The Italian's Final Redemption (Mills & Boon Modern)

by Jackie Ashenden

  He was still puzzled as to why he’d brought her here. He’d told himself that it was because, although the de Santi palazzo, deep in the Campania countryside, was a much better place for a prisoner, being, as it was, built along the lines of a medieval castello rather than a palace and thus very secure, it was also a place that she might find frightening with its ancient walls and dark rooms. This villa was brighter, airier, and being on the sea with cliffs on one side made it easily defensible, not to mention the fact that Capri was an island and therefore it was less likely that she would escape.

  All very good reasons and justifications for bringing her here, where he never brought anyone. And yet all he could think about was her voice telling him that she could hear the waves from her house in Cornwall and yet had never seen the sea.

  You are getting soft, perhaps? Tired of the crusade?

  No, of course not. And he would never tire. He needed her unafraid of him and willing to share the information in her head, that was all. And all of this was in aid of lulling those fears, making her relax, and who knew? Perhaps he could even get her to trust him?

  She was staring down at her plate, her hands fussing with the silk of her robe as if she didn’t know what to do with either them or herself. He made her uncomfortable, that much was clear. She’d blushed before, when he’d looked at her, and had glanced away, as if she’d felt the sudden tension between them too.

  There is tension now?

  Vincenzo gritted his teeth, trying to force the thought from his head as Martina and a couple of other staff members bustled over bearing quantities of food. Olives and bread and cheeses. Plates of fresh pasta with the excellent oil that she made from the olives in the gardens, and a tomato sauce to go with it. And a bottle of a very good red wine from the de Santi vineyards themselves.

  The consummate professional, Martina arranged the food, poured the wine, then left, taking her staff with her.

  Silence fell and he still couldn’t take his gaze from her pale, uncovered shoulder.

  Lucy reached for a piece of the fresh bread, but his patience was thinning, and when the robe slipped even more it ran out completely. He shoved back his chair and rose to his feet.

  She looked up at him, her eyes wide and startled behind her glasses, and he knew he shouldn’t do this, but he couldn’t stop himself. He moved unhurriedly around the table to where she sat and paused beside her chair. Then gently he lifted the slipping fabric of the robe up and over her shoulder, covering her. A better man wouldn’t have touched her, but he’d always known, deep down, that he wasn’t a better man, so he allowed the backs of his fingers to brush over her bare skin. It was warm and even softer than the silk that covered it.

  Her eyes went even wider, that vulnerable mouth of hers opening slightly as her breath caught. Colour flooded her cheeks, making her freckles turn pink, though he was more interested in the row of goosebumps that rose as he touched her.

  It would be so easy to push that silk away instead of lifting it up, to uncover instead of conceal. Examine the curves he’d felt when she’d rested in his arms in his office, caress them, see if they were as satiny as the curve of her shoulder.

  She was staring at him as if she’d never seen anything like him before in all her life, and though there was fear in her eyes there was also something else. Something that he’d seen in the eyes of other women who’d stared at him just like this one.

  She was attracted to him, it was clear.

  Perhaps you could use that to your advantage?

  The thought streaked through his brain, bright and clear as a comet at midnight, but he dismissed it almost as soon as it had occurred to him. Those were his mother’s tactics and he would never stoop to using those. Just as he would never indulge himself with her. Seduction was not and would never be one of his weapons. He was better than that. He had to be.

  He turned away, ignoring the tight feeling in his body as he headed back to his chair. She was still staring at him, a bewildered look on her face.

  It occurred to him, as he sat, that the slipping of her robe might have been purposeful, but one look at her expression told him it hadn’t. She seemed to have no guile at all, which was definitely a rarity in a criminal.

  ‘Why did you do that?’ she asked, her voice slightly husky.

  He ignored her. ‘I have ordered clothing for you. It should arrive tomorrow. In the meantime you can continue to wear that robe.’

  She frowned and he thought she might push, since he hadn’t answered her question, but she didn’t. Instead, she reached for the bread she’d been going to have before he’d interrupted her.

  So, she was uncertain about this...chemistry between them, was she? It certainly seemed that way. She’d had no trouble speaking about other subjects, but she didn’t want to push him on this. Interesting. Perhaps she was inexperienced. He wouldn’t be surprised, given how her father had kept her prisoner.

  ‘Why are you doing this?’ she asked after a moment, small fingers tearing apart the piece of bread. ‘With the candles and the food. This beautiful house.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ He reached for his wine and picked up the glass, swirling the liquid around inside it.

  That deep crease between her brows was back. ‘I’m a prisoner. A criminal. Yet there are candles on the table.’

  ‘I did tell you that you wouldn’t have a cell.’ He leaned back in his chair, sipping his wine, letting the flavour warm him, since nothing else did much these days; justice was a cold mistress. ‘The candles were Martina’s idea.’ They were not. They were his. He’d been concerned about the incipient darkness and wanted her to have some light, because he didn’t want a repeat of her panic attack, that was all. But he didn’t want to tell her that. It felt like giving away an advantage. ‘You don’t like them?’

