Mistresses: Blackmailed With Diamonds / Shackled With Rubies

by Lucy Gordon;Sarah Morgan;Robyn Donald;Lucy Monroe;Lee Wilkinson;Kate Walker

  Pushing a hand into his pocket, he pulled out something small enough to hold completely in his palm, his fingers closed around it.

  ‘Here…’

  He tossed it towards Vincenzo who managed to catch it one-handed, in spite of the fact that all his attention was centred totally on Amy’s face, polished onyx eyes locking with confused and shadowed blue ones.

  She was suddenly, disturbingly, shockingly aware of just how little she knew about this man who was now her husband. She had given him her heart, her body, she knew she would give him her soul if he asked for it, but she could never claim that she really knew him. And looking at him now, seeing icy withdrawal where she had expected warmth and love, she felt as if she was in the presence of a total stranger.

  ‘V-Vincenzo…’

  She needed the length of his full name to get her voice to work, no longer feeling free to use the shortened, more affectionate form.

  ‘What’s happening?’

  Still with his eyes locked with hers, Vincenzo lifted the hand that held the small box Sal had tossed to him. With it resting on the flat of his palm, he held it out to her.

  ‘I want you to have this.’

  ‘Cenzo!’

  Sal’s exclamation was a croak of shock and sheer blank disbelief.

  ‘Cenzo, what the devil are you doing? You can’t give that to her.’

  A muscle tugged faintly of the corner of Vincenzo’s mouth, creating something that might have been a smile, but was there and gone before it registered.

  ‘Amy…’ he said, ignoring his cousin, all attention centred on her face.

  Slowly, automatically, totally unable to think for herself, Amy moved forward, her actions like those of a sleepwalker, looking neither to right or to left. As she came closer, Vincenzo opened the box with a flick of his hand and pulled out the ring it contained. With his free hand he reached for hers, the one that bore the wedding ring he had placed on it only the day before.

  ‘I never bought you an engagement ring…’ he murmured huskily. ‘Perhaps this will compensate.’

  All Amy’s breath escaped her in a gasp of shock as she looked down and saw the fabulous ring he was pushing on to her finger. In the middle of an ornate, beautifully intricate gold setting a huge ruby gleamed, its burnished colour like the glow at the centre of a fire.

  ‘Cenzo!’ she breathed in awe. ‘It’s fabulous!’

  ‘Vincenzo!’ Sal’s shocked voice broke into her stunned delight. ‘Cugino, what the hell are you doing? You can’t give the Ravenelli ruby—’

  Vincenzo’s head snapped round, something dangerous flaring deep in the black eyes.

  ‘I can give what I like to my wife.’

  ‘Your…Oh, Dio! Cenzo…’

  Coming forwards hastily, Sal caught hold of his cousin’s arm, turning him away from Amy, his dark head bent conspiratorially towards his cousin’s.

  ‘Cenzo, tell me it isn’t true. You haven’t married her, have you? There was no need to take it that far. I mean, I would have paid out on our bet if you’d simply bedded her. You didn’t have to sign your life away.’

  ‘Bet…What..?’

  Amy was struggling to take in a word of this bewildering conversation.

  ‘Cenzo, you’re not saying you had a bet on…on…’

  She couldn’t form the words; they were too dreadful, too frightening. But they were there, in her head, like some appalling scream of pain and fear.

  ‘Vincenzo?’

  ‘Yes.’

  It was like the cut of a brutal knife. Hard and stark and totally destructive. It slashed into the dream world that had enclosed her, ripping it into pieces and destroying it forever, letting a terrible reality in to shatter her.

  ‘I…’ Sal began but Vincenzo turned on him, eyes blazing.

  ‘Sal—get out!’

  ‘But…’

  ‘Per Dio, I said get out!’ Vincenzo roared with a ferocity that even his cousin wouldn’t dare risk stirring any further.

  As the door slammed behind him Vincenzo turned back to Amy, launching into a harsh, emotionless explanation.

