Vincenzo de Santi didn’t react. He remained in his chair, his hands loosely clasped in his lap. Her father favoured big gold rings, but this man wore no jewellery. He was austere as a monk. Except monks generally did not have eyes that glittered like polished onyx; he reminded her of a great black panther about to pounce.
Time was going faster and faster, and the fear was harder and harder to contain. She gripped on to the strap of her handbag for dear life, her nails digging into her palm, the slight pain holding panic at bay.
This was obviously deliberate, this silence he was giving her. Hoping to rattle her possibly. Well, she wouldn’t be rattled and she wouldn’t panic. She’d got this far and she couldn’t allow herself to fail.
Failure was her mother dying in a pool of blood after trying to protect her from her father’s wrath, and she couldn’t let that death be in vain. She wouldn’t.
‘Please,’ she said. ‘I am throwing myself on your mercy.’
The young woman—it was difficult to tell her age, given the quantity of dark hair covering most of her face, but he thought she was a woman rather than a girl—was plainly terrified, yet trying very hard not to show it. The knuckles of her right hand where it clutched the strap of a ratty brown leather handbag were white, and her skin was very pale. Her eyes behind her glasses were very large and an indeterminate colour between brown and green, and she wore a shapeless dress of the same muddy colour.
Vincenzo eyed her. Silence was a useful interrogation tactic and so he used it often. People didn’t like it. It made them uncomfortable. It made them want to fill the dreadful quiet any way they could, letting slip all kinds of interesting information.
Not that Miss Lucy Armstrong was someone he was interrogating.
At least, not yet.
‘Mercy,’ he said, tasting the word, because it was strange to hear it used in conjunction with himself. ‘I’m afraid if it’s mercy you’re wanting, Miss Armstrong, you’ve come to the wrong place.’
Her gaze, for all that it was trapped behind two pieces of thick glass, was startlingly direct. In fact, he couldn’t recall a woman—or, indeed, anyone—staring at him the way she was staring at him. People were generally too afraid to look him in the eye, and with good reason.
She should be afraid too. Especially being Michael Armstrong’s daughter.
He’d tried to take down that particular piece of scum for years now, but the man had evaded all Vincenzo’s attempts to bring him to justice. And Vincenzo had tried very hard to bring him to justice. A couple of centuries ago, when crime families warred against each other, the war was carried out physically and brutally, and the authorities left well alone if they knew what was good for them. It had a certain...efficiency about it.
These days though, the battles were conducted on twenty-first-century battlefields; online, in the financial markets, in numbers and money. In shell companies and tax havens.
Vincenzo had tried many times to shut down the lucrative money-laundering business Armstrong had going on, since money and all the ways to hide it was a relatively easy way to take down someone’s illegal empire. Yet every time Vincenzo thought he had Armstrong, the man managed to get away. It was puzzling.
Armstrong wasn’t a subtle man and Vincenzo was almost positive he didn’t have the kind of understanding required to evade Vincenzo’s team of financial forensic specialists, yet somehow he did. One would almost suspect that Armstrong himself was far more sneaky than anyone thought, but Vincenzo didn’t think he was. What Armstrong had was help. And Vincenzo thought he knew who that help might be.
The woman standing in front of his desk right now.
There had been many rumours throughout the European underground about Armstrong’s daughter. That he guarded her closely, jealously, because she was the secret of the success of his empire. She knew numbers and money, was a genius with computers, could hide anyone’s digital tracks with ease...
A dangerous woman. Yet she didn’t look very dangerous. She looked very small, her body hidden away behind that awful, shapeless dress and thick, dark, frizzy hair hanging over her face. Her features were mostly hidden too, behind those thick glasses, but he thought he could see a scattering of freckles over her nose.
Not dangerous, perhaps. Just very, very unremarkable.
Interesting, though, that she should come here. That she should blunder through his doors seeking him. His security had informed him of her presence the moment she’d set foot in his family’s auction house and despite his inclination to have her instantly taken and imprisoned, since her arrival was the kind of windfall he couldn’t pass up, he’d decided to let whatever she was here for play out.
Raoul needed the practice in dealing with difficulties anyway.
Lucy Armstrong took another step forward, still holding his gaze. There was a certain ferocity to her, a determination that on another day he might have admired.
But he wasn’t going to admire her. She was Armstrong’s partner in crime, fully complicit in his evil empire, and so he would use her instead. Get her to reveal all her father’s secrets, and once Armstrong was in prison, where he belonged, she would join him.
‘Mr de Santi—’ she began yet again, her voice low and slightly husky.
‘Don’t worry, Miss Armstrong,’ he interrupted. ‘Your father’s men won’t even get through the front door. My security is excellent.’ And it was, because it needed to be.
When you were conducting a crusade against the most powerful crime families in Europe, having people try to kill you was an everyday occurrence.
It didn’t bother him. If people were trying to kill him it meant he was doing something right.
‘You don’t understand,’ she said. ‘He will—’
‘No.’ Vincenzo didn’t raise his voice, didn’t put any emphasis on it. Just let it cut across her, cold as an icicle. ‘He will not.’
