“What the fuck is going on?” Orlando looked as shocked as Zulika. Norah took Giacomo’s hand and Zulika could see she was trembling.
“I’m sorry we had to put you through last night, but we needed it to look real. For everyone else.” She nodded at the ‘killer.' “This is Grayson Harris. He was hired by Tara’s father to kill me. He chose another path.”
Zulika felt the energy drain out of her and she sank into a chair. “Why? Why not go to the police?”
Grayson Harris half-smiled. “I’m afraid that’s my fault, or rather, my …old occupation’s job.”
Zulika stared at him with cold eyes. “Why should any of us care if you’re arrested, Mr. Harris?”
“Because he could have just taken George Hubert’s money, killed Norah, and gotten clean away.” Giacomo’s voice was calm, but there was a tiny break in it and Zulika softened.
“Right.” She turned back to Norah, who was watching her with a wary look in her eyes. “So …why the charade?”
“We need Tara to think Norah is dead …we need her to show her hand. We think she’s hiding out at her dad’s place, somewhere we can’t get to her. If she thinks Norah is dead, she might try the whole ‘lean on me’ thing. She’ll come out of the woodwork or whatever and then we’ll have her.” Giacomo looked at Orlando. “Lando …Grayson found out something you should hear.”
Orlando blanched, obviously guessing what he was about to say. Carmel’s murder … He faced Grayson, his gaze intent on the other man. “Just tell me …was it you?”
Grayson stood. “No. I don’t kill women. I swear that to you. I’m very sorry for your loss—to be honest, I was somewhat of a fan of your wife’s, as bizarre as that might sound for someone like me. I didn’t kill her.” He looked at Norah and smiled. “I would not have killed you either, Ms. Reddy. But you know that.”
“I do.” Norah gave a nervous laugh. “Excuse me, but this whole thing is just bizarre to me. Still.”
Zulika walked over to her and wrapped her arms around her. “I understand why you did what you did—and great acting, by the way, both of you—but man, when this is all over, I’m opening a can of whoop ass on you, buddy.”
Norah laughed and hugged her. “I don’t blame you …it was pretty grim.”
“Even the surgeon and emergency room staff were in on it?”
“Amazing what funding a new wing of the hospital will get you,” Giacomo smiled and Zulika nodded.
“Right.”
Orlando cleared his throat. “So how is this going to work? I mean, you can’t just walk out of here. The paparazzi are already baying for blood out front.”
Norah nodded. “I’m going to be a master of disguise.”
“Really?”
“No,” she grinned at him. “I’ll be wearing a surgical mask and scrubs. It really is that complicated. Then I’ll get a cab to a hotel and camp out there for a few days until we see how the land lies.”
Giacomo slid his arm around her waist. “Not too long, Principessa. And if it’s safe, then I’ll sneak in.”
“So what now?”
“Now, we’ll just have to wait.”
Norah opened the door of the hotel room a crack and chuckled. “You just couldn’t stay away, huh?” She opened the door, pulled Giacomo inside, and locked the door again. He caught her mouth with his, lingering over the kiss. Norah slid her hands under his t-shirt.
“You’re overdressed, Mr. Conti …”
He pulled his t-shirt over his head in one move and she laughed. “More like it.”
“Uh-ah, your turn …” He pulled the spaghetti straps of her dress down her shoulders and let the dress slip to the floor, “Hmm. Still not naked enough.” With one quick move, he unclasped her bra, and her full breasts fell into his hands. He dipped his head to take each nipple into his mouth in turn. Norah sighed, closing her eyes and reveling in the sensations his tongue sent shivering through her body. She tangled her fingers in his hair, breathing in his clean, woody scent.
“Giacomo …” she whispered and he stood and covered her mouth with his. He lifted her easily in his arms and carried her to the bed. He kicked off his jeans and underwear and made Norah laugh by taking the waistband of her panties in his teeth and attempting to pull them off.
“You lunatic,” she gasped with laughter and pushed him away, sliding her underwear off. Giacomo straddled her and she grinned up at him. “What are you looking at, mister?”
