by Maya Blake
A shock wave went through the crowd.
Zaccheo didn’t bat an eyelid.
‘By all means do that if you wish, but you know exactly why I’m here, Pennington. We can play coy if you prefer. You’ll be made painfully aware when I tire of it.’ The words were barely above a murmur, but their venom raised the hairs on Eva’s arms, triggering a gasp when she saw Sophie’s face.
Her usually unflappable sister was severely agitated, her face distressingly pale.
‘Ciao, Eva,’ Zaccheo drawled without turning around. That deep, resonant voice, reminiscent of a tenor in a soulful opera, washed over her, its powerfully mesmerising quality reminding her how she’d once longed to hear him speak just for the hell of it. ‘It’s good of you to join us.’
‘This is my engagement party. It’s my duty to interact with my guests, even unwelcome ones who will be asked to leave immediately.’
‘Don’t worry, cara, I won’t be staying long.’
The relief that surged up her spine disappeared when his gaze finally swung her way, then dropped to her left hand. With almost cavalier laziness, he caught her wrist and raised it to the light. He examined the ring for exactly three seconds. ‘How predictable.’
He released her with the same carelessness he’d captured her.
Eva clenched her fist to stop the sizzling electricity firing up her arm at the brief contact.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Harry demanded.
Zaccheo levelled steely grey eyes on him, then his parents. ‘This is a private discussion. Leave us.’
Peter Fairfield’s laugh held incredulity, the last inch of champagne in his glass sloshing wildly as he raised his arm. ‘I think you’ve got the wrong end of the stick there, mate. You’re the one who needs to take a walk.’
Eva caught Harry’s pained look at his father’s response, but could do nothing but watch, heart in her throat, as Zaccheo faced Peter Fairfield.
Again she was struck by how much his body had changed; how the sleek, layered muscle lent a deeper sense of danger. Whereas before it’d been like walking close to the edge of a cliff, looking into his eyes now was like staring into a deep, bottomless abyss.
‘Would you care to repeat that, il mio amico?’ The almost conversational tone belied the savage tension beneath the words.
‘Oscar, who is this?’ Peter Fairfield demanded of her father, who seemed to have lost the ability to speak after Zaccheo’s succinct taunt.
Eva inserted herself between the two men before the situation got out of hand. Behind her, heat from Zaccheo’s body burned every exposed inch of skin. Ignoring the sensation, she cleared her throat.
‘Mr and Mrs Fairfield, Harry, we’ll only be a few minutes. We’re just catching up with Mr Giordano.’ She glanced at her father. A vein throbbed in his temple and he’d gone a worrying shade of puce. Fear climbed into her heart. ‘Father?’
He roused himself and glanced around. A charming smile slid into place, but it was off by a light year. The trickle of ice that had drifted down her spine at Zaccheo’s unexpected arrival turned into a steady drip.
‘We’ll take this in my study. Don’t hesitate to let the staff know if you need anything.’ He strode away, followed by a disturbingly quiet Sophie.
Zaccheo’s gaze swung to Harry, who defiantly withstood the laser gaze for a few seconds before he glanced at her.
‘Are you sure?’ Harry asked, that touching concern again in his eyes.
Her instinct screamed a terrible foreboding, but she nodded. ‘Yes.’
‘Okay. Hurry back, sweetness.’ Before she could move, he dropped a kiss on her mouth.
A barely audible lethal growl charged through the air.
Eva flinched.
She wanted to face Zaccheo. Demand that he crawl back behind the bars that should’ve been holding him. But that glimpse of fear in her father’s eyes stopped her. She tugged the wrap closer around her.
Something wasn’t right here. She was willing to bet the dilapidated ancestral pile beneath her feet that something was seriously, dangerously wrong—
‘Move, Eva.’
The cool command spoken against her ear sent shivers coursing through her.
She moved, only because the quicker she got to the bottom of why he was here, the quicker he would leave. But with each step his dark gaze probed her back, making the walk to her father’s study on the other side of the manor the longest in her life.