Her mouth opened then closed. It was, Vincenzo couldn’t help noticing, a rather full and soft-looking mouth.
‘Now,’ he went on, dismissing the observation and nodding at the chair near his desk. ‘Sit.’
She frowned, a deep crease between two straight dark brows, and he thought she might be working herself up to argue with him. But, clearly thinking better of it, she did as she was told, holding her worn handbag protectively in her lap.
He tilted his head, studying her. She was still very afraid. He could almost smell it on her. He was a connoisseur of fear. He knew how it worked and what it did to people, and how it could be used to manipulate them. He himself didn’t use it that way, since that was an approach he loathed above all others. But he wasn’t averse to people letting themselves be manipulated by their own emotions. And he was constantly amazed by the fact that they did.
Another reason, if he needed one, that it wasn’t a gun that would kill you, it was fear. Or hate. Or anger. Or love. Emotions were far more dangerous than any weapon.
‘Explain,’ he said, finally breaking the silence that had fallen. ‘Why are you here, Miss Armstrong? Apart from throwing yourself on my non-existent mercy?’
She was sitting in the chair completely rigid, almost vibrating with tension. ‘But my father’s men will be here any minute.’
Fear, again. And she was right to be scared. Coming to him directly would be a betrayal her father would not forgive.
He glanced at his computer screen and, sure enough, she wasn’t wrong. Some of Armstrong’s thugs were already at the doors of the auction house.
Vincenzo touched a button on his keyboard and swivelled the screen around so it was in front of her. ‘Top right-hand corner is a camera feed of the front of the building. As you can see, your father’s men are already here. But they are being dealt with.’
It was clear he’d get nothing out of her until she was satisfied that she was safe from her father, so he might as well let her watch the proceedings
. It would also serve as a good reminder to her that he was no less dangerous.
She watched the camera feed avidly, her eyes unblinking from behind her glasses. She didn’t move, clutching her handbag and looking like nothing so much as a small brown owl.
Fanciful of him. And he wasn’t given to fancies. Nor was he given to mercy for small, unremarkable women, who also happened to be accessories to the crimes committed by their father.
Really, he didn’t know why he was letting her sit there watching a feed of his security team dealing with her father’s men. Especially when what he should be doing was to call his head of Security and get Alessio to hand her over to the British police immediately. After all, if his crusade against the crime families of Europe had taught him anything it was that immediate action was the best kind of action.
Then again, she could be useful to him in all kinds of ways, especially if he wanted to eventually bring Armstrong down. Perhaps he wouldn’t be calling Alessio quite yet.
‘Seen enough?’ he asked, watching her.
She glanced at him, frowning ferociously. ‘How do you know that your security dealt with it? You didn’t look once.’
‘I don’t need to. My team is the best there is.’ He swivelled the screen back. ‘Your explanation, if you please.’
She took a little breath. ‘Okay. So, as I said, I’m here because I need your protection against my father. I managed to get away from him, but he’ll never let me go free. He’ll come for me whether I want to go back or not, and the only way to stay safe from him is to have someone to protect me. Which is where you come in.’
‘Lucky me,’ he said dryly. ‘Presumably you know who I am, Miss Armstrong? I mean, you didn’t wander into my office at random looking for a place to hide?’
The look she gave him was almost offended. ‘Of course I know who you are. I planned my escape meticulously, including coming to you. You’re my father’s enemy number one. You’re powerful and strong, and you have a great many resources. You don’t owe my father anything and apparently you can’t be bought.’ She pushed her glasses up her nose again in what was obviously a nervous gesture. ‘You’re incorruptible, which makes you perfect.’
She had done her homework, hadn’t she?
‘I’m not as perfect as I’m sure you’d like me to be,’ he said flatly. ‘What’s to stop me from taking you direct to the authorities right now, for example? You’re an accessory to a great many crimes, Miss Armstrong, and, as you’re no doubt aware, it is my stated aim to make sure people like you and your father are brought to justice swiftly.’
Her frown turned into a scowl. ‘I am not like my father.’
‘And yet you’re complicit in a number of illegal activities if my sources are correct, and they usually are.’
She went even whiter than she was already, making the dusting of freckles across her nose stand out, and highlighting the shadows beneath her eyes.
Now the little owl wasn’t just afraid, she was terrified.
Vincenzo had a reputation for ruthlessness, and some would have called him cruel. He supposed they could be correct about that. His world was a very black and white one, and it needed to be, since his personal mission in life didn’t allow time to debate moral quandaries or sort out grey areas. He turned everyone over to the authorities and let them sort the innocent from the guilty, which could be interpreted as cruelty by some people.
It didn’t bother him. He didn’t care how other people interpreted his actions.
And he wasn’t sure what the strange tightness was that whispered through him when he looked at the terrified young woman sitting across his desk. But it was there all the same. It was almost like...pity.
