by Lyla Payne
The chuckle on the other end of the line felt menacing, and slid up her spine like a cold hand. “I can ruin your father’s reputation. Do you think his clients would be interested to know that he’s been lying about his medical issues for the better part of two years?”
Her breath caught. “The work hasn’t suffered.”
“Still. People do not take kindly to being lied to, not where their money is concerned.” He paused. “There is another matter, as well. One that pertains to your dear, departed mother. I promise your father would suffer more than the loss of his reputation should it be made public. I don’t think he would last long in the royal dungeon, do you?”
“Leave us alone.” Maggie hung up with as much force as she could muster, her hands shaking as though she was the one fighting Parkinson’s.
The vegetables blurred through her tears, which plopped onto the counter as she finished chopping them and swept them into the waiting salad. While she grilled a fresh chicken breast and cut it up, arranging it on top of the lettuce and veggies before serving it to her father at the table, the man’s words played again and again in her mind.
What could he mean?
She tried to think of a way to bring up the phone call, to ask what the caller could have been referencing, as they ate. They never spoke of her mother, though, and the words refused to find their way past her lips. It didn’t take long until she’d decided the man was nothing more than a lying asshole. She wouldn’t let him drive a wedge between her father and her, no matter what happened.
“Everything in order?” her father asked, picking at his dinner.
“Yes. Juliet is going to come and stay with you while I’m gone, too.”
He looked as if he wanted to argue, but after a moment, his shoulders slumped in defeat and he nodded. Maggie’s heart broke in two at the sight. She thought that the indignities of getting older were worse than the illnesses, or the death that waited for everyone at the end of them.
She reached out and covered her father’s frail hand with her own, squeezing as tight as she dared. He refused to look up at her, and Maggie forced good memories to the front of her mind—her strong father, giving advice, lifting her onto his shoulders, teaching her how to throw a punch and change the oil in her car, how to make a strong, hidden stitch. That’s who he was, not this.
“I love you, Papa.”
He gave her a smile, then. “And I, you, bella mia.”
It was clear neither of them felt much like eating, so after another five minutes of trying, Magdalena rose and cleared the dishes, putting the salad away in the fridge in case they were hungry later. As she worked, the Matrigna man’s hubris dug beneath her skin like needles.
Maggie tossed the dishrag on the counter, then popped her head into her father’s study. “Papa? I think I will go and see my friends.”
“Have a good time, dear.”
She wasn’t alone in her hatred, in her desire to fight. He thought he knew everything about the families he was displacing, enough to cow them into leaving the homes they’d worked so hard to keep, but they knew nothing about him.
It was time they figured out a way to change that.
It hadn’t taken long to round up a small group of disgruntled Arcobaleno citizens at the local pub. Her friend Camilla was one, plus two boys they’d gone to school with, Bartomaleo and Lorenzo. Once Brigida took a seat and a long pull from her dirty martini, Magdalena thought they could get started.
Barty ordered a plate of deep fried mushrooms, but for once, food didn’t sound good.
The adrenaline that came from at least attempting to take action had erased her fatigue and she fidgeted with the peeling label on her bottle of beer as she ran down the latest letter, her visit to the odd Matrigna Holdings office in town, and the phone call earlier that night.
She didn’t go into details regarding the threats, but the expressions of swirling anger and understanding on the others’ faces promised they got the gist.
“Have you guys been threatened with some kind of exposure, too?”
“My grandmother thinks Matrigna started killing her sheep,” Brigida offered. “After she said no way, no how, for a third time, the flock started disappearing, two or three at a time. She’d find them days later, half eaten by carrion birds and other scavengers, too mutilated to figure out how they died.”
“Why does she think it’s Matrigna?” Lorenzo asked.
“The timing. And the fact that she’s lost half her flock at this point, and that’s never happened before in the fifty years she’s been farming.”
“Anyone else?” Maggie asked, wiping her lip after taking a swig of her beer.
“Me,” Barty volunteered. “Threatened to expose my sexuality to my superior officer.”
Maggie felt sick. “What did you say?”
“I told him to go fuck himself.” Barty shrugged. “But I’m probably going to sell. It’s against the recruitment rules for me to have been accepted, and I love my job. I don’t want to lose it.”
“My mother apparently had a juvenile record,” Camilla sighed. “Expunged when she turned eighteen, but it wouldn’t look great if it came out, given my father’s station.”
“Jesus,” Lorenzo said, echoing Magdalena’s thoughts. “Who is this guy?”
“That’s what we need to find out,” Maggie said, motioning for the waitress and another beer. The bar was the same one they’d been coming to since they were sixteen, even though the place smelled like sweat, old wood, and stale vomit and it was hard to see in the impossibly low lighting.
She suspected the lighting choice was to keep people from looking too closely at their food, but at least there were fewer creepers than the trendy place she’d been the other night.
“How?” Barty asked, patting his perfectly coiffed hair back into place. “The company is privately held and no one seems to know who the owner or shareholders are. You said yourself that the office at the address on the letter is a sham. He calls from unlisted numbers.”
“Do you think his voice sounds familiar?”