Giacomo grinned. “Well, for starters, the most exquisite face on this earth.” He bent over and trailed his lips across her cheek to her mouth, “The most delicious lips …”
Norah sighed as his lips pressed against her throat and down to her breasts. “Each perfect nipple …’
His hand drifted between her legs and began to caress her clitoris. Norah gave a soft moan, and Giacomo chuckled, his laughter rumbling through her belly as he found her navel and began to run his tongue around the edge, circling it. He slipped his finger deep into her cunt and began to slide it in and out of her. He kissed a path from her belly down to her sex and took her clit into his mouth, sucking it gently and teasing it with his tongue.
Norah groaned and writhed as he pleasured her, gasping his name and coming hard as Giacomo moved up the bed and plunged his diamond-hard cock into her. “Mio Dio, you’re beautiful …”
Norah smiled up at him. “I love you so much …oh god, Giacomo …”
He chuckled as he began to thrust harder, enjoyed the undulations of her body beneath him, her large, ripe breasts pressing into his chest, and her soft belly trembling with desire. He sought her mouth again, massaging her tongue with his, and feeling her fingernails digging into the muscles of his back.
He came explosively, groaning, calling her name out over and over, and shooting thick creamy cum deep into her belly. Norah, her cunt hot and clenching around his cock, bit down on his shoulder and gave a long, drawn out moan of pleasure.
“Baby, remember when we used to fuck in your office? With the door unlocked?”
Giacomo grinned. “How could I forget, you little exhibitionist?”
Norah laughed as Giacomo lay down by her side, both catching their breath. “Well, earlier, I was exploring this hotel and do you know what? They have a rooftop.”
Giacomo propped himself up on his elbow. “You don’t seem to understand this whole ‘keep out of sight’ thing, do you?”
Norah laughed. “I was careful. Besides, no one saw me. Anyway, I was thinking …”
Giacomo smirked. “Dirty girl.”
Norah pressed her body against his. “Well, if it doesn’t appeal …”
Giacomo considered for a long moment and his cell phone buzzed. “Hold that thought, mio caro.” He grabbed his phone and read the text message. In an instant, his face changed from playful to a fierce triumph. He looked at Norah, his eyes blazing. “Guess what?”
“What?”
“Tara took the bait.”
Tara sat in the hotel restaurant, idly flicking through her text messages. Or should I say, old text messages, she thought. Her friends had drifted away from her of late and she was sure they all blamed for Norah’s murder; they had been friends of Giacomo too before he split with Tara and now they had chosen sides.
Well, who gives a shit? Tara wasn’t at all bothered by their disloyalty; she had her career and her money—and now she was finally free of her father and his bullshit. Maybe she should re-hire that dude to kill her father.
She was lost in thought, waiting for Giacomo to show up, when the maître d’ appeared by her side. “Miss Hubert? I have a call at the front desk for you.”
Really? “Who is it?”
“Mr. Conti, I believe.”
Why hadn’t he called her cell phone? Tara sighed, got up, and followed the maître d’ out to the reception. He indicated a phone just inside the office. Tara walked in and picked up the phone.
“Hello?”
“Boo, bitch.” Norah ‘s voice was hard.
S
hocked, Tara didn’t have time to respond before someone grabbed her from behind and a needle was stuck into her neck.
Zulika had kissed Orlando before he left the house, on his way to meet Giacomo, Norah, and the very captive Tara. Zulika looked up at him. “Don’t do anything …I mean, if she tries to …” She couldn’t get the words out and he gave her a half-smile.
“Just say it plain, kiddo.”
Zulika drew in a deep breath. “Stay …you. You are better than her.”
He kissed her cheek. “I promise. Even if she acts up.” His face got serious then. “But I can’t tell Giacomo or Norah what to do. If they want Tara dead …”
“Then it’s their decision …but I cannot imagine Norah going for it.”
Orlando studied her. “Tara killed your brother. You have as much to say to her as anyone. I could get a sitter for Ferma.”
Zulika shook her head. “Lucian was dead to me the minute he raped Norah. I want Ferma to feel safe in her bed.”
Orlando kissed her softly. “I love you, you know?”
Zulika smiled up at him. “I do know. Ditto.”
