Harlequin Presents: Once Upon A Temptation June 2020--Box Set 2 of 2

by Lynne Graham

  “I am going to take it all.”

  “That’s…” Her eyes wide in her face, Alessandra looked like he had sucker punched her. Her tall body swayed where she stood. When he took a swift step toward her, she jerked away, her beautiful face contorted in shock. “Greta would never do something like that. She welcomed me with open arms when I came here to live with my father, her second husband. She’s more than a stepmother to me. She loved me even more than…”

  Whatever defense Alessandra wanted to offer on behalf of Greta died on her lips as she turned to face the older woman. A soft gasp escaped her mouth, her body bowing as if against a sudden, forceful gale.

  Truth shone in the older woman’s eyes, the only remainder of an encounter she’d probably never given another thought to. Whereas it had become the foundation of his life.

  The dirty accusations. The supposed higher ground of privilege. The utter lack of sympathy.

  The entire room filled with a vibrating sense of shock, all heads turning toward Greta with various degrees of accusation. Except Alessandra. Even in the face of the older woman’s guilt plainly written on her face, Alessandra still looked disbelieving. She looked as if she were the one dealt the hardest blow. Something he hadn’t accounted for and should have.

  Even the legendary Brunetti brothers looked horrified, their gazes alternating between their grandmother and Vincenzo in a parody that he would’ve laughed at any other time. A string of colorful curses spewed from Massimo’s mouth while Leo stared in numbed silence.

  “We could do a DNA test, if you want to lend legitimacy to my taking over what should be mine,” Vincenzo added dismissively. “I’d quite like to keep my mother’s name though. There’s a certain poetic justice in heading the prestigious BFI with her name, si?”

  “We will take your word for it, Cavalli, though you’re quite the spiteful bastard,” Massimo said evenly.

  “That’s mighty grand of you since your father and grandmother denied my mother even that small decency,” he couldn’t help adding, the very thought of the blankness in his mother’s eyes filling his throat with a corrosive taste he’d lived with for far too long.

  “And me, V?” Alessandra said in a soft entreaty. “Where do I fit into this sordid tale?” For all it was asked in a tremulous voice, it reverberated around him as if it had been fired out of a gun.

  His gut tightened, a cold, clammy feeling drenched his skin. A feeling he tried to battle and dominate into submission. He found he had no answer to give her right then.

  At least, not one that wouldn’t shatter the painful hope glimmering in her eyes.

  Not one that he could articulate in so many words.

  Not in front of all of them.

  She nodded as if he’d given her a clear-cut answer. As if his silence didn’t end up damning him after all. And then she fled.

  * * *

  Alex suppressed the tears that threatened with a deep breath and a big gulp of water. God, she’d cried enough over him in the last week.

  She looked out of the French doors at the neatly maintained acreage around the villa. The greenhouse that Leo had had restored on the grounds. The ancient wine cellar that had been restructured and repurposed to serve as brilliant Massimo’s state-of-the-art computer lab.

  The pride and sense of history of this place was in their blood. It was their legacy. Their place in the world.

  A place, and a sense of belonging, that Vincenzo had been cruelly denied. Along with his share of the legacy. She’d never forgotten the utter sense of inadequacy, the powerlessness when she’d discovered as a teenager that her mother’s husband, Steve, the man she’d always thought was her father, actually wasn’t—remembered the desperate need to belong somewhere, anywhere, completely.

  She could imagine the pain and loss a little boy might feel being rejected by his family, the scars that would carry over to the man. But to destroy Leonardo and Massimo after all these years… She couldn’t abide that. She couldn’t.

  “You have to stop running away from me, cara mia.”

  The deep, bass voice carried over to her on the soft breeze from the open doors, playing over her spine as if she were a set of piano keys and he the maestro.

  She stayed with her face averted from him. Like a coward. No, a woman who knew her own weakness and was assembling her armor. But it was time to decide.

  To look into the eyes of the man who’d seduced her so thoroughly that she’d lost all her hard-earned common sense and rushed straight to the altar with him.

  “You left me no choice,” she said. Even after she’d learned the truth, even on the long flight from Bali, even the past couple of days until Vincenzo caught up with her, there had been a small part of her that hoped that they’d all gotten it wrong. That the man she’d fallen for and married in secret wasn’t the same man ruining the very people she loved.

  “If I’d stayed in Bali, you’d have gotten the boxing match you’ve been asking for and I’d have beaten you to a pulp the way my mind’s working right now.”

  His laughter enveloped her. Her spine stiffened, but she was no match for the frissons that husky sound created in her. Or the scent of him that twisted like a screw in her lower belly. Or the memory of the warmth of that tight body covering her like a favorite blanket.

  The explosive chemistry between them had been instantaneous, all-consuming, mutual. And apparently, had no intention of abating even when her heart felt bruised inside her chest and her brain rebelled.

  “Then maybe I’d have deserved it.”

  “You think it’s that simple?” she said, turning around, frustration driving the words out of her. “That I yell at you, or scream at you, or pound that gorgeous face into mush and then we’re even?”