“A little? I don’t know.” Camilla shrugged and everyone else looked as lost for an answer.
“We know he picks up messages and mail at the office downtown,” Maggie started. “What if we stake it out?”
“We’re not detectives,” Camilla said, making a face. “And I look terrible in black.”
“Well, if the detectives in town are getting blackmailed themselves, then we can’t count on them to find out who’s behind this.” Frustration curled Magdalena’s fingers around her fresh beer.
“Another tactic could be trying to find out why they’re buying up so much land,” Brigida suggested. “Why would they want it? For what purpose?”
“It’s a good question.” Maggie bit her lip. “And it can’t be just money. They’re too aggressive. Like it’s personal.”
“I’ll help stake out the office,” Lorenzo said. “We can take shifts.”
“Me, too,” Barty agreed. “As long as we can work around my duty hours.”
Annoyance twisted Magdalena’s stomach. “I’m not going to be able to help. Not for a while.”
Camilla’s eyes lit up. “The ball. You’re going to be busy with the clothes.”
“Yes. Living at the palace for a few weeks, it would seem.”
It wouldn’t be odd to her friends that she was going; even if her father had been well, the job was so involved and large that he would have needed her help, anyway. No one knew her father wouldn’t be in charge of the project, and Maggie felt cold when she thought about how the King and his sons might respond after learning they would have to trust her with the entire thing.
“Oh my goodness. Did you see him? Salvadore? Is he really going to pick a wife, like in Cinderella?” Camilla sounded breathless, and it didn’t take a genius to figure out why.
Her father’s family came from lesser nobility. That meant that she would be eligible, in the eyes of the royal family, to wed the second-i
n-line.
Brigida made a face. “Why on earth anyone would want to marry that puffed-up asshole is beyond me.”
“Oh, I can think of a few reasons,” Barty drawled, raising a suggestive eyebrow. “One of which is stuffed in his tight pants.”
“He’s disgusting,” Magdalena agreed, her hackles raised all over again. She pushed his treatment of her this afternoon into the forefront of her mind and tried to forget everything else. “This whole thing is a waste of time and money, and it’s embarrassing as shit.”
Camilla waved a hand. “You’re only saying that because you’ve got no shot. I do.”
Anger washed through Maggie—anger that felt slightly like jealousy, if she was honest—but she shoved it down. No one knew how she’d felt about the younger prince when they were teenagers, and God willing, no one besides she and Salvy ever would. If Camilla wanted to go after him like a greased pig during a chase, more power to her.
The jealous spike was only remnants of the long-ago crush, not any real desire to somehow win the favor of the narcissistic, leering, half-naked man she’d met this afternoon. Even if he had been suspiciously restrained after he’d realized who she was.
“That was rude,” Brigida informed Camilla. “Are you in for the stakeouts or not?”
Camilla nodded. “Yes. But if Salvadore picks me at the ball, you can all suck it. My new husband will find out who’s behind Matrigna and tar and feather them in the town square.”
Lorenzo rolled his pitch-dark eyes. “I think you’re getting a tad carried away with this whole fifteenth century reenactment the crown is apparently trying to pull off.”
“Besides, I wouldn’t count on Salvadore, or any of the Piaceres, taking a stand on this land buyout thing. People have already made complaints, all of which have been ignored with a pat ‘we don’t get involved in private business affairs that are perfectly legal’ statement.” Magdalena frowned.
“Maybe you could talk to Salvadore or Nico, since you’re going to be spending so much time with them,” Barty suggested. “It could be that they’re not aware of how dirty Matrigna is playing. I’m no expert, but I’m pretty sure blackmail doesn’t count as above-board tactics.”
Magdalena made a face, knowing that King Alfonso wouldn’t take kindly to her using her position as royal tailor to attempt to garner special favors.
“We signed a contract saying we wouldn’t discuss matters of state while on official duty,” she explained. “And if the royal family discusses matters of state within our earshot, we’re to pretend we’ve gone deaf and mute.”
“Charming,” Brigida commented, motioning for a third round of beers. “Maybe we haven’t come so far from the fifteenth century after all.”
Maggie shrugged. “You can’t blame them. They’re careful about who they take into the palace, and they have to know they can trust us.”
“That may be,” Lorenzo started. “But if we’re going up against a mysterious billionaire with dirt on the entire town, we’re all going to have to get our hands dirty.”
Magdalena worried about the fallout, should the royal family be disgruntled with her family’s involvement in underhanded schemes to uncover the billionaire behind Matrigna Holdings. A wry smile tugged at her lips as she wondered whether King Alfonso would be as soft on her now as he had been when she was a child blackening the eyes of his precious sons.
Somehow, she doubted it.
Chapter Seven
Salvadore
Salvy stepped out of the shower, dripping onto the floor while he wiped a spot clear on the mirror. He looked tired; being back at the palace, even on the grounds, stressed him out. He hated the weight of his father’s expectations, of Nico’s pleading, of worrying what Luca would do next. He didn’t want those to be his problems and when he was home, they felt as if they were.