Zaccheo shut the door behind him. Her father turned from where he’d been gazing into the unlit fireplace. Again Eva spotted apprehension in his eyes before he masked it.
‘Whatever grievance you think you have the right to air, I suggest you rethink it, son. Even if this were the right time or place—’
‘I am not your son, Pennington.’ Zaccheo’s response held lethal bite, the first sign of his fury breaking through. ‘As for why I’m here, I have five thousand three hundred and twenty-two pieces of documentation that proves you colluded with various other individuals to pin a crime on me that I didn’t commit.’
‘What?’ Eva gasped, then the absurdity of the statement made her shake her head. ‘We don’t believe you.’
Zaccheo’s eyes remained on her father. ‘You may not, but your father does.’
Oscar Pennington laughed, but the sound lacked its usual boom and zest. When sweat broke out over his forehead, fear gripped Eva’s insides.
She steeled her spine. ‘Our lawyers will rip whatever evidence you think you have to shreds, I’m sure. If you’re here to seek some sort of closure, you picked the wrong time to do it. Perhaps we can arrange to meet you at some other time?’
Zaccheo didn’t move. Didn’t blink. Hands once again tucked behind his back, he simply watched her father, his body a coiled predator waiting to strike a fatal blow.
Silence stretched, throbbed with unbearable menace. Eva looked from her father to Sophie and back again, her dread escalating. ‘What’s going on?’ she demanded.
Her father gripped the mantel until his knuckles shone white. ‘You chose the wrong enemy. You’re sorely mistaken if you think I’ll let you blackmail me in my own home.’
Sophie stepped forward. ‘Father, don’t—’
‘Good, you haven’t lost your hubris.’ Zaccheo’s voice slashed across her sister’s. ‘I was counting on that. Here’s what I’m going to do. In ten minutes I’m going to leave here with Eva, right in front of all your guests. You won’t lift a finger to stop me. You’ll tell them exactly who I am. Then you’ll make a formal announcement that I’m the man your daughter will marry two weeks from today and that I have your blessing. I don’t want to trust something so important to phone cameras and social media, although your guests will probably do a pretty good job. I noticed a few members of the press out there, so that part of your task should be easy. If the articles are written to my satisfaction, I’ll be in touch on Monday to lay out how you can begin to make reparations to me. However, if by the time Eva and I wake up tomorrow morning the news of our engagement isn’t in the press, then all bets are off.’
Oscar Pennington’s breathing altered alarmingly. His mouth opened but no words emerged. In the arctic silence that greeted Zaccheo’s deadly words, Eva gaped at him.
‘You’re clearly not in touch with all of your faculties if you think those ridiculous demands are going to be met.’ When silence greeted her response, she turned sharply to her father. ‘Father? Why aren’t you saying something?’ she demanded, although the trepidation beating in her chest spelled its own doom.
‘Because he can’t, Eva. Because he’s about to do exactly as I say.’
She rounded on him, and was once again rocked to the core by Zaccheo’s visually powerful, utterly captivating transformation. So much so, she couldn’t speak for several seconds. ‘You’re out of your
mind!’ she finally blurted.
Zaccheo’s gaze didn’t stray from its laser focus on her father. ‘Believe me, cara mia, I haven’t been saner than I am in this moment.’
CHAPTER THREE
ZACCHEO WATCHED EVA’S head swivel to her father, confusion warring with anger.
‘Go on, Oscar. She’s waiting for you to tell me to go to hell. Why don’t you?’
Pennington staggered towards his desk, his face ashen and his breathing growing increasingly laboured.
‘Father!’ Eva rushed to his side—ignoring the poisonous look her sister sent her—as he collapsed into his leather armchair.
Zaccheo wanted to rip her away, let her watch her father suffer as his sins came home to roost. Instead he allowed the drama to play out. The outcome would be inevitable and would only go one way.
His way.