  Their eyes met across the room and held. That stillness she found fascinating about him descended again. He reminded her of a jungle cat—all restless energy and contained violence, preparing every single move for an attack.

  A white shirt unbuttoned showed off the tanned V of his throat, with an enticing glimpse of curls at the bottom. Dark smudges under his eyes told their own tale—he was as much of a workaholic as her.

  He looked a little rumpled after the long flight chasing her, coming after the fact that he’d been working straight for thirty-six hours when she’d left him. The gray of his eyes deepened—the only signal in all his stillness that betrayed him. That told her he’d been just as consumed by what was between them as she had.

  Even now as she looked at him, there was no doubt what her foolish heart and her greedy body wanted.

  More of what he’d made her feel. More of those warm, lazy nights. More of the man who’d promised her she’d never be alone again.

  More of him.

  She cleared her throat, ashamed of how little control she had around him. “Natalie spent a lot of hours—at the risk of increasing wrath from Greta and Leo and even Massimo—trying to convince me that you’re not the utter monster your actions prove. That long ago, you were the only protector she’d known against a cruel world. That she owes you a lot. At a time when there was nothing she could do for you in return.”

  His gaze became opaque, but Alex noted the stiffness of his shoulders. “Didn’t she tell you that I did demand a price for all that I’ve done for her, in the end?”

  “You’re surprised she stuck up for you. Are you that much of a villain then?”

  “I don’t know if I’m a villain, Princess. But I’m definitely not a hero,” he said, walking into the expansive room and completely owning it in a matter of seconds.

  Greta had gone to great pains when Alessandra had moved in to create a welcoming space for a lost teen. Every inch of this room had been a haven to a girl whose own mother had broken her heart repeatedly.

  “I thought Massimo had all the rights to Natalie’s loyalty,” he said so softly that she could barely
make out the words.

  “I’m sure they wish it was that simple, that one emotion for one person could trump or cancel out the emotion you feel for another. But it doesn’t work like that, does it?”

  His head jerked. She’d chinked that armor, she was sure.

  But when he spoke, his voice was as cool as ever. “I will admit I do not have much experience with emotions and family and all the complex, twisted drama that comes with it, si? So, no, I’ve no idea how it works.

  “But if Natalie’s misguided loyalty toward me—she was a fierce little thing even as a teen—paints me in a different light in your eyes, then I will thank her for it.

  “Don’t look for redeeming qualities in me that don’t exist, cara. Don’t forget either that I’m the same man you married recently.”

  The sheer arrogance of his statement swept through Alex like a wave threatening to drag her under. “You expect me to just shove everything you’ve done to them under the rug and carry on with you as though nothing has happened?”

  “What if you learned that I had done all this—” his arms swept out to encompass the villa “—to them, for no other reason than that I was a cutthroat businessman who wanted to rule the finance center of Milan and BFI is automatically the first target?”

  Afternoon sunlight gilded his face, caressing it with loving hands.

  Her breath hitched in her lungs as she suddenly saw the resemblances she’d never seen before. The set of his eyes—so much like Massimo’s, especially when he was smiling. The curling disdain Vincenzo’s mouth so artfully expressed—exactly like Leo’s when he was displeased.

  So many small things hit her, causing her heart to stutter. Ramming her conscience again and again with the fact that he belonged here, in this place she’d called home. Weakening her anger. Confusing her hurt with too many emotions he far too easily evoked.

  “That you can even think it could ever be that simple…shows how completely differently we’re wired.”

  “Fine. How about we forget the whole cursed lot of them for a few minutes?” A little frustration slipped into his voice.

  “You’re the one who entangled me in this.”

  “Our marriage can stand outside of all this Brunetti drama, Alessandra.”

  “That’s where you lose me, V. Maybe that’s what comes of playing with people’s lives like you’re conducting a chess game. Maybe you’re incapable of seeing that to demand my loyalty while at the same time you’re destroying them…is impossible. I can’t see how we can possibly go forward from here… Because you lied to me.”

  “Not a single time did I lie.”

  “Fine. If you want to split hairs, then you hid a great big truth from me.

  “I’m trying to understand what you might have felt as that little boy, why you chose this path of revenge years ago. How much Greta’s momentary thoughtlessness might have hurt—”

  “I wouldn’t refer to calling my mother a whore and a gold digger as a momentary thoughtlessness,” he said, baring his teeth in a growl. “I grew up destitute, thanks to her. My mother had a mental breakdown she never recovered from. She lost her livelihood, and we were turned out onto the streets. It turned into early onset dementia.”

  Her heart thumped in her chest, the anguish in his eyes dissolving her righteous fury. Still, she had to try. “That is not Greta’s fault.”

  “No? That my mother went untreated for so long, that she had a mental breakdown and that she didn’t even have access to the minimum level of medical care is their fault. That she now lives needing round-the-clock nursing care is their fault.” He reminded her of a wild animal, hurt and pouncing to attack. “That her disease spread so far and so fast that she doesn’t even recognize me is totally their fault.”

  “She doesn’t recognize you?” Alex whispered, her heart breaking for him. For herself too.

  Because how was she to cross this divide caused by him holding on to his pain and fury for so long? How could she hope to turn him from this path of destruction when he was utterly determined to see Leo and Massimo as enemies, when his hatred had such strong foundations in his terrible childhood.

