His Wedding Ring Of Revenge

For a male like the one who had been staring down at her, ‘ordinary’ might as well not exist.

She had known exactly what kind of girls he would date. The A-list girls, the ones oozing sex appeal, who looked fabulous every moment of the day. The ones who totally outclassed all the other girls and who knew exactly just how hot they were.

Any other girls could just forget it. Give in. They wouldn’t even register on his radar.

All this had gone through her mind in a few scant moments, and she had realised that, since she was not an A-list female—even one far too young for him—she wouldn’t even exist for him as a member of the female species. So what would it matter if he thought her swimsuit unalluring and her face and figure likewise?

What had mattered, though, was that he might think she was trespassing—or gatecrashing, or something—some tourist chancing it at a deserted posh villa.

He had continued looking down at her, one hand still thrust into his trouser pocket, the other hanging loose, his expression blank and unreadable. Had he been waiting for her to say something? Explain her presence?

Embarrassment had flushed through her. She’d raised a hesitant hand in a sort of wave, or some sign of visual communication. The moment she’d done it she felt a fool. But it had been too late to back off.

‘Hi,’ she said awkwardly. ‘You’re probably wondering who I am, but—’

The moment she started speaking she realised she was an even bigger fool. She was speaking English, and it was totally obvious that he was Italian. No English male could ever look that svelte, that beautiful…

He cut her short.

‘I know exactly who you are,’ he said. He spoke in English, completely fluent, his Italian accent doing nothing to soften the flat harshness of his words. ‘You’re the bastard daughter of my father’s whore.’

CHAPTER TWO

ELEVEN years later his voice was just as harsh, just as flat, the Italian accent just as unsoftened.

‘So, you’ve finally decided to cash in your last asset.’

His eyes went on surveying her, completely without expression.

Yet as his unblinking, impassive gaze rested on her she could see, very deep at the back of his eyes, a flash of gold.

Emotion pinpointed her, like a sniper’s bullet. And just as deadly.

That flash of gold came only at two moments.

The first was when, as she knew he must be now, he was keeping a leash on that tight, white rage that could lash out with such lethal devastation.

He had done that with the very first words he had ever said to her.

If she’d had any instinct whatsoever for survival then, she knew, with bitter accusation, she would have made sure they were the last words he’d ever spoken to her.

But that stupid, gormless fourteen-year-old had had no such instinct. Only one for encompassing with sure, deadly accuracy her own total ruin.

She felt her nails curve with a minute jerk into the soft leather of her handbag. And that was why she knew about the other moment when that flash of gold in his eyes came.

Out of nowhere, after the last seven years of ruthless, relentless suppression of any feeling to do with the man who was now sitting there, not three metres away from her, came a bolt of memory that she would have given her right hand not to be remembering now, here.

No! No!

She forced the memory aside.

You are here for one thing only. One purpose. One aim.

A single business transaction.

She sharpened the focus of her gaze on him.

Feel nothing. Remember nothing.

He sat there, waiting for her to pitch. He knew she would pitch. It was what he had let her in to do. It was the sole justification for her continued existence as a data field in his mind. She didn’t exist otherwise.

Did I ever exist?

The question came, treacherous, pointless.

No, she had never existed for him. Not her, not Rachel Vaile.

Not the person she was—her soul, her mind, her personality, her likes and dislikes—nothing, about the person she was existed for him.

Not even my body existed for him.

I thought it did, in my naïve stupidity. I thought that at least my body existed.

But it hadn’t. Only one thing had mattered to him about her.

Over the wastes of eleven long years his words echoed in her mind.

‘I know exactly who you are—you’re the bastard daughter of my father’s whore…’

That was who she was to Vito Farneste. It was all she ever had been. All she ever would be.

And then, into the welling seepage of old, old bitterness, a new thought came. One that made her vicious with sudden satisfaction.

She would be more to Vito Farneste.

If he wanted to do business with her.

Her shoulders pulled back with a minute, almost invisible straightening. Her gaze rested on his blank, impassive face, no trace of emotion, none whatsoever, in her eyes.

And she pitched.

‘There are conditions,’ she began.

Vito held himself still. Every fibre, every muscle in his body was under total control.

It was essential.

If he had not imposed such ruthless control over his body it would have hurled itself from his chair, thrust past his desk and his hands would have curved around the shoulders of the woman who dared, dared to stand there offering him conditions, and he would have shaken her, and shaken her and shaken—