The Ultimate Revenge

by Victoria Parker - The Ultimate Revenge

  * * *

  She hadn’t seen him. Wouldn’t even glance at his empty chair—a chair he’d asked Narciso and Ryzard to leave empty so as not to distract her. And Pia certainly didn’t need to borrow his courage, even though he’d gladly give it for eternity, because she had the strength of a lioness all on her own.

  What she needed was to be loved. Adored. Cared for and cosseted in the way only a lover could. She needed to laugh and smile, have piggybacks and wear jeans, go dancing and give Nic the power to make her feel alive. She needed him. Nic just had to convince her of that.

  When he’d walked away from his shambles of a wedding all at once he’d wanted an entire future with her—afraid of nothing, side by side, walking into a new dawn to live their dreams. He wanted them fused and naked and damp between his sheets. And in the morning he wanted to kiss that face, cherish all that heart-stopping endearing beauty so tenderly she wouldn’t wake, only turn to seek his lips, trusting him, loving him.

  That was what he wanted. That was what he was here to beg for.

  Nic watched her work the room, brewing and stirring the crowd like a cauldron until magic bubbled in the air. She declared the old laws null and void in this age of a new day, when women were becoming more powerful in their own right and could bring much to Q Virtus. She mentioned Ryzard’s wife, Tiffany, who sat straight and tall beside her husband, a look of shock and awe on her face.

  And she wasn’t the only one. Every man in the room couldn’t take his eyes off her, mesmerised by the power, the determination emanating from her. He only hoped to God he was the only one seriously turned on, because he had more important things to do than warn off suitors tonight. Jealous, Nic? Yeah, what if he was? Nic was his own man, comfortable in his own skin, and that would never change.

  In a move that was simply genius, instead of leaving the way she’d come, exerting her influence and power, Pia made her way around to shake hands. One man. One woman. Equals in every aspect. A show of trust that no matter what had gone before her reign she would run the club with honour and integrity.

  From the ashes of despair and the flames of fiasco she rose like a phoenix, and his chest felt crushed by the weight of his pride and love for her.

  When the doors finally closed behind her she didn’t look up to where he now leaned against the conference table, wood cutting into the base of his spine, aiming for a sexy, insouciant pose and royally messing it up by having a seriously bad case of the shakes.

  Nic crossed his arms. To stop himself trembling or pulling her into his arms and demanding a second chance he wasn’t sure. But if he had any sense—debatable, considering he’d just come from his own abandoned wedding—he would use a gentle hand to coax and lure.

  His resolve was shattered when she slumped against the door, clearly fighting the urge to crash to the floor. But she wouldn’t. He knew it.

  ‘You were magnificent, querida.’

  Up came her head, so quickly it smacked off the door—ouch. Then down she went, landing on her lush bottom with a soft thump.

  Nic had to grit his teeth against the overpowering compulsion to grin at the effect he had on her, thanking his lucky stars it wasn’t one-sided.

  ‘What...what are you doing here?’ she said, the snippy emphasis on ‘here’ accompanied by a messy arms-and-legs scramble to her feet.

  Nic pushed off the table, let his arms fall to his sides and compared his nervous terror to the day he’d clambered from his bed, glaring at the rails that would teach him to walk again as if they were the devil’s pitchforks and taking his very first step. He actually thought this was worse.

  ‘Shouldn’t you be...?’ She wafted her hand around as if searching for the right words as she clung to the wall and walked around the boardroom, getting as far away from him as she could. ‘On your honeymoon? In bed with your wife?’

  Barely, he stifled the impulse to run over there and grab her. Dios, she was so beautiful she made him ache. ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘As far away from you as I can get. Are you going to answer my question?’

  ‘People only tend to go on honeymoons when they’re married, Pia.’

  That stopped her. Barnacle-like, she clutched the hardwood panelling at her back.

  And he’d had enough.

  Nic strode forward purposefully.

  ‘Stay right where you are, Lobisomem.’

  ‘No.’ He growled in frustration when she stepped forward and started to skirt around the table—on the opposite side to him. ‘I’m going to spank you for that.’

  ‘I’d love to see you try.’