Her chin came up then, her narrow shoulders squaring slightly, as if she were facing down a firing squad.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘You’re right, I am complicit. But prisoners don’t get choices, especially when they’re being threatened, and I didn’t have the luxury of refusing. Believe me or don’t, it’s up to you. Just promise me that you will keep me safe from my father.’
She was wrong. Everyone had a choice, even if you didn’t like the choice you were given.
‘And why would I promise you a single thing?’ he enquired, keeping the question casual.
Her gaze turned ever more determined. ‘Because I can give you everything you need to take my father down.’
CHAPTER TWO
LUCY HAD KNOWN nothing but fear for most of her life and was used to it. But the fear that gripped her as she sat opposite Vincenzo de Santi was unlike any she’d ever known.
And she couldn’t work out why.
Her father’s men had been dealt with efficiently—she’d seen just how efficiently on that camera feed—and so there shouldn’t have been any reason for her to remain scared. Yet she was, and now it had less to do with her father than it did with the man sitting opposite her.
He was still lounging there in that casual pose, to all intents and purposes bored. But his eyes glittered like black jewels and they did not move from her face, not even once. He was all coiled menace and a ruthlessness that she could almost feel like ice against her skin.
She hadn’t expected to be confronted about her own crimes, not so soon, though in retrospect she should have. But she didn’t like having to think about the things her father had made her do and, since she was very good at not thinking about certain things, she’d simply pushed it out of her head to be dealt with later.
Except later had now come. And Vincenzo de Santi calmly stating that she was complicit in her father’s crimes wasn’t something she could deny.
But she’d told de Santi the truth. She hadn’t been given a choice. It was either she did what her father asked, or there were consequences. Survive, that was what her mother had told her and so that was what she’d done, any way she could.
Maybe one day there would be time to address her crimes, but she would see her father taken down first if it was the last thing she did.
Yet it wasn’t her guilt or otherwise which scared her. It was something else. Something about Vincenzo de Santi himself that she couldn’t put her finger on.
She wasn’t used to men. Her father kept her secluded in Cornwall, her every move watched by the guards he employed twenty-four-seven. She had a few online friends, but she made sure any identities she used online were heavily cloaked. She didn’t really see anyone but the guards in real life, and she kept away from them, because they made her uncomfortable. It would have been a lonely existence if she’d let herself think about it, but she didn’t ever let herself think about it. Never let herself see the bars of the cage she was locked in. Never contemplated the tightrope she walked between being useful enough for her father so he’d keep her alive, and refusing to do certain things that would anger him and make him deal out the same punishment he’d given her mother.
Her attention must always be on what was directly in front of her, never looking right or left, or anywhere else. Otherwise she would lose her balance and fall to her death.
She stared hard at Vincenzo de Santi, not letting her focus waver, not paying any attention to the new fear that lived inside her, just under her skin. An electric, prickling kind of fear that made her heart beat fast.
‘Of course, you will give me everything you have on your father,’ de Santi said easily, as if that had always been a foregone conclusion. ‘Immediately, if you please.’
Lucy eyed him warily. ‘And you will then hand me over to the police?’
He lifted one powerful shoulder and she found herself watching the way the fabric of his suit jacket pulled in response to the movement. She didn’t know why. She already knew he was strong; she didn’t need to watch him in order to confirm that.
‘Naturally.’ He put one hand on the arm of his chair, one long finger tapping out a soundless, slow, meditative rhythm. ‘I should imagine the po
lice would be very happy to get their hands on you.’
They probably would. But she didn’t want to go. She hadn’t survived for years waiting for her chance to escape, only to be put back in yet another cage. That wasn’t what her mother had wanted for her.
But you have committed crimes. You deserve prison.
It was true. And to a certain extent she’d protected herself from the knowledge of what she’d done by not enquiring too deeply about where all her father’s money had come from. Because she knew, if she did, she’d discover things that would make her life even more untenable than it was already. So she hadn’t enquired. She’d only done what she was told. She’d made some money disappear into offshore accounts, pouring the rest into other investments, making her father’s bank balances grow.
It had been survival, pure and simple.
But did survival really deserve a jail cell?
Because Vincenzo de Santi would hand her over to the police, that was obvious. She could see it in his mesmerising, compelling face. He was her judge, jury and executioner, and she couldn’t look away.
Her hands tightened on her handbag and the laptop hidden in it. The laptop that contained all the information he required. But not the passwords he would need. Those were all in her head.
‘When you say you will hand me over to the police, when will that happen?’ It was very difficult, but she held his gaze. Because she had to know. His handing her over to the authorities had always been a possibility, but she’d held out a tiny sliver of hope that perhaps he wouldn’t. That he’d help her disappear into obscurity somewhere in the US, far away from her father. Where she could make sure her mother’s death hadn’t been in vain.
He tilted his head and she had the impression that he could see every single part of her. From her guilty conscience to the fear she lived with every day. Every aspect of her small, narrow, confined existence.
‘You give me the information I want,’ he said in that easy, casual voice, ‘and then I will notify the authorities. This afternoon probably. The quicker you do it, the quicker I can take your father off the streets for good.’
The Italian's Final Redemption (Mills & Boon Modern) Page 2