Читать книгу The Platinum Collection: Affairs To Remember онлайн | страница 5

The man’s eyes flickered over them both, and then to the open grave in the distance. He asked, with a derisive curl to his lip, ‘Are there any more of us?’

Rafaele looked at Alexio, who was frowning, and said, ‘Us? What are you talking about?’

The man looked at Rafaele. ‘You don’t remember, do you?’

The faintest of memories was coming back: he was standing on a doorstep with his mother. A huge imposing door was opening and there was a boy, a few years older than him, with blond hair and huge eyes.

The man’s voice sounded rough in the still air. ‘She brought you to my house. You must have been nearly three. I was almost seven. She wanted to take me with her then, but I wouldn’t leave. Not after she’d abandoned me.’

Rafaele felt cold all over. In a slightly hoarse voice he asked, ‘Who are you?’

The man smiled, but it didn’t meet his eyes. ‘I’m your older brother—half-brother. My name is Cesar Da Silva. I came today to pay my respects to the woman who gave me life...not that she deserved it. I was curious to see if any more would crawl out of the woodwork, but it looks like it’s just us.’

Alexio erupted beside Rafaele. ‘What the hell—?’

Rafaele was too stunned to move. He knew the Da Silva name. Cesar was behind the renowned and extremely successful Da Silva Global Corporation. His mind boggled to think that he might have met him and not known that they were brothers. With a sickening sense of inevitability, he didn’t doubt a word this man had just said. Their fraternal similarities were too obvious. They could be non-identical triplets.

That half-memory, half-dream had always been all too real—he’d just never known for sure, because whenever he’d mentioned it to his mother she’d always changed the subject. Much in the way she had never discussed her life in her native Spain before she’d met his father in Paris, where she’d been a model.

Rafaele gestured to his brother, ‘This is Alexio Christakos...our younger brother.’

Cesar Da Silva looked at him with nothing but ice in his eyes. ‘Three brothers by three fathers...and yet she didn’t abandon either of you to the wolves.’