  He laughed wickedly and darted to the left.

  Pia darted to the right and he growled again.

  ‘Now, now, Nic—be serious.’

  ‘Worried, querida?’

  ‘Yes. I mean no. Stay back!’

  ‘Lesson number one,’ he said, lowering his voice to a commanding tone that he knew would make her shudder from top to toe. ‘You are not the boss of me, Olympia Merisi, and when I tell you to stop, you stop.’

  She sneered but it was a dire effort. ‘Not in this lifetime. Now, run along to your bride and leave me be!’

  ‘Dios, I have no bride!’ Not yet, anyway.

  ‘Oh? Realised she was marrying a wolf in sheep’s clothing, did she?’

  ‘No, she found out I was in love with someone else.’

  ‘What? Who told her that?’

  ‘I did.’

  She blinked the confusion from her violet-blue gaze. ‘Oh, I see. When you got my note and realised it was all a con you had to get out of it, right? Poor woman—you probably broke her heart.’

  ‘I did not break her heart! Love was never in the equation. I— Wait a minute. Note? What note? And what do you mean con?’

  She pursed those lush lips. ‘You didn’t receive my note this morning?’

  ‘No. You wrote to me, Pia? What did it say? Tell me,’ he ordered, his agitation at her avoidance ratcheting into the red zone.

  Slowly she shook her blonde head. ‘I don’t think I will. Not until you tell me why you’re here.’

  His patience snapped and he launched himself atop the table, skidding over the highly polished surface on his backside and landing in front of her wide-eyed and stupefyingly beautiful face.

  Then he backed her up until she slammed into the wall.

  ‘Ah, this is much better. You know I prefer the personal touch.’ Palms flat to the wall either side of her head, he buried his face in her neck and inhaled deeply.

  Gracie de Deus. Finally.

  Pia wriggled and pushed at his chest—quite hard, actually. Not that it moved him. They both knew it was a half-hearted effort. ‘Why...why didn’t you get married?’

  Nic straightened up and cupped her jaw, dropping a tender kiss on her temple. ‘Because one day I met an amazing woman I intended to wreak the ultimate revenge upon and she was unlike anything I’d ever known or seen before in my life. She scared me, and I’m a man who doesn’t handle fear well, Pia. I told myself she was a means to an end and that I’d seduce her into my bed to reach my end game. What I wouldn’t admit, even to myself, was that she was slowly stealing my heart.’

  ‘She was?’ Pia breathed.

  He dropped another kiss on the tip of her nose. ‘Sim. Minute by minute. Hour by hour. Day by day. Until I didn’t know what was up or down. Until every breath I took was for her.’

  She gazed up at him with a little pleat in her brow. ‘Then why...?’

  ‘Why did I leave you lying in your bed while my heart was breaking?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Because I didn’t want the same kind of marriage as my parents. My father was obsessed with my mother. Possessive beyond control. My father fired the first shot in that room, Pia. He killed my mother.’

  Shock flared in her eyes. ‘Oh, my God.’

  ‘My father lost Santos in a rigged deal at Q Virtus—you know that bit. But what you probably don’t know is that it was my mother’s money
—my mother was the Santos heir. My father even had to change his surname to take control. Which he did without question, because he was obsessed with her. But it was an unhealthy kind of love. He often stalked her when she went out. Flew into jealous rages when they got home if she’d even spoken to another man while they were out together. Screaming matches would last for hours. He even locked her in the attic once so she couldn’t go out. But the more he pushed her the more she rebelled—and let me tell you she was a reckless, zesty woman to start with. So volatile, Pia. All of it...’

  ‘Sounds like my childhood,’ she said, her gaze dropping to the open collar of his black shirt. ‘Volatile.’

  ‘I know, bonita,’ he said, curling one hand around her nape and holding her close for a long. precious moment. ‘Is your mother still alive?’

  ‘No, she died of a drug overdose a couple of years ago. I never saw her again after she left me outside my father’s house. He gave her fifty thousand dollars to disappear and in a way I felt as if I owed him.’

  Nic could hear the pain of being abandoned and the sorrow in her voice at what might have been if her mother had been a different kind of woman.

  ‘I take it your father never married her?’

