The Italian's Inherited Mistress

by Lynne Graham

  It could not be. Not here. Not now.

  But it was.

  Her heart stuttered an erratic rhythm in her chest, its jagged beat reverberating in her head. Frozen to the spot, her companion’s words faded to the background as she absorbed Santo Di Fiore’s formidable, charismatic presence. Six foot two inches of lean, hard male, he had the perfectly hewn face and golden hair of an angel. A woman could drown herself in those velvety dark eyes.

  And for a night, she had done just that. One kiss—one perfect passionate kiss on a stormy evening in Manhattan four years ago—had changed everything. An attempt to escape her fate had dissolved into a fire neither of them could extinguish—a hunger that had been almost a decade in the making.

  She went hot and cold all at the same time, desperately wishing he was an illusion, because Santo Di Fiore had been her biggest mistake. Her most unforgettable, costly mistake—the repercussions of which had set into motion a chain of events she could never have foreseen. But he had also given her the most precious thing she possessed.

  Santo looked up and cast a lazy glance over the crowd. Every muscle in her body seized tight as his gaze came to rest on her, a hint of male interest flickering through his dark eyes, followed by a frown that marred his brow.

  Shock descended into fear—a bitter layer of it that coated her mouth. She turned away before he could focus on her, her purse clutched to her chest. She looked different. There was a chance he hadn’t recognized her, but she doubted that luck would hold. She needed to get out of here now.

  Spinning on her heel, she headed through the crowd. But before she could make an exit, Delilah descended upon her with one of the investors who’d purchased two of the private residences that morning and her escape route was blocked.

  She pasted a smile on her face and tried desperately to pretend that her world wasn’t crashing in on her.

  * * *

  He should be on a plane back to New York, stickhandling the most important launch in Supersonic’s history, dispensing with the hundreds of emails that had piled up in his inbox while he’d spent the weekend playing in a charitable golf tournament alongside his brother, Lazzero. Instead, Santo Di Fiore was on a tropical island being schmoozed by the current queen of the luxury-hotel market.

  Really, he’d had no time. But given he and Lazzero had bet the bank on Elevate—the new running shoe they’d promised investors would set the world on fire—gaining access to Delilah’s exclusive clientele list wasn’t an opportunity he’d been able to pass up. So after a tour of her impressive flagship property that afternoon, where the hotel maven had expressed her desire to house a half a dozen of his Supersonic boutiques in her hotels, he and Lazzero had been invited to soak up the local atmosphere before flying out in the morning.

  He brought his glass to his lips and tipped back a mouthful of Scotch. Under normal circumstances, the delectable redhead, who’d been all over him in far more than a business sense ever since the tour, would have been adequate compensation for the expenditure of time. Instead, he was consumed by ghosts—ghosts he’d thought long ago put to bed. Because surely the sophisticated blonde across the crowd couldn’t have been Giovanna. She had beautiful raven-dark hair she’d always worn long and wavy, swearing she’d never cut it short.

  He brushed his wayward thoughts aside with an irritated twist of his lips. Giovanna Castiglione had married another man. They were over. End of story. That her husband had been taken out in a targeted hit, that she hadn’t been present at any of the functions where their social circles might have overlapped since, that she was a widow, available now, was inconsequential to him. The Giovanna he’d fallen in love with had been an illusion. She’d never existed.

  So why the hell couldn’t he get her out of his head?

  Lazzero, who’d finished his conversation with a slick-suited real-estate developer, joined him at the bar. “So what do you think of Delilah’s offer?” he prompted.

  “If we could get the pop-up retail in place in time for Elevate, it could offer us an entrée into a whole different clientele.”

  “Not a problem.” Lazzero dismissed the if. “Our retail teams have done it in a month. So we scale—we make it happen. My only question,” he allowed, tipping his glass at Santo, “is whose hotel chain do we like more for this? Stefano Castiglione’s or Delilah’s? They are two entirely different propositions.”

  A bitter taste filled Santo’s mouth. Once he hadn’t been good enough for Giovanna—Stefano Castiglione, her father, had made that very clear. Now, Stefano wanted to partner with him because he ran the most buzzed-about athletic-wear brand on the planet, because the famous personalities representing his clothing would make a huge splash at his casinos? Hell would freeze over before he did business with the man who had put those emotional bruises in Gia’s eyes.

  “Castiglione has a bigger reach,” Lazzero pointed out. “Don’t let your personal feelings about this cloud your professional judgment.”