Orlando laughed. “Girl, you’ve been watching Ghost again. Ever get sick of it?”
“Hell, no. Hurry home to me.”
“I will.”
Tara opened her eyes. Tied tightly to a hard wood chair, she blinked in the cold light of the hanger. The air was cold and the private jet stood silently in the huge building. She recognized it immediately. Conti-One. She’d flown on it many times. She wasn’t surprised to see who her captors were. Her eyes fixed on the woman who sat on the desk opposite her.
“You just won’t fucking die, will you?” Tara’s speech was slurred and, humiliatingly, she felt a gob of drool spill from the side of her mouth.
Norah smiled coldly. “Oh, I will. Just at the end of a long, happy life with Giacomo, instead of when a spoiled, bratty, little bitch like you decides it’s time.”
Tara smirked. “I swear you must have a magical vagina. Lucian wouldn’t kill you when I told him too. Giacomo is like a dog on a leash. I should have gotten …”
She trailed off when she saw Orlando step into her field of vision. “Should have gotten …the same man you hired to kill my wife to kill Norah?”
Tara was silent. She glanced around to see Giacomo watching her, his fury all too evident and his green eyes dark with anger. She studied him, this man she used to love …wait …did she really ever love him?
Yes. God, he was beautiful. All that glowering menace, that hard body, and his huge, masterful cock. Fuck …why had she cheated on him with that skid-mark Lucian?
She looked back at Norah. Tara knew, in her heart, that she would never match up to Norah Reddy in any department; beauty, brains …courage.
She looked away from Norah’s steady glance. “I suppose this is where you kill me and dispose of my body? You,” she nodded at Orlando, “I can see it in your eyes. The rage. The need for vengeance.”
Orlando’s expression was like stone. “So, that’s an admission, then? You had my wife, my pregnant wife, murdered?”
Tara clamped her mouth shut. Giacomo walked over to her, and despite her bravado, she shrank back in the chair.
He put a hand on each arm of her chair and leaned in so his face was inches from hers. “You would think that,” he said softly. “You would automatically assume that we brought you here to kill you. Because that’s your go-to, isn’t it, Tara? Murder. You had Carmel killed because she found out about you fucking Hargity. You killed Hargity because he wouldn’t kill Norah. And you tried to have my beautiful girl killed out of sheer spite.”
He pinched Tara’s chin between his fingers. “We are not like you, Tara.”
She jerked her chin away from him. “Fuck you, Giacomo.”
He smiled a chilly, icy smile. “You wish, you little bitch. So here’s what’s going to happen. We’re going to deliver you to the police. You’re going to admit everything and take your punishment. Or …”
He glanced around at Norah who nodded. “Or you can walk free from here.”
Tara blinked. “What?”
“You can go free.”
She started to laugh hysterically. “Fuck you people. Have the balls to take your revenge.”
Giacomo half-smiled. “Oh, we already are. Your name is poison now. Every contact you have will no longer take your call. Every contract is now null and void. No restaurant will take your booking, no fashion designer will hire you to walk in their shows, and no magazine wants you on their cover. Ever.”
Tara sneered at hum. “I don’t believe you. They still have to sell their product and who does that better than me?”
Giacomo looked over at Norah and winked. She beamed back at him and Tara laughed. “Her? She doesn’t have what it takes to do my job.”
Norah chuckled derisively. “Yes, the capacity to stand up straight and walk somehow eludes me.”
Giacomo gave a genuine laugh then before looking back at Tara. “Norah doesn’t have to whore herself out like you, but, funnily enough, they were interested in the story of the beautiful girl who survived, the gorgeous woman with a brain the size of Sicily and a heart of gold. Think about it, Tara …who would they rather have? The washed-up ice queen who treats people like crap? Or the warm-hearted heroine who escaped a madman and is about to marry the luckiest man in the world?”
Norah hopped off the desk and came to stand next to him, linking her fingers with his. Tara watched them, her eyes narrowed.
“So, Norah will be taking over all your commitments before retiring from ‘modeling’ to do, you know, actual work.”
Norah chuckled, looking up at her love. “So bitchy.”