  ‘Oh, no, they’re lovely. I just...’ She stopped. Then lifted a shoulder as if the subject was one she’d lost interest in, and began layering some of the dip onto her bread with a knife. ‘This smells very good,’ she offered after a moment. ‘I’m quite hungry.’

  ‘That is obvious,’ he observed dryly as she ate the piece of bread with small, precise bites then proceeded to get herself another. ‘Are you ready to give me some information yet?’

  She ate the other piece of bread then picked up her wine glass and took a sip. ‘Is that why there are candles and nice food? You’re hoping to bribe me into giving you what you want early?’

  Irritation gathered inside him. It was true. He had promised a week. ‘No,’ he said shortly, even though he had a suspicion that was a lie as well. ‘The candles and food are an added bonus. I do not bribe anyone, nor do I manipulate. You will give me what I want because I ask for it. Because we have made a bargain.’

  She sipped again at her wine, frowning at him from behind the thick lenses of her glasses. ‘Why is taking down my father so important to you? Did he do something to someone you know?’

  ‘He’s a criminal who has hurt others. He’s a murderer, civetta, in case you didn’t know. That’s all the reason I need.’

  An expression he couldn’t read flickered over her face. ‘Oh, I know what he is, believe me. But is it him in particular? Or merely the fact that he’s a criminal?’ She regarded him curiously. ‘Why don’t you let the police deal with it?’

  Was she really expecting him to tell her his reasons? To justify himself to someone like her? She’d be waiting a long time in that case, because he did not have to explain himself to anyone. Rumours followed him, naturally enough, but he didn’t concern himself with them. The facts were his own and he gave them to no one.

  No one else, for example, needed to know how his mother had seduced his father into the de Santi family ‘business’. Or how she’d manipulated Vincenzo himself into doing the same thing, using his love for her against him.

  He’d been her creature through and through. Her perfe
ct boy, her heir. Her tool. There was a war, she’d told him, and their family had enemies that they had to defend themselves against. All lies. Lies he’d been too busy basking in her attention to see. Too busy being the chosen de Santi prince to care.

  You knew. Deep down, somewhere inside, you always knew.

  Some nights he lay awake in the dark, going over and over the things she’d told him to do, searching for signs he’d somehow missed. Signs he perhaps should have noticed—a cruel glint in her eye or a betraying curl to her lip. Something that would have told him that what she’d said about wars and soldiers and fighting were lies.

  But there had been nothing. His mother had spent years perfecting her lies and he’d been sucked in completely. It was an evil he could never be free of and so all he could do was mitigate the damage by pursuing justice relentlessly.

  No, he couldn’t tell her that.

  ‘I do let the police deal with it.’ He kept his voice level and without emphasis. ‘I give them the evidence they need, and they do the rest.’

  ‘But isn’t gathering the evidence their job?’

  Annoyance gripped him. He didn’t want her questioning him. ‘They miss things. And they do not have the resources or the knowledge that I do. In some instances the police are corrupted by the very people they’re trying to bring to justice.’

  ‘You don’t trust them, then?’

  ‘No one can be trusted.’

  ‘No one except you?’

  Vincenzo realised he was holding his glass far too tightly and that if he held it any tighter the slender stem would snap. With a conscious effort he relaxed his fingers, staring across the table at the woman opposite.

  There was nothing sly or knowing in her gaze, only curiosity. She wasn’t goading him, it seemed; she genuinely wanted to know and obviously hadn’t picked up on his irritation.

  ‘You’re not very polite, are you?’ he observed casually, turning the conversation back on her.

  Her eyes widened as if the statement had surprised her. ‘Aren’t I? Is asking questions wrong?’

  ‘You are my prisoner, civetta. And a prisoner does not interrogate her captor.’

  Colour tinged her cheekbones, giving her face a rosy flush. She really was quite pretty, now he thought about it. Which was not at all helpful.

  ‘No, I suppose not.’ She took another piece of bread. ‘I just don’t get to talk to people very often.’

  ‘Why not?’ he asked, since what was clearly sauce for the gander could also be sauce for the goose.

  She looked down at the piece of bread in her hands, tearing it once again into tiny pieces. And stayed silent. Her shoulders had hunched, her glossy hair a curtain over her face. The chestnut colour gleamed almost auburn in the fading twilight.

  He was trespassing on painful subjects, it was clear, and no wonder. If her father had locked her in a dark basement, then what else had he done? But then, Vincenzo knew already. There were rumours about her, as there were about him; her father kept her well-guarded, deep in the English countryside. No, not just well-guarded. Her father had kept her prisoner.

  The strange sensation in his chest that he’d felt earlier when he’d held her trembling body in his arms shifted again. A constriction.

  He didn’t like it and he knew he should let the subject alone, move on, even get up from the table and leave her here to finish her meal alone. Yet he didn’t. Something compelled him to remain in his chair and to look at her all wrapped up in red silk, with her dark hair everywhere. Small and vulnerable and very, very alone.

  ‘He kept you prisoner,’ Vincenzo said, voicing his thoughts aloud to see her reaction. ‘Didn’t he?’