  Pia shook her head.

  ‘Once a Santos marries that’s it. Stuck for life. Which was the problem with my mother and father. There’s a myth—a legend based around the necklace. The Heart of the Storm. It says only a true intended Santos can wear the jewels or provoke the wrath of the gods. Same if a Santos union is broken. Superstitious nonsense—that was my retort. But the moment I saw them around your neck... Looking back, a tiny part of me—one I had no intention of acknowledging—had always known you were meant for me, and I think they led me to you, Pia.’

  Lips curved, she beamed up at him and his heart flip-flopped.

  ‘I think there was more than revenge on your mind back then, Nic.’

  ‘Yes, I know. Our fathers have a lot to answer for.’

  Cinching her waist, he lifted her up and carried her to a high-backed leather chair, where he sat with Pia straddling his lap. Then he tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear and went on.

  ‘When my father lost the empire to your father and Merisi’s men came to take ownership of the mansion—the necklace—my parents had a huge showdown. I walked in and didn’t know what the hell was going on, but my father was getting more and more agitated. My mother was yelling, screaming that this was it, she’d had enough, she was leaving him...’ Nic closed his eyes, reliving the memory. ‘He snatched the gun out of the pocket of one of Merisi’s men, turned and just...shot her in the heart. Right there in front of me. Next thing bullets were flying, the room was steeped in panic, and one of the henchmen killed him. I got caught in the middle of it all. One bullet in the back and it took me over a year to walk again.’

  ‘Oh, Nic, I’m so sorry.’

  ‘I needed something to live for, Pia. Finding your father, making him pay for rigging that deal, for sending thugs to my home to threaten our lives and pushing my father to the brink... As far as I was concerned Antonio Merisi had put the gun in his hand and virtually pulled the trigger. Revenge was all I had to live for. And after that I wanted Santos Diamonds. That was all I had to live for. Until you.’

  ‘I wish you’d trusted me—told me all this. Now I understand why you’d marry her.’

  ‘I just didn’t want that kind of erratic marriage. Goldsmith’s daughter is nice...timid; there’d have been no jealousy, no furious outbursts of possessiveness to shake the foundations of our home. No insanity to take one of our lives. But I was missing something in all this. I’m not my father. I am nothing like him.’

  ‘No, you’re not.’

  ‘I am my own man.’

  ‘Yes, you are.’

  ‘And you—you are not my mother. Don’t get me wrong, I adored the woman, but to marry a woman like her...?’ He shuddered.

  Pia smiled and shook her head in that way she did—as if he was past help. Where she was concerned, he was.

  ‘But you know the downsides of a safe marriage, Pia? No passion, no adoration. No heart banging with one look. None of that weird bird-flapping in my chest. No violent tug when you’re near that changes into a harrowing emptiness when you’re gone, as if you’re the other half of my soul. Dios, I was so proud of you tonight.’ He wrapped her hands in his larger palms and kissed her thumb, her knuckle, stroked her hands over his cheeks, craving her touch all over his body. ‘I’ve missed you so much, Pia. Felt I was dying without you.’

  ‘I’ve missed you too,’ she said, the words tremulous and watery as she leaned in to kiss him. Long and slow and deep.

  Nic struggled to come up for air. ‘That will be enough for me. Maybe you’ll grow to feel more when I’ve gained your trust again, and I’ll be grateful for that.’

  ‘And maybe I’ve loved you from the start.’

  He’d swear his heart paused in that moment. ‘Maybe or definitely?’

  ‘Definitely, definitely.’

  Nic grinned as that heart of his floated to the ceiling. There was a God after all—

  Hold on a minute...

  ‘And yet,’ he growled, suddenly annoyed with her, ‘you were willing to let me marry another woman?’

  She arched one eyebrow and gave him a load of sass. ‘I gave you a choice. Something I’ve never truly had. Until tonight. Until I chose to come out of hiding. To stop living in my father’s shadow. Just like you told me to. Ever since he died I’ve honestly thought I was free. Controlling my own life for the first time ever. But, like you said, he was still controlling me from the grave. I was still carrying the stigma of my past when instead of being ashamed I should’ve been even prouder of myself for what I’ve achieved. For coming so far.’