Giacomo kissed her. “I know. I couldn’t resist.”
Tara spat at them. “God, you make me sick.”
Norah turned to her. “You know what, Tara? I would never trust a man who hurt a woman. Hit her. As much as both Giacomo and Orlando would love a freebie at kicking your ass right now, neither of them would stoop that low. Me, on the other hand …I grew up in a trailer park.” And she slapped the other woman hard, once, across the face. “Well, now, that was fucking satisfying.”
She grabbed the back of Tara’s head and forced her to look at her. “Don’t ever, ever mess with my man, my family, or me again. Do you understand me? Or I will happily, happily do time for ending you.”
Tara recoiled from the growl in Norah’s voice and felt a grudging admiration. “You know, my dad’s going to be pissed that his guy took the money and didn’t kill you.”
Norah burst out laughing. “Oh, you moron …your dad already knows. His ’guy,’ as you call it, told him he wouldn’t do the job and never took his money. Giacomo went to see your father and …well, baby, do you want to tell Tara what her daddy-dear told you?”
Tara felt her heart begin to clench and tighten. Giacomo was obviously enjoying this.
“He said he didn’t have a problem with Norah living; that he only hired the ‘guy’ as a last favor to his about-to-be-disowned daughter. Said it wasn’t worth his while to keep his promise. Your dad couldn’t give a crap about you, princess.”
Norah smiled. “And to my mind, that makes …precisely zero people who do give a crap about you. So what we’re offering is the best you’re going to get.”
Tara laughed then. “What the fuck are you offering? Prison or destitution?”
“Yup.”
“That’s it. But you get to live, is the point we’re making, I think.”
Orlando cleared his throat. “Unless, of course, you want to tell us who killed my wife and where to find him?”
Tara smirked. “And lose the only card I have left?”
Orlando stepped towards her, but Norah stopped him. “Allow me, Lando.”
Tara tried to scream in the second before Norah’s fist smashed into her temple and knocked her cold.
Garbage. Garbage and gulls and grime. Tara opened her eyes. She was dumped on a landfill site. She stood up
and clambered down of the pile, gagging and heaving all the way. A couple of raggedy dumpster divers stared at her, but she ignored them. Her clothes and her hair were soaked in old, stinky food and god knows what else.
It wasn’t until she finally tumbled to the bottom of the trash pile that she saw them.
Paparazzi. And every single one of them was laughing at her.
Six weeks later
As they sat outside the café on Florence’s sun-drenched streets, Enrico Conti read the newspaper silently as his son and Norah waited for his reaction. Tara’s picture was still headline news, even after all these weeks. Her broken contracts, her fall from grace, and now she had disappeared. Norah couldn’t rustle up any sympathy for her.
She watched her future father-in-law from the corner of her eye. Since they’d returned to Italy, she’d spent even more time with Giacomo’s lovely mother, Vittoria, his sister. Adriana, and occasionally his brother, Enzo, but his father had still kept his distance. He was certainly polite to her and she thought he might be thawing, but no sooner than she thought she’d made progress, he would retreat again.
Giacomo had assured her that his father wouldn’t stand in the way of them marrying, and now, with the wedding a week away, Norah couldn’t feel anything but optimistic about the future. In two days, Orlando, Zulika, Fred, and Ferma would be arriving, and then she and Zulika would be frantically trying to organize everything.
She was regretting not having some gelato, as the weather was so warm, but she felt too relaxed, Giacomo’s arm around her, to bother asking for some now. Giacomo and Enrico were chatting about something in Italian now, and although she was picking up the language, she didn’t listen along, instead just people-watching.
Norah fiddled with the coffee cup as the two men spoke. She tried not to keep glancing at Enrico Conti, trying to read his reaction to her. She felt as if there was a little thawing, but he was so hard to read, she couldn’t be sure.
The sun was beating down on Florence, bright on the café’s windows, and at first, she could not believe what she was seeing until the woman came closer.
Tara.
The blonde woman, her face unmade, her hair bedraggled, lurched towards them, her gaze fixed on Giacomo who had his back turned towards Tara.
His Beautiful Revenge: A Bad Boy Billionaire Romance Page 19