He wanted to look into Pennington’s eyes and see the defeat and helplessness the other man had expected to see in his eyes the day Zaccheo had been sentenced.
Both sisters now fussed over their father and a swell of satisfaction rose at the fear in their eyes. Eva glanced his way and he experienced a different punch altogether. One he’d thought himself immune to, but had realised otherwise the moment he’d stepped off his helicopter and singled her out in the crowd.
That unsettling feeling, as if he were suffering from vertigo despite standing on terra firma, had intrigued and annoyed him in equal measures from the very first time he’d seen her, her voice silkily hypnotic as she crooned into a mic on a golden-lit stage, her fingers caressing the black microphone stand as if she were touching a lover.
Even knowing exactly who she was, what she represented, he hadn’t been able to walk away. In the weeks after their first meeting, he’d fooled himself into believing she was different, that she wasn’t tainted with the same greed to further her pedigree by whatever means necessary; that she wasn’t willing to do whatever it took to secure her family’s standing, even while secretly scorning his upbringing.
Her very public denouncement of any association between them on the day of his sentencing had been the final blow. Not that Zaccheo hadn’t had the scales viciously ripped from his eyes by then.
No, by that fateful day fourteen months ago, he’d known just how thoroughly he’d been suckered.
‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ she muttered fiercely, her moss-green eyes firing lasers at him.
Zaccheo forced himself not to smile. The time for gloating would come later. ‘Exacting the wages of sin, dolcezza. What else?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I don’t think my father is in a position to have a discussion with you right now, Mr Giordano.’
Her prim and proper tones bit savagely into Zaccheo, wiping away any trace of twisted mirth. That tone said he ought to know his place, that he ought to stand there like a good little servant and wait to be addressed instead of upsetting the lord of the manor with his petty concerns.
Rage bubbled beneath his skin, threatening to erupt. Blunt nails bit into his wrist, but the pain wasn’t enough to calm his fury. He clenched his jaw for a long moment before he trusted himself to speak.
‘I gave you ten minutes, Pennington. You now have five. I suggest you practise whatever sly words you’ll be using to address your guests.’ Zaccheo shrugged. ‘Or not. Either way, things will go my way.’
Eva rushed at him, her striking face and flawless skin flushed with a burst of angry colour as she stopped a few feet away.
Out on the terrace, he’d compelled himself not to stare too long at her in case he betrayed his feelings. In case his gaze devoured her as he’d wanted to do since her presence snaked like a live wire inside him.
Now, he took in that wild gypsy-like caramel-blonde hair so out of place in this polished stratosphere her family chose to inhabit. The striking contrast between her bright hair, black eyebrows and dark-rimmed eyes had always fascinated him. But no more than her cupid-bow lips, soft, dark red and sinfully sensual. Or the rest of her body.
‘You assume I have no say in whatever despicable spectacle you’re planning. That I intend to meekly stand by while you humiliate my family? Well, think again!’
‘Eva...’ her father started.
‘No! I don’t know what exactly is going on here, but I intend to play no part in it.’
‘You’ll play your part, and you’ll play it well,’ Zaccheo interjected, finally driving his gaze up from the mouth he wanted to feast on more than he wanted his next breath. That’ll come soon enough, he promised himself.
‘Or what? You’ll carry through with your empty threats?’
His fury eased a touch and twisted amusement slid back into place. It never ceased to amaze him how the titled rich felt they were above the tenets that governed ordinary human beings. His own stepfather had been the same. He’d believed, foolishly, that his pedigree and connections would insulate him from his reckless business practices, that the Old Boys’ Club would provide a safety net despite his poor judgement.
Zaccheo had taken great pleasure in watching his mother’s husband squirm before him, cap in hand, when Zaccheo had bought his family business right from underneath his pompous nose. But even then, the older man had continued to treat him like a third-class citizen...
Just as Oscar Pennington had done. Just as Eva Pennington was doing now.