  ‘Sal and I had a bet. He said there was this girl—a stunning, fabulous girl who he wanted so badly he thought he would die—but she would have nothing to do with him. He bet me—’

  ‘That even you couldn’t get me into bed,’ Amy’s voice was a dull, bruised monotone of disbelief. ‘That even your very special seduction techniques wouldn’t work on this one.’

  Even as she spoke the awful truth she couldn’t yet accept, she was praying that somehow Vincenzo would make it right. That he would deny her appalling interpretation and give her another one entirely. One that would heal the anguish deep inside, restore her faith in this man who was her husband.

  But he didn’t.

  ‘That’s about right,’ he said flatly. ‘And the stake was…’

  Amy looked down at her hand. At the ring that burned on her finger, looking to her agonised mind for all the world like a great, ominous drop of blood welling from some incurable wound.

  ‘The Ravenelli ruby.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Vincenzo didn’t even have the grace to look guilty, ashamed, or even the slightest touch embarrassed. Instead, those cold, hard onyx eyes regarded her shocked, bloodless face, and the navy-blue bruises that were her eyes with a steady confidence that rocked her sense of reality.

  Totally secure in his supreme male arrogance, it was obvious that he didn’t even feel that what he had done might be wrong. That direct, unwavering gaze showed no sign of understanding the agony of betrayal he had subjected her to.

  This couldn’t be happening! She had to have fallen asleep and tumbled, unaware, into the most terrifying, most appalling nightmare of her life. At any moment she would wake up and discover that this had never really happened.

  But Vincenzo had said that her suspicions were well founded; the horror was true.

  And Vincenzo never lied.

  In another part of her brain she could hear Vincenzo’s own words when he had told her the story of the Ravenelli ruby. It had been in the family for centuries until Vincenzo’s grandfather had lost it to his hated brother-in-law—Sal’s grandfather—from whom Sal himself had recently inherited it.

  ‘He doesn’t even value it,’ Vincenzo had told her. ‘He has no time for anything old, any tradition. But for years his family has refused any offer we’ve made to try and buy it back.’

  ‘And why is it so special to you?’

  ‘That ring should have been my mother’s. My father should have given it to her on their wedding day, just as my grandfather should have given it to my grandmother. That has always been the tradition. A tradition that had been kept unbroken until my grandfather pledged it on the gaming tables. I would give the world to be able to restore that tradition—do anything at all to get it back.’

  Her stomach lurched nauseously, the bitter taste of acid in her mouth. Somehow she found the strength to force herself to speak.

  ‘Well, I hope that one night we spent together was worth it, because that’s all you’re going to get.’

  With fingers that shook so hard she could hardly force them to grip, she wrenched the ring from her finger and flung it straight in his face. Just to touch it seemed to send shockwaves of distress up her arm, made her feel as if some terrible corruption had entered her blood, contaminated her soul.

  Her wedding ring followed. She could barely watch its progress as it hit Vincenzo’s broad shoulder and bounced off, landing on the floor somewhere and rolling away. Her eyes were blurred with burning, agonising tears that she resolutely refused to let fall.

  Dragging up a strength she didn’t know she had, she dug deep inside the pain that was all that possessed her, needing something, anything at all, to hit back with. All she knew was the hurt he had inflicted on her. That and the need to throw it right back at him. To make him know some tiny part of what she was going through.

  ‘It appears we each had our own private age
nda going into this marriage. And, luckily it seems to have worked out for both of us.’

  ‘Worked out?’

  He hadn’t expected attack, that much was obvious. The jet eyes were wary now, his expression, his whole stance watchful and alert.

  ‘That’s right.’

  She astounded herself by being able to produce a nonchalant little shrug, even flashing a dismissive smile on and off, like a brilliant neon sign.

  ‘You wanted the ruby. I wanted a rich husband. Oh, you didn’t believe that “love at first sight” garbage did you? Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you, but my motives were far more…’

  She made a play of hunting for the right word.

  ‘Practical.’

  ‘You mercenary bitch!’

  ‘And that’s very definitely the filthy pot calling the grubby kettle black!’

  This time her anger was genuine, her head coming up, blue eyes flashing fury at his hypocrisy.

