “Come,” Byron said. She was pleasantly surprised when Amelia walked in. “Mia cara, why are you knocking?”

“You might be having a meeting or something. I don’t want to intrude.”

“You could never intrude.” Byron held out her hand to beckon Amelia over.

Amelia kissed her, then leaned over Byron’s shoulder. “Are those your great-great-grandmother’s things?”

“Yes, all her papers. I found this letter addressed to me. Take a look,” Byron said.

Amelia took the letter and scanned it.

Losing Lucia was still raw for Byron. Lucia had been the matriarch and the life force of the Debrek clan, not to mention how much she was loved.

Amelia stopped reading suddenly and said, “She wants you to bring Victorija back over to the light before she destroys herself?”

Byron shook her head. That part of the letter had stopped her in her tracks. “How can she ask it of me? Why would she ask it of me? Victorija has just ripped my great-great-grandmother’s heart from her body. I want to kill her, not help her.”

Amelia sighed still reading over the letter. “She seems to think there’s still good in her. Lucia says that she failed Victorija as a child. That she should have stepped in and taken Victorija away from Gilbert.”