  Her fingers shredded the bread to crumbs. ‘I was too valuable to be let out, or at least that was what he told me. It was for my own protection. There were a lot of people who wanted to use me or kill me, and so I was safer in the house with the guards.’

  The sensation shifted again, getting tighter.

  ‘So you had no one at all you talked to? No friends? No family?’

  ‘No. I had some online friends he didn’t know about, but no one in real life. The only people I could speak with were him and my guards. But I didn’t like speaking to the guards because they were...’ She stopped.

  But he could fill in the blanks. ‘They frightened you?’

  She lifted a shoulder, clearly not wanting to admit it.

  ‘How long have you been a prisoner?’ he asked, even though he shouldn’t want to know, that it didn’t matter. That being a prisoner was no less than what she deserved.

  ‘Since I was seven.’ Her hands rested beside her plate, still and tense.

  ‘And how old are you now?’

  ‘Twenty-two.’

  Fifteen years she’d been her father’s prisoner. Fifteen years.

  He was aware that another sensation had joined the tightness in his chest, something hot that felt like anger, though it couldn’t have been. Because she was a criminal and needed to face justice, and it seemed that she’d served fifteen years of equivalent jail time already. A just sentence. Especially when she would have been committing even more crimes in that time.

  She has been alone all her life. Like you have been alone.

  No, it was not the same. And he wasn’t alone. He had his staff and business colleagues, and anyway, he didn’t need anyone. The path he’d chosen for himself was one he could only walk himself. No one else could walk beside him and he’d known that when he’d chosen it.

  You are serving a sentence just like her.

  He ignored that thought. His own guilt had nothing to do with this and he didn’t need that contributing to the already tangled knot of emotions inside him. Emotions that he would have told himself even a day ago he no longer felt.

  He was a fool. He shouldn’t be sitting here talking to her about her life. He had better things to be doing with his time.

  Vincenzo put his glass down on the table with a click. ‘None of that matters, of course. You are guilty, Miss Armstrong. And at the end of the week you will pay for your crimes.’

  CHAPTER FIVE

  LUCY COULD HEAR the certainty in his deep, cool voice and it sent yet more chills through her. Clearly he’d finished making conversation. And he had been making conversation, that was obvious.

  She shouldn’t have asked him all those questions. She’d only been...curious about him and why this justice crusade he was on was so important, and she shouldn’t have been. Curiosity had always got her into trouble and she shouldn’t indulge it.

  Sadly, he hadn’t given her reasons for his crusade, though that was understandable. As he’d said, a prisoner didn’t interrogate her captor.

  And he’s right that you should pay. You are guilty.

  A shiver chased over her skin. If she was guilty of anything, it was of not standing up to her father. Of cowardice. Except cowardice didn’t deserve a jail term.

  However, he certainly seemed to think it did. She had to change his mind somehow, convince him to let her go.

  Incorruptible, they said of him, but, as her father liked to remind her, every man had his price.

  What was Vincenzo de Santi’s?

  Slowly she raised her head and looked at him, her heart thudding strangely in her chest as she met his inky gaze.

  He was leaning back in his chair, the casual arrogance he carried around with him everywhere he went even more palpable. The menace that gathered like a cloak at his back even stronger. He was dark and he was dangerous and yes, she was frightened.

  But she was always frightened. Of everything. She’d been frightened since she’d been seven years old and her mother had died right in front of her eyes.

  Yet Kathy hadn’t let fear of her husband stop her from protecting her daughter. She’d been brave; why couldn’t Lucy follow her example?

  You h
ave other weapons at your disposal, remember?

  She frowned, trying to puzzle the thought out, because what other weapon could there be?

  He is a man and you are a woman...

  A flash of heat seared her skin, passing over her so fast she barely had time to draw a breath before she could feel burning in her cheeks. Burning everywhere.

  Because he was a man and the way he’d looked at her earlier, unable to tear his gaze from her bare shoulder, had been very much the way a man a looked at a woman. He’d been...hungry...

  The heat deepened. She’d never thought of having a lover, had never liked the idea of getting that close to a man, not after what her father had done to her mother.

  She had never regretted her decision. She didn’t think of the future beyond her mother’s promise. Have a life, Kathy had told her, but Lucy didn’t let herself think about what that life would contain, because it was only the escape that mattered.

  But if she had thought about it, a man wouldn’t have featured anywhere. Yet a part of her now wondered if this would have been easier if she’d managed to find herself a lover.

  Not that her father had given her any opportunity to find one, but still. Maybe if she had she might know what to do, how to use de Santi’s definite hunger to her advantage.

  Because she could, couldn’t she? This could be a way for her to take control, to get some power for herself. She could offer herself in return for her freedom. Some women did that, didn’t they?

  Of course, he could just take what he wanted from her whether she let him or not, but it was unlikely that he’d force himself on her physically the way some men did. Surely a man who’d held her in his arms while she’d been paralyzed with fear, who’d tended to her burn, wouldn’t be physically violent, not the way her father had been. De Santi was a much more controlled man.

  Her heartbeat had speeded up, her breathing becoming unsteady. He watched her as if he could read every thought in her head and knew exactly what she was planning, his eyes gleaming obsidian black in the night.