  ‘You were playing for much the same stakes, yourself.’

  At least he had the grace not to deny it this time. She wouldn’t have been able to bear it if he had argued with her, tried to convince her otherwise.

  ‘Oh, Vincenzo, darling,’ she mocked gently, determined to give another twist to the knife in case he was thinking of coming up with some explanation she might just have to listen to, be tempted to consider or believe. ‘You don’t really believe that I slept with you simply out of desire, do you?’

  When he gave no answer, regarding her with the coldest, hardest eyes she had ever seen, she swallowed deeply and forced herself to go on.

  ‘The desire I can’t deny. I’d be a fool to try. But I needed your wedding ring on my hand if I was to have any claim on my rights as your wife. But then, of course, you’d understand that. I expect you and Sal came up with much the same sort of conditions over the ruby.’

  ‘Get out.’

  It was nothing like the way he had spoken to Sal. Instead, it was a low, menacing whisper, brimming with a danger that made her shiver convulsively.

  ‘Get out of my sight. If I ever see you again it will be too soon.’

  She had taken him at his word. She had fled to the bedroom, flinging her few belongings back into the case she had barely unpacked the night before, and escaping from the apartment without ever seeing her husband. And when he’d followed her to England, she’d taken the greatest satisfaction in slamming her mother’s door in his face.

  Chapter Four

  ‘ARE you ready?’

  Vincenzo’s voice interrupted her memories of the previous night, jarring her back to the present with an uncomfortable jolt. Blinking dazedly, she saw the polished jet gaze focus on her sharply, sweeping from the top of her shining dark head, over the simple, flowing lines of her dress to the toes of her low-heeled patent pumps in a swift, assessing survey before he gave a small, unsmiling nod of satisfaction.

  ‘I’m glad you decided on the red,’ he murmured, his tone soft as velvet. ‘I always liked you in that.’

  ‘Well you needn’t think I chose this dress to please you!’ Amy retorted with tart defiance, her chin coming up, blue eyes flashing in refutation of even the thought.

  ‘Of course not.’

  The deliberate irony, the obvious implication that in fact he meant the exact opposite, aggravated Amy’s already decidedly edgy mood, so that she had to grit her teeth against the furious outburst that almost escaped her. It didn’t help that every sense in her own body was unnervingly already on red alert in response to the sensual appeal of Vincenzo’s lean, strong body in the black informal suit that screamed Italian styling in every tailored inch, a pale blue V-necked T-shirt clinging to the hard lines of his chest, exposing the tanned column of his throat.

  ‘As you know very well, I only brought the basic minimum with me,’ she managed, her jaw stiff and tight, her lips feeling frozen so that she could hardly get the words out. ‘I didn’t expect to be dining with you or spending the day out sightseeing.’

  ‘Naturalmente.’ The low murmur was even more sardonic, the faint flicker of a smile mocking her indignation, incensing her further.

  ‘What I brought with me was only enough for a day or so. My dress was crumpled after the flight—’

  ‘You do not have to explain,’ Vincenzo inserted smoothly. ‘No woman should ever need to justify choosing a dress that brings out her true beauty over one that makes her look like some dowdy secretary.’

  ‘As a matter of fact, a secretary is exactly what I am!’

  Amy took a rather perverse delight in tossing the declaration at him, seeing the way his face changed, the beautiful mouth thinning harshly, black eyes narrowing in angry assessment.

  ‘You don’t like that, do you?’ she taunted when he seemed uncharacteristically at a loss for words. ‘You really don’t like to think of me earning my living at all. What is it, Vincenzo? Is it the idea of my lowly station that appals you? The thought that you, a Ravenelli of Venice, should be tied to someone who actually earns their living in such a menial capacity? Someone who…’

  ‘If you want to know the truth, then what appals me is that you should work for anyone at all!’ Vincenzo inserted coldly, his voice rough with dark anger. ‘That you, my wife, should work for some man who would watch you, lust after you, think thoughts about you that he has no right to.’