  “What personal feelings?” Santo responded curtly. “The man is a criminal. Just because he’s bought half of Washington and Hollywood with his money and influence doesn’t mean I want to do business with him.”

  Lazzero had grown up around the corner from the powerful Castiglione family, just as he had. Knew that along with being one of the most powerful real estate and gambling czars in the United States, his empire reaching from New York to Las Vegas, Stefano Castiglione was reputed to carry darker connections beneath that smooth, charismatic facade of his as the head of an international crime syndicate.

  “We aren’t doing business with him, Laz.” He dismissed the notion with a shake of his head. “End of story.”

  His brother hiked a lazy shoulder. “I wasn’t actually suggesting we do business with him,” he drawled. “I was merely yanking your chain to see how you would react. Which was predictable.” His brother narrowed his gaze on him. “You’re still hung up on her.”

  “Who?”

  “Gia.” Lazzero waved a hand at him. “You’ve gone on a tear through half the women on the planet since her, but you’re not even remotely interested in any of them. Take tonight, for instance. You could have had that redhead—the publicity girl. What’s her name... Sylvie? Sophie? Instead, you are completely distracted.”

  “Because I should be back at the office working.”

  “Says the man who likes to socialize more than he likes to breathe.” His brother rolled the Scotch around his tumbler, the amber liquid flickering in the torch light. “So if I were to tell you that Gia is standing behind you it would be of no interest to you?”

  He turned to stone. Fingers locking around his glass, he swiveled, his scan of the crowd pinpointing the woman he’d spotted earlier talking with Delilah and another guest. His heart stalled in his chest as he took her in. Confirmed what he’d instinctively known. It was Gia.

  Clad in a vibrant coral dress that hugged every inch of her curvaceous figure, she was thinner than he remembered, her gorgeous long, dark hair cut into a sophisticated blond bob that gave her a completely different look. Her cheeks were gaunt under her perfect, dramatic bone structure, her eyes deep, dark pools of green that seemed to vibrate emotion.

  Exactly as they had that night four years ago when she’d given him her innocence, then walked away, as if what they’d shared had meant nothing. When she’d married another man.

  Turn around, he told himself. Pretend she isn’t here. Do exactly what you said you would do if you ever saw her. But he stayed where he was. Gia looked up. She froze as their gazes collided, her eyes widening beneath long, dusky lashes. Like a curtain coming down over her face, the blood fled, rendering her whiter than a sheet.

  A midnight storm darkened those beautiful eyes. Twisted something in his insides tight. Maledizione. Why tonight? Why here, when she hadn’t been seen in public for an eternity?

  “Santo,” Lazzero said on low note. “S
he is bad for you. Nothing good ever came of the two of you. Leave it alone.”

  He was wrong, Santo corrected silently. They had been good that night. Perfect. Before she’d torn out his heart. And even though he knew he should stay away, he couldn’t seem to do it.

  He set down his glass on the bar, ignoring his brother’s muttered imprecation as he threaded his way through the crowd toward where Gia stood. But when he got there, she was gone, Delilah and the other guest immersed in conversation. Instinct took him to where Gia stood at the edge of the terrace, looking out at the water, a silent, delicate figure silhouetted against a sparkling, dark blanket of blue.

  The image struck him as particularly appropriate, because hadn’t it always been Gia against the world? Gia, who’d hovered on the outside, sitting by herself in the high-school cafeteria the first time he’d ever seen her, shunned by her fellow students because of who she was. Because she’d been escorted to and from school by her bodyguards, her friendships vetted and discarded by her powerful father before they’d ever had a chance to take flight.

  He would never forget the shy smile that had lit up her face when he’d plunked his tray down beside hers and asked if the seat beside her was taken.

  She turned as he approached, as if she’d sensed his presence, that same invisible thread tethering them together that had always defied reason. Her spine rigid, her face set in a mask he couldn’t possibly decipher, she looked haunted. Guarded. Vulnerable. It awakened a primitive need to protect inside of him that was as instinctive as it was irrational.

  “Santo,” she said huskily, unleashing that insanely sexy voice that had haunted his dreams. “I had no idea you would be here tonight.”

  He came to a halt in front of her. Dug his hands into his pockets. “Delilah is hot on the idea of putting our boutiques in her hotels. Lazzero and I were on the way home from a golf tournament in Albany. She suggested we drop in.”