He sighed and toweled off. The ball, though…that was his problem. The King expecting him to choose a bride…that was his problem. He’d created them both, thinking that it would be a cheeky way to get back at his father, and now it seemed as though he was going to have to follow through or lose everything.
Salvy didn’t know if he could. For all the time he spent with women, he’d never been with one he thought he could stomach spending his entire life with, and getting married as a method of revenge was gross, even to him. His parents had been special. They’d had something special. He wanted a woman who inspired that sort of desire in him, and he’d never found it.
A thud from his bedroom pulled his mind from the contemplative bullshit. He tugged on a pair of boxer briefs before striding into the other room.
“Jesus, how much time do you spend in the gym?” Nico asked, sitting at Salvy’s desk under the window. Morning sunlight streamed in, surrounding his brother and his impeccable, three-thousand-dollar suit with a literal halo.
Nico, the perfect prince. Salvy struggled to stop his sneer.
“Enough. I’m more eligible than Ginger Harry now, haven’t you heard?”
Nico snorted. “I’ve heard lots of things lately. But we both know that if it had been me swinging my pecker around like an elephant’s trunk, there wouldn’t be any question about which brother is better endowed.”
Salvy grabbed a clean white T-shirt from the drawer and slipped it over his head, hiding his carefully cultivated abs from view. He normally enjoyed showing them off, but he sensed that Nico had come here to lecture him, and one should never go ill-dressed into battle.
“I’m sure you didn’t come here to compare penis sizes,” Salvy said, sitting on the edge of the bed to put on a pair of socks. “We took care of that definitive ranking years ago.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Well, out with it. It must be important for you to be all cleaned up at seven in the morning.”
His brother made a face. “This is a normal hour for one to be up and dressed, you know. Though I must say, I didn’t expect you to be out of bed, so well done. Etzio claimed ten a.m. is a hard rule.”
“Yes, well, I’ve got a big day ahead of me. Fittings and all of that.”
“That’s what I came to talk to you about.” Nico sighed and leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “A ball to find a wife? Have you lost your mind?”
“Possibly.”
“That’s all you have to say about it?”
Salvy sighed, too, then went to pick a suit from the closet. He pulled on the gray slacks and buttoned them, securing a belt around his waist and dragging a lavender shirt from a hanger before returning to face his brother.
His brother, who at thirty-three had already lost the love of his life. His brother, who had not walked, but run to get married because he believed he’d found the perfect woman, not because he was calling the King’s bluff.
“Father told me I have to grow up or become a goddamn priest. I picked grow up.”
“And make a mockery out of the crown, and marriage, in the process?”
“I think both will survive,” Salvy said dryly. “And honestly, I didn’t expect Father to agree to this nonsense.”
“After you sent out the invitations it was a little hard to retract.” Nico’s voice was hard. “Which you knew. You’re not stupid, Salvadore, despite the image you seem to love.”
Salvy didn’t answer. There was no good way to go about it, especially not with Nico. Not when he wasn’t sure the decision he’d made was the right one.
“You know, like Father, I’ve been hoping that you would find it within yourself to make the decision to come home and settle down. I’ve…I know it sounds silly, but a life with one woman—if she’s the right one—can be more akin to breaking free of a prison than being slammed into one. I want that for you.”
“How can you say that after what you lost? After what we lost, when Mother died?” Salvy’s throat felt scratchy. The women loved by Piacere men didn’t fare well.
“It’s worth it, Sally. That’s all I can tell you.” Nico unfolded his lanky frame and stood, head an inch o
r so above Salvy’s. He reached out and clapped his younger brother on the shoulder. “I’m told I have no choice but to support this asinine event, so let me know when you need Elisa and me for fittings.”
“Oh! I almost forgot to tell you—when I summoned Gabriel Rossi yesterday, guess who showed up instead?”
Nico raised one dark, bushy eyebrow, a sly smile on his lips. “Oh, I don’t know…Magdalena?”
“Yes. How did you know that?”
“This isn’t common knowledge, but her father is ill. Terminal. She’s been doing all of the work for at least six months while he pretends here and there so the clients don’t realize.”
Salvy’s heart twitched. Memories of Maggie and her father, the love between them, flooded his mind. As thick as thieves her entire, motherless life. It would kill her to lose him, too.
He swallowed, not wanting to think about her alone. “That’s too bad. Why didn’t she say something?”
“You know how people are when things change. They can’t afford to lose the business.”
“She can’t seriously think we would replace them as the royal tailors just because Gabriel is no longer able to work.”
Nico shrugged. “There are people who wouldn’t blame us. And by us, I mean the King. I’m not even sure Father is aware of the situation. We haven’t needed their services for a few months, and Gabriel was here the last time.”
“We can’t fire her.”
His brother stared at Salvy with an unreadable expression. “Of course not. She’s a friend, and Gabriel has served us loyally for years. Magdalena will have to prove that she’s up to the task, of course, but with her training and background it should be a snap. I think this ball of yours should do the trick. If she can handle that, she should be in the clear.”
“If she can handle my balls, she can handle anything,” Salvy joked, immediately regretting it. Not only did thinking about Maggie touching him make his skin hot, but talking about her that way felt immediately wrong.