Notorious: Ruthlessly Bedded by the Italian Billionaire / Bound by the Marcolini Diamonds

He propped himself on the well-padded armrest of a sofa, commanding the space between her and the door. ‘What did your father tell you about the family rift?’ he asked, wondering if his uncle Antonio had painted Marco in some false light to favour himself.

She shook her head. ‘You talk. I’ll listen.’

He talked, repeating his grandfather’s story of what had led up to Antonio’s banishment, filling in some facts about the rest of the family, the death of his own parents, Marco’s grief at having lost two sons, the cancer that decreed he had only three months left to live—one month already gone—his search for Antonio which had led to Isabella, his wish to see her, get to know her.

He played on gaining her sympathy and was gratified when he saw tears well into her eyes. Sure that he could now clinch her co-operation, he finished with, ‘He’s dying, Isabella. The time is so short. If you can find it in your heart to give …’

‘I can’t!’ she cried, covering her face with her hands as she sobbed, ‘I’m sorry … sorry …’

‘I’ll organise everything, make it easy for you,’ Dante pressed.

‘No … no … you don’t understand,’ she choked out.

‘No, I don’t. Please tell me.’

She dragged her hands down her tear-streaked face, gulped in air, and raised a wet, bleak gaze to his. ‘It’s too late,’ she cried in a grief-stricken voice. ‘Bella died in a car accident six months ago. I thought she had no one. I didn’t think it would matter if I took her identity for a while. I’m sorry … sorry that your grandfather thinks she’s alive. Oh God!’ she shook her head in wretched regret. ‘I didn’t mean to hurt anyone.’

Dante was totally floored. He’d been sent on an impossible mission. Another death. He closed his eyes, shutting out the imposter, thinking of his grandfather who’d been fooled into believing he had another Isabella who might look like his beloved wife. Everything within him railed against delivering such a devastating disappointment.

Anger stirred. Why hadn’t the private investigators picked up the identity swap? How had this woman deceived everyone? No problem now in understanding her responses to him. She’d been scared out of her mind about getting tripped up. He opened his eyes to glare furious hostility at her.

‘Explain to me how you managed to take Isabella’s place without anyone questioning it,’ he commanded, pushing himself upright and walking over to where she sat, standing over her, using deliberate intimidation to draw what he wanted out of her.

She didn’t try to fight him this time. Her connection to his cousin poured from her in a stream of pleading for his understanding … how she’d come to share Isabella’s apartment and use her name to get employment at the forum, the car accident, her friend burnt beyond recognition, her own identification cards destroyed in the fire, the mistake made by the authorities because of a handbag she’d been holding when she’d been thrown clear …

‘I remembered afterwards that was why I’d taken off my seat belt. Bella was driving and she asked me to get a bag of sweets out of her handbag which she’d thrown onto the back seat. I couldn’t reach with my seat belt on, so I unclipped it and leaned through the gap between the front seats, hooked my hand around the shoulder strap and dragged it onto my lap.’

‘Her handbag must have contained her driver’s licence,’ Dante tersely pointed out. ‘The identification photo …’

‘It wasn’t a good one of her. We both had long curly hair, hers darker, but that could have been from bad lighting when the camera shot was taken, and she was smiling so you couldn’t tell her mouth wasn’t as wide as mine. Her eyes were squinted up so their different shape wasn’t so obvious, and I guess my face was bruised and puffy from the accident, making it look rounder. Even so, there was enough doubt about who I was for the police to call in the employment manager from the forum to identify me and because of my working under Bella’s name …’

‘Very convenient for you.’

She flushed at his acid sarcasm. ‘I was in a coma for two weeks after the accident. The identification was made while I was still unconscious. I didn’t know about it until after I woke up, and then all the medical staff was calling me Miss Rossini … and I let them. I let them because I had nowhere else to go and I needed recovery time from my other injuries, and I didn’t think Bella would mind …’

‘How could she?’ Dante savagely mocked. ‘She was dead.’

‘Yes,’ she agreed miserably. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t know about you. Bella told me she was an orphan like me. No family. I didn’t think it mattered when the police came again after I woke from the coma and I identified the driver as my flatmate, Jenny Kent … a nobody who wasn’t connected to anyone. And that was the end of it.’

‘Not the end. You took over Isabella’s life because she had more than you,’ he accused mercilessly. Money was a prime motivation. It always was. She’d just proved him right again.

‘I only meant to do it for a while. Until I could …’

‘Well, you fooled everyone effectively. You can go on fooling them for another two months.’

He would not fail his grandfather on what was virtually a death-bed request. It didn’t matter who this woman was. She could make up for the deception she had played by being a good and loving grand-daughter to Marco until he died.

She shook her head, pained bewilderment in her eyes. ‘I was going to leave here tonight, become Jenny Kent again. I’m sorry I …’

Ruthless purpose surged in Dante, cutting her plan of escape dead. ‘I will not allow you to destroy the hope that made my grandfather send me on this mission. You will come to Italy with me. You will stay with him in the villa on Capri until he no longer needs you. He will know you as Isabella …’

‘No! No!’ She leapt to her feet in panic, hands wildly gesturing protest. ‘You can’t! I can’t!’