  Her long lashes brushed the delicate line of her cheeks. “That’s exciting. Delilah has some of the biggest key influencers on the planet on her client list. It would be the perfect partnership.”

  “We think so.” He held her gaze. “I was sorry to hear about your husband.”

  She inclined her head. “Thank you. It was a shock. It’s taken me some time to process it.”

  He would have bought her cool, collected act if it wasn’t for the white-knuckled grip she had on her clutch. The tremor in her voice that dismantled his insides. “Gia,” he said softly, stepping forward to sweep a thumb across her jaw. “Are you okay?”

  She flinched away from his touch, a quick, reflexive movement that sent a hot rush of emotion through him. “I’m fine. You know I didn’t love him, Santo. What my marriage was and what it wasn’t.”

  “I’m not sure what I know and what I don’t,” he growled, “because you walked away without a word.”

  “Santo—”

  He waved a hand at her. “You dropped off the edge of the earth for two years, only to show up here tonight. Forgive me if I had to ask the question. Old habits die hard.”

  She anchored her teeth in her lush bottom lip. “I work for Delilah. I have for the past couple of years.”

  He frowned. “You live here?”

  She nodded. “You know I never wanted that kind of a life for myself. When Franco died, it was my opportunity to reach out and take everything I had been denied. Delilah,” she explained, “is an old friend of the family on my mother’s side. She offered to help me create a new life for myself. Gave me a job as a designer for her hotels and a place to stay. No one,” she stated evenly, “knows me as Giovanna Castiglione here, they know me as Giovanna De Luca.”

  And she wanted to keep it that way. He struggled to wrap his head around that revelation. “And what does your father think of all of this?”

  Her chin hiked, a tiny, but imperceptible movement. “He doesn’t know.”

  He frowned. “What do you mean, he doesn’t know?”

  “I mean he doesn’t know where I am. No one does, Santo. I left the life. I walked away.”

  She’d left the life? Walked away? A surge of astonishment coursed through him. “You ran away?”

  A fire darkened her emerald eyes. “I am a Castiglione, Santo. You know who my father is. What was I going to do? Tell him I wanted out? Tell him I was done? You don’t simply walk away from a life like mine. You run and you don’t look back.”

  He ran a bemused palm over his jaw. “So let me get this straight,” he began. “You married a man you didn’t love because your father decreed it. Because your family means everything to you. And then, when your husband is gunned down in broad daylight outside of his casino, you walk away from that family and all the protection it affords to hide in the Bahamas, where you are open and vulnerable prey?”

  “It’s been two years. There is no longer that kind of a threat.”

  There was always a threat. He dealt with it as one of the world’s richest men. She faced it because of who she was. But apparently, he conceded dazedly, no one knew where she was.

  He arched an eyebrow. “And what do you intend to do? Run for the rest of your life?”

  “No.” Defiance was painted in every centimeter of her ramrod-straight spine. “I intend to live the life I’ve always dreamed of. I have everything I’ve ever wanted here, Santo. I’m never going back.”

  He studied the visible tension etching the sides of her eyes and mouth. Two and two weren’t adding up to four here. Something was way off. But he didn’t have the opportunity to push it further because Delilah descended upon them with an effusive “Darlings” to talk about the pop-up retail she envisioned for the Elevate launch.

  Gia had designed one of the retail spaces he’d admired earlier on his tour of the hotel, done in partnership with a French high-fashion brand. Delilah thought Gia and his own designers would be the perfect working combination, a suggestion Santo couldn’t refute because he’d loved the poolside boutique space Gia had created, an oasis that drew the hotel’s clientele in the highest heat of the day. She clearly knew how to meld two distinct brands into a show-stopping, utterly unforgettable space.

  Unfortunately, his brain wasn’t functioning on all cylinders at the moment as he attempted to follow the conversation, because none of what Gia had told him made sense. Why did she look so terrified if she had the perfect new life? Why would she leave her family to live on her own in the Bahamas when the blood ties that had always bound her had been sacrosanct?

  Why had she not come to him?

  Four years of not knowing, of wondering why she’d left that morning, piled up in his head until he couldn’t think of anything else.

  He needed closure—once and for all.

  But first, he needed answers.

  Copyright © 2018 by Jennifer Drogell

  ISBN-13: 9781488083884

  The Italian’s Inherited Mistress

  First North American publication 2018

  Copyright © 2018 by Lynne Graham

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