  So this was what really troubled him, Amy reflected bitterly. The deeply jealous, possessive Vincenzo Ravenelli hated the thought of her associating with any other man, even if just to work for him. He didn’t love her himself, but that didn’t stop him wanting to own her, control her life. She was his wife, and what he had he kept.

  This time, when I take you…I will never let you go again.

  Sex and possession. Just the sound of the words in her thoughts made Amy shiver in apprehension.

  ‘And besides,’ Vincenzo continued still in that low, black-edged tone, ‘there was no need for you to work at all. You were well provided for. The allowance I made you—’

  ‘I didn’t want your allowance! I wouldn’t have touched it if I was derelict and starving in a gutter! I would rather have swept the streets than take your money, Vincenzo! I can’t be bought that way!’

  ‘I had no intention of buying you! That money was yours, by right, as my wife.’

  ‘Your wife!’

  The burn of agony deep inside put a savagery into her voice that simple anger could never have created.

  ‘I was never your wife, Vincenzo! I was only a passing fancy, a plaything—something you saw, and wanted, like a child who screams and screams until they get the latest fashionable toy, and then discards it only hours later when they’ve tired of it.’

  ‘And what makes you think I have tired of you?’ It came swift and low, with the force of a striking snake. ‘You do yourself an injustice, innamorata, if you truly believe that the appeal of your charms can pall after just one night. It is precisely because I am still hungry for you that I was prepared to tolerate your foolish behaviour.’

  ‘And precisely what “foolish behaviour” might that be?’ Amy demanded, deliberately lacing her tone with acid.

  ‘Your childish temper-tantrum when you discovered that our marriage was not quite the perfect fairy story you had concocted in your juvenile fantasies. The way you ran home to mother without waiting for any explanation or the truth—’

  ‘The truth, if I recall rightly, was that you married me not for myself but for something very much more mundane—the price of a damn ring!’

  ‘The Ravenelli ruby could never be described as mundane,’ Vincenzo tossed back at her, supremely indifferent to her distress. ‘To my family it has a value beyond accounting. It is priceless.’

  ‘Priceless? Is that what you call it? So tell me, Signor Ravenelli, is anything, anything at all, of more value than a human heart? Is any possession, however old, however beautiful, worth the cost of destroying another person’s happiness, of taking it and trampling it underfoot?’

  �
�I gave you what you wanted. I married you. You had my ring on your finger, my name. You had my wealth—“All that I have I share with you.”’

  Cynically he quoted from the wedding vows he had made. The vows that had once made her heart soar and sing in delight but now had acquired a terrible, bitter twist that stabbed straight to her soul.

  ‘You still have all of those. What more could you want?’

  His love. All that she had ever wanted was his love, and, without that, nothing had any value. She hadn’t cared about his famous name or his stunning wealth. If he had been the poorest man in the whole of Italy, but he had loved her, it would have been enough.

  ‘L…’ she began but fear closed her throat over the word and she couldn’t say it. ‘Nothing so cold,’ she choked out. ‘What about feeling? What about passion?’

  ‘Passion? Oh, Amy, cara. There was always passion. There still is. It was you who insisted on marriage and it was a price I was prepared to pay. I still am.’

  ‘I…’

  Once more her voice failed her, the rush of her memories swamping her thoughts. The appalling thing was that she couldn’t deny him, couldn’t fling a furious rejection of his dreadful words straight into his smug, sardonically smiling face, no matter how much she might dream of doing so.

  She had insisted on marriage. Had refused to take their relationship any further, refused to go to bed with him, without the degree of commitment a wedding ring implied. Emotionally battered and bruised by the events of the past six months, shocked to the core by the discoveries she had made about her father, the destruction of all she had believed to be true, she had needed so much more than just a casual fling. And so she had held out for marriage or nothing.

  And the terrible, savage irony was that the precious wedding ring had meant so much less than any casual sexual affair might have done. At least an affair would have been more open, more honest; it would have stated its terms, so to speak, up front from the start. She had thought that all her dreams had come true when Vincenzo had asked her to marry him. It was only later, when she had realised exactly why he had done so, that the devastating deception he had practised on her had hit home.