the other woman's voice. 'But I don't recall you ever coming to the palazzo in Milan, and Lucia has never once mentioned you coming to see him at the villa here.'
Sondra gave Emma a cold-hearted sneer. 'That old crone is too old to be looking after a place the size of The Villa Fiorenza,' she said. 'She doesn't see the dust on the chandeliers let alone who walks in and out of the back entrance. And as for the palazzo in Milan, that was all too easy. I phoned Valentino whenever you were out on an errand. I had an agreement with Rosa the housemaid there.'
Emma's insides tightened even further. 'An...an agreement?'
Sondra's smile was all the more sneering. 'Rosa always let me know when you were going out so I could talk to Valentino in privacy on the telephone.'
Emma was still frowning so hard she felt an ache between her eyes. 'If you were so close to Valentino why didn't he ever mention to me you had phoned or visited him?'
'I asked him not to, that's why. I told him I was dating a very jealous man who wouldn't understand my continued affection for an ex-lover. Fortunately for me, Valentino agreed to our little secret. I think it fed his ego that I had never stopped caring about him. In any case, he knew what the paparazzi were like given what they had reported about his supposed involvement with you. As I was one of the few friends he had he didn't want to cause trouble for me.'
'Is that why you didn't come to his funeral?' Emma asked. 'Because of what your new lover might think?'
Sondra inspected her talon-like nails, her gaze averted, Emma suspected deliberately. 'I wanted to remember Valentino as he was the last time I saw him,' Sondra said, but her tone lacked sincerity.
'When was the last time you saw him?' Emma asked.
Sondra returned her cold gaze to Emma's. 'It was a couple of weeks before he died,' she said. 'I had to wait until you left the villa to get more medication or whatever errand you were running. Lucia was out talking to one of the gardeners so I let myself in. It was then Valentino told me what he had decided to do.'
Emma frowned again. 'You mean about the will?'
'No,' Sondra said with a glint in her cold eyes, 'about his relationship with Rafaele.'
Something about the woman's cat-with-the-canary smile bothered Emma. 'What do you mean?'
'Valentino told me he had just written a long letter to his son,' Sondra said. 'In it he had begged for Rafaele's forgiveness for how he had treated him over his mother's and then his brother's death. It seems you had worked some sort of miracle on Valentino's hardened soul, Emma. He said as much himself. He decided he wanted to put things right before he died. He knew he didn't have long to go.'
'I don't remember him asking me to post a letter to his son,' Emma said. 'And I'm sure if he had got Lucia to do it she would have told me about it.'
'That is because he didn't ask you or Lucia to post it,' Sondra said with a malicious glint in her eyes.
Emma felt her heart begin to slam against her sternum. 'Who...who did he ask to post it?' she said, her voice coming out slightly strangled.
'Oh, Emma.' Sondra gave a cackling laugh. 'Valentino was right. You are as innocent as a dove.'
Emma's skin began to prickle all over. 'You took the letter...' she said hollowly. 'You took the letter but...but you didn't post it...'
Sondra's expression turned bitter. 'Of course I didn't post it. Valentino Fiorenza broke my heart. He refused to marry me. He wanted a mistress, not a wife. No one was ever going to replace his beloved Gabriela. Do you know what that was like for me? I was competing with a dead woman and there was no way I could win.'
'So you waited all this time to get back at him in the most despicable way,' Emma said, her stomach churning with disgust. 'You pretended to still care about him in those last months of his life just so you could have your revenge.'
'Revenge, as they say, is a dish best served cold,' Sondra said with a disaffected smile. 'And you can't get any colder than a dead man in his grave, now, can you?'
Emma swallowed back a mouthful of bile. 'When did you find out about the codicil?'
'That was only recently,' Sondra