‘You think my threats empty?’ he enquired softly. ‘Then do nothing. It’s after all your privilege and your right.’
Something of the lethal edge that rode him must have transmitted itself to her. Apprehension chased across her face before she firmed those impossibly sumptuous lips.
‘Do nothing, and watch me bury your family in the deepest, darkest, most demeaning pit you can dream of. Do nothing and watch me unleash a scandal the scale of which you can only imagine on your precious family name.’ He bared his teeth in a mirthless smile and her eyes widened in stunned disbelief. ‘It would be my privilege and pleasure to do so.’
Oscar Pennington inhaled sharply and Zaccheo’s gaze zeroed in on his enemy. The older man rose from the chair. Though he looked frail, his eyes reflected icy disdain. But Zaccheo also glimpsed the fear of a cornered man weighing all the options to see how to escape the noose dangling ever closer.
Zaccheo smiled inwardly. He had no intention of letting Pennington escape. Not now, not ever.
The flames of retribution intensifying within him, he unclasped his hands. It was time to bring this meeting to an end.
‘Your time’s up, Pennington.’
Eva answered instead of her father. ‘How do we know you’re not bluffing? You say you have something over us, prove it,’ she said defiantly.
He could’ve walked out and let them twist in the wind of uncertainty. Pennington would find out soon enough the length of Zaccheo’s ruthless reach. But the thought of leaving Eva here when he departed was suddenly unthinkable. So far he’d allowed himself a brief glimpse of her body wrapped in that obscenely revealing red dress. But that one glimpse had been enough. Quite apart from the rage boiling his blood, the steady hammer of his pulse proved that he still wanted her with a fever that spiked higher with each passing second.
He would take what he’d foolishly and piously denied himself two years ago. He would take and use, just as they’d done to him. Only when he’d achieved every goal he’d set himself would he feel avenged.
‘You can’t, can you?’ Oscar taunted with a sly smile, bringing Zaccheo back to the room and the three aristocratic faces staring at him with varying degrees of disdain and fear.
He smiled, almost amused by the older man’s growing confidence. ‘Harry Fairfield is providing you with a bridging loan of fifteen million pounds because the combined running costs of the Pennington Hotels and The Spire have you stretched so thin the banks won�
��t touch you. While you desperately drum up an adequate advertising budget to rent out all those overpriced but empty floors in The Spire, the interest owed to the Chinese consortium who own seventy-five per cent of the building is escalating. You have a meeting with them on Monday to request more time to pay the interest. In return for Fairfield’s investment, you’re handing him your daughter.’
Eva glared at him. ‘So you’ve asked a few questions about Penningtons’ business practices. That doesn’t empower you to make demands of any of us.’
Zaccheo took a moment to admire her newfound grit. During their initial association, she’d been a little more timid, and in her father’s shadow, but it looked as if the kitten had grown a few claws. He curbed the thrill at what was to come and answered.
‘Yes, it does. Would you be interested to know the Chinese consortium sold their seventy-five per cent of The Spire to me three days ago? So by my calculation you’re in excess of three months late on interest payments, correct?’
A rough sound, a cross between a cough and a wheeze, escaped Pennington’s throat. There was no class or grace in the way he gaped at Zaccheo. He dropped back into his chair, his face a mask of hatred.
‘I knew you were a worthless bet the moment I set eyes on you. I should’ve listened to my instincts.’
The red haze he’d been trying to hold back surged higher. ‘No, what you wanted was a spineless scapegoat, a capro espiatorio, who would make you rich and fat and content and even give up his life without question!’
‘Mr Giordano, surely we can discuss this like sensible business-minded individuals,’ Sophie Pennington advanced, her hands outstretched in benign sensibility. Zaccheo looked from the hands she willed not to tremble to the veiled disdain in her eyes. Then he looked past her to Eva, who’d returned to her father’s side, her face pale but her eyes shooting her displeasure at him.
Unexpectedly and very much unwelcome, a tiny hint of compassion tugged at him.