  And if she stayed with him, knowing his plans for people she loved so deeply, what did that make her?

  He shook his head, his jaw tight. “She thinks I’m still a ten-year-old boy. She’s…frozen in that year.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me any of this?”

  “Because I don’t want the pity I see in your eyes.”

  “Then what do you want from me?”

  As she watched, half fascinated, half furious, he reined all that emotion back in. As easily as if he’d packed it away and locked it up. No, instead he channeled all that pain into hatred, into fury, into revenge. “The vows you made to me. The future we promised each other. That’s what I want.”

  “I still can’t believe Greta could’ve done something so—”

  “Because you’re buried under the weight of your obligations to them. You don’t know their true colors—you’re not tainted by the privilege and power that resides in their blood.”

  “And you think that means I can’t love them just as much? When I found out Carlos was my biological father and came to live with him, Greta was already married to him and didn’t even know I existed. But she welcomed me with open arms, she made a home for me here, she was the rock in my life when he died. Leo and Massimo, they accepted me and treated me like a real member of their family. You can’t imagine what they mean to me, Vincenzo.”

  “And yet you presume to understand my animosity toward them?”

  The leap of anger in his eyes—so unusual, especially directed at her—gave Alex pause. She wanted to try and see this from his point of view, but he’d put her smack-dab in the middle of it.

  She took a deep breath and chose her words carefully. “You’re right. It’s nothing but lip service of me to say that I…understand what you went through. But you…you don’t know what life was like for Leo and Massimo with your father, Silvio. They’re innocent of any wrongdoing. They don’t deserve to have their lives ripped apart like this.

  “Your true culprit is Silvio Brunetti. Not them. But he’s dead now.”

  He shrugged and the casual cruelty with which he did it with no pause to even consider her entreaty felt like a slap. “They bear the name I’ve hated all my life. Anyway, there are always casualties in war, cara. It’s unavoidable.”

  Her heart sank. “Is that what this is, V? War?”

  “Si. One I have waged for a long time. One I’ve invested everything into. I looked for weaknesses, sore spots, for years. I hit them with everything I had. And I don’t intend—”

  “Wait…” interrupted Alex, a cold finger raking its way down her spine. Pieces falling into place emerging in a picture that made her want to run away again.

  Alessandra Giovanni: Supermodel. Style Icon. Businesswoman. Philanthropist. Adopted Daughter of the Powerful Brunettis of Milan.

  She remembered the headline now.

  That feature had been released in a magazine no more than a few days before she’d flown to Bali for yet another photoshoot.

  Where the mysterious, gorgeous, gray-eyed Italian businessman had showed up.

  Their accidental meeting when she’d visited the ruins of an old temple…

  Their shared love of ancient architecture…

  The three hours he’d waited the next day while she finished her shoot, as if there was no other place on earth he’d rather be, those gorgeous eyes eating her alive.

  The promise to show her sights she’d never see on a formal touristy visit…

  Their first kiss under the most magnificent waterfall…

  The questions about her charity, about the business she planned to launch, about all the things near and dear to her… The way he’d left her wanting more after that first night of intimacy on
the balcony of her villa… The fairy-tale proposal and the marriage vows he’d recited in that deep voice…

  Had any of it been real?

  Nausea threatened to flood her mouth. “Did you come to Bali specifically looking for me? To see if you could use me in this war of yours?”

  He didn’t precisely flinch but she knew him. Knew every small shift and jerk of his beautiful face.

  “Answer me, Vincenzo,” she screamed, the question bursting out of her on a wave of fury and unspeakable hurt.

  “Si. I did come looking for you. Alessandra—”

  “Because that article quoted Greta as saying, ‘Alessandra is the one I love the most in the world,’ right?”

  Again that dreadful, soul-crushing silence.

  Despite her best efforts, tears broke out onto her cheeks, making her vision fuzzy. Distorting those clear-cut features. Twisting that sensuous mouth.

  “I looked for weaknesses, sore spots. I hit them with everything I had.”

  It hadn’t been enough that he’d come after BFI and BCS. Or that he’d somehow achieved ownership of Silvio Brunetti’s shares in BFI. He’d had to hit them where it would hurt them personally too, hadn’t he, especially Greta?

  Everything had been premeditated. Planned. Perfectly executed.

  And she’d fallen for him like a ton of bricks.

  She turned and faced him, wiping her cheeks roughly. Hurt gave way to anger, to a fury unlike any she’d ever known. “So how do you see this whole thing playing out exactly? What is it that you expect of me while you wreak havoc through these people’s lives? People I love, let me clarify.”

  “I expect you to do what you’d have done if you hadn’t found out. To give our marriage a real chance. To spend the rest of your life with me. To keep the vows you made to me.”

  “Our marriage is nothing but a…farce.”

  “No! I married you, Alessandra. I promised to spend the rest of my life with you. It is not something I undertook lightly.”

  Alex searched his face, hoping to see a flicker of something that she could hang on to. That implacable gaze didn’t soften. Slowly, his words sank in, bringing yet more questions.