  ‘Damn right you should.’

  She leaned forward until the tips of their noses rubbed in an Eskimo kiss. ‘You whirled into my life like a hurricane and showed me a taste of life outside the cage I was living in. Just the thought of stepping back into the darkness was more frightening than going forward into the light. So I decided that I’d give you all the facts and the choice was yours to make.’

  ‘What facts?’

  ‘That Goldsmith was trying to pull the wool over your eyes. He only owns forty-two per cent of Santos, Nic.’

  ‘What? That dirty louse! I will flatten his unfortunate beak of a nose after all. That— Hang on—who owns the remaining shares?’

  Her satisfied smile made her eyes sparkle. ‘You do.’

  ‘I think I would know this, querida.’

  ‘Only if your grandfather told you that I signed my shares—my fifty-eight per cent—over to you at eight this morning. Santos Diamonds is back where it belongs. I gave him the necklace too—laid it right in the palm of his hand.’

  Blinking, jaw slack, he stared at her until her words stopped caroming around his head like pinballs and he let them compute. Then she blurred in front of him. ‘I don’t believe it. You love me. To do that you must love me.’

  She held his face and kissed away the tear that slipped down his cheek. ‘Of course I do. With all my heart. I’m so surprised you didn’t realise about the diamonds. You should know the majority shareholder would always keep possession of the jewels, Nic. Didn’t you see that in Zanzibar?’

  He shrugged helplessly. ‘All I could see was you.’

  She let loose a half-laugh, half-cry and wrapped her arms around his shoulders, holding him to her, blissfully tight.

  ‘Marry me, Pia. Please,’ he begged.

  She squeezed him tighter. ‘I’ll think about it,’ she said.

  And while her tone was teasing he knew she was asking for some time. Time to learn how to trust him wholly, completely, and after everything he’d done he couldn’t blame her for that. It would be torture, but he’d wait.

  ‘And if I say yes I won’t want you to take my name, Nic.’

  ‘There is little chance of that, Pia. You’ll be taking mine and the
re will be no arguments. Our power struggles will begin and end in the bedroom, bonita. With me in charge!’

  She shut him up with another kiss—this one deep and passionate, messy with emotion and unbearable need—until he reluctantly pulled back to dive into her violet eyes.

  ‘This is going to sound ridiculous, but it has been plaguing me and I...’

  ‘What, querido? Tell me.’

  ‘What can I give you, Pia, that you don’t already have? That you can’t buy for yourself?’

  Tenderly, lovingly, she ran her fingers through his hair, brushing it back from his brow. ‘Your heart, your gorgeous smile and the way you make me laugh. The way you make love to me. Take control.’

  Her voice dropped, sultrier than ever, and she licked across the seam of his lips and undulated over his lap with a sinuous serpentine movement that made him hard in seconds.

  ‘I love it when you make me fly. Only you can do that. Only you can take away the loneliness inside me, and when I sway only you can help me stand tall. Don’t you see?’ she whispered. ‘I need you and I’d give it all up to have you always.’

  Nic swallowed thickly. ‘You would?’

  ‘In a heartbeat. And maybe...one day...you can give me a baby so I can take her to football matches in my stilettos and shout at the referee.’

  Nic cupped her lush backside and grinned. He could see her doing exactly that. ‘Don’t you mean him?’

  She arched one flaxen brow. ‘Girls can make excellent football players, Nic. There’ll be no inequality in my house.’

  ‘God forbid.’

  He cinched her small waist, then smoothed upward to cup her perfect breasts. Where he lingered, toying with her through the layers of silk and lace until she flung her head back and moaned. He wanted rid of her shirt. Now.

  ‘I can do all of that, Pia,’ he promised, unveiling her pearly skin one button at a time and flexing his hips so she could feel his hard desire.

  ‘Oh, you can?’ she said, a little breathless, a whole lot turned on.

  ‘Sim. Starting right now. I’m going to make you go supernova.’

  ‘In the boardroom?’ she asked, aiming for horrified. The flush in her cheeks ruined it. ‘I’ll never be able to have a meeting in here again.’