He gripped her flailing arms. His eyes burned through the glaze of horror in hers with unshakeable determination. ‘I can and you will. If you don’t do as I say, I’ll call the police and have you arrested for identity-theft and fraud, and I promise you your term of imprisonment will be a lot longer than two months!’

Shock, fear, despair chased across her face.

‘So what do you want to be, Jenny Kent?’ he mocked. ‘A common criminal rotting in jail or a pampered grand-daughter living in luxury?’

CHAPTER FIVE

Rome

One Week Later

JENNY stood in the bedroom assigned to her in Dante’s palatial apartment and stared at her reflection in the mirror, barely recognising herself. She had been transformed into someone else—the Isabella Dante wanted to present to his grandfather. It was incredible what money could do; incredible, fascinating and frightening. It had the power to make anything possible.

She now had a passport in Isabella’s name, an entire wardrobe of fabulous designer clothes—some acquired in Sydney while they waited for the passport, the rest bought during a stopover in Paris—a face that had been made over by a beautician, her once thickly tangled mass of hair cleverly cut into a tousled cascade of wild sexy curls, newly applied perfect fingernails, polished in a natural tone, plus a whole range of fantastic accessories to complement her new look—belts, bags, shoes, jewellery.

She’d flown halfway around the world in a private jet, been waited upon hand and foot, eaten food she’d never been able to afford, stayed in penthouse suites at the Gondola Hotels, and any minute now Dante would come and collect her for the helicopter flight to Capri. A different life, she thought. A totally different life which still didn’t feel quite real to her.

This image in the mirror was Dante’s puppet, moving and acting to his will. Even how it was dressed …

‘Wear the Sass and Bide outfit,’ he’d instructed. ‘This first lunch at the villa will be informal, and the design is something fresh and individual. Lucia would not have seen it anywhere. She’s not into Australian fashionistas.’

Lucia … Bella’s other cousin.

Every time Dante mentioned her it was with a cynical twist. He didn’t like her. Jenny had the strong impression he wanted his Isabella creation to outshine Marco’s real grand-daughter. Which felt terribly wrong to her, but maybe there was some good reason behind his antipathy towards his cousin. It was not her role to make judgements on the Rossini family. She had to follow Dante’s edicts or … A convulsive shudder ran through her at the thought of imprisonment in a women’s jail.

She couldn’t face it. The rigid discipline of the orphanage still haunted her in nightmares. Being subjected to that kind of uncaring authority again—the unrelenting system of punishment for any infringement of the rules, fighting to survive with some sense of self intact—anything was better than suffering through another soul-destroying environment.

Somehow for the next two months she had to think herself into Bella’s skin, be as true as she could to what her friend had told her about her life. If her presence helped Marco Rossini to die peacefully, maybe the deception wasn’t such a bad thing. Whatever happened, this was Dante’s choice, Dante’s family, so he had to deal with the outcome. Though she was irrevocably tied to it.

No way out, she thought, hating the sense of being trapped, frightened of failing, frightened even more of never regaining her freedom. Two months … two months of a life she knew too little about. Would this incredible makeover Dante had orchestrated really help to blind the Rossini family to seeing she was not one of them?

The Sass and Bide outfit was startling, fascinating in its creative use of fabrics. The patchwork on the blue denim vest was quite wild with bits of lace, decorative buttons, braiding and embroidering. The short-sleeved white T-shirt underneath ended in jagged handkerchief points, just lapping over the matching blue denim hipster jeans which also had embroidery running down the legs, and buttons detailing the short side splits at her ankles.

She wore embroidered rope sandals on her feet, decorated with tiny lacy shells, and a matching rope handbag was slung over her shoulder. But that was where the trendy casual image ended. Dante apparently scorned costume jewellery. Sapphires went with blue denim; sapphire and diamond drop earrings and a gold chain watch with a sapphire face and diamonds marking the hours. In short, she was wearing a fortune, and the woman in the mirror could have stepped out of a magazine featuring incredibly wealthy celebrities.

‘Ready?’

Her heart jerked. He even had a string on that, Jenny thought as she swung around to face the all-powerful puppeteer. She’d left the bedroom door open for his manservant to collect her luggage which was all packed and ready to go. The man moved in behind Dante to do precisely that while his master—her master—strolled towards her, his gaze taking in her appearance from head to toe, making every nerve in her body twang with the need to be approved.

She took a deep breath, stiffened her spine and answered, ‘As ready as I’ll ever be.’

He smiled, apparently satisfied with how she looked, his dark eyes glittering with a sexy appreciation of the woman he’d fashioned to suit what he wanted. ‘You look beautiful, Isabella,’ he purred at her, and her whole body seemed to vibrate with self-awareness.

She’d never bothered much about her appearance. Clean and tidy was all she’d cared about, buying most of her clothes in charity shops, shying away from spending money on non-essentials because she might need it for living. Being dressed like this, being looked at as Dante was looking at her, evoked feelings she’d never felt before and she wasn’t comfortable with them.