The De Santis Marriage

Lizzy straightened her trembling tense shoulders. ‘Have you quite finished slaughtering my family?’ she demanded, wanting to slap his face.

‘Haughty,’ he remarked. ‘I like it.’

‘Well, I don’t like you!’ she hit back. ‘Bianca and I have been friends since we were twelve years old—her wealth or my lack of it has never been an issue between us because that’s not what true friendship is about! My family works hard for its living, signor,’ she defended proudly. ‘All of us work hard! My father did not waste his life swanning around the world enjoying the useless life of an overindulged playboy from a filthy rich but totally dysfunctional family from which you, sadly, were the cynical end result! And if my brother is different from the rest of us at least he knows he is loved! Whereas you, signor, with your untold wealth and your inherited arrogance, can’t ever have been loved to be so cold and suspicious of everything and everyone that you have to dig into their lives behind their backs!’

‘Dysfunctional?’ His glinting gold eyes narrowed on her. ‘You have a very cynical view of my family history, Miss Hadley. It makes me curious as to where you collected your information and, more interestingly, why you did.’

Lizzy tensed as if he’d shot her. She’d walked herself right into that prickly trap. ‘I…Bianca,’ she said, hating the hot rush of colour that mounted her cheeks because she knew she’d been guilty of spending hours looking him up on the internet. ‘She described marrying you as joining a dynasty because she had the right name and the right genetic fingerprint,’ she crashed on. ‘It sounded so cold and businesslike to me that I thought she was joking at the time, but now I see that she wasn’t joking at all or you would be standing there too overwhelmed by your broken heart to even think of putting such a cold suggestion to me!’

‘Finished?’ he asked when she finally ran down to a breathless choke.

Shaking all over now, Lizzy pressed her trembling lips together and nodded.

So did he, and straightened from the desk. ‘Then with the character assassination over we will return to the subject of our wedding,’ he said.

‘I am not marrying you!’ Lizzy all but shrieked at him. Was he mad?

He moved round the desk. ‘You kissed me last night.’

The reminder forced her into dragging in a sharp intake of breath. She’d hoped he’d forgotten it. She’d prayed all night long that she’d just dreamt up that awful, shocking stolen kiss.

‘I was drunk—’

‘You appeared to be.’ He was opening a drawer now and taking out a thick folder which he placed on the desk. ‘Of course, you could have been playing with me as diversionary tactics to keep my eyes blinded to what Bianca was up to.’

She was so stunned by that cynical slant on her stupid behaviour, when she opened her mouth nothing came out of it.

He smiled—coolly. ‘Everything is open to misinterpretation, Elizabeth. When you—came on to me like some very tipsy sweet, shy virgin, I was—flattered. Now?’ He flipped open the file. ‘How different things can look in the cool light of day and with common sense re-established. Come and take a look…’

It was not a suggestion. Lizzy felt a tingling prickle spread across the surface of her skin as she forced her shaky legs to move back to the desk. He twisted the file around, then stabbed at it with a long finger to draw her eyes down.

She found herself staring at a bank statement—a bank statement with the Hadley name printed at its head. ‘H-how did you get hold of that?’ she whispered.

‘I’m a banker,’ he reminded her—again. ‘With the right contacts and the right strings to pull I can get anything I want.’

There was a double meaning in that remark that did not pass by Lizzy.

‘Look where I’m pointing,’ he prompted.

She looked, then stilled as if turned to stone.

‘The date shows that your company account received a heavy injection of funds just two days ago,’ he spelled out what she had already seen.

Five and a half million…Lizzy had never seen five and a half million written down in black and white before. To her it was a gasping amount.

‘If you look at the next entry,’ her tormentor persisted, ‘you will see that the five and a half million pounds was withdrawn again on the same day.’

‘No,’ she breathed, refusing to believe what it was he was implying here.

Then she jerked out of her shocked stasis. ‘I need to ring my father.’ White as a sheet now, she turned dizzily and headed for the door.

‘You will not call anyone,’ that ruthlessly calm voice instructed. ‘At this precise moment I have control of this situation and I mean to hold onto it. Bringing someone else into it will risk that control.’

‘Control over what?’ Lizzy swung around to stare at him.

‘You,’ he provided. ‘Until you brought me Bianca’s letter I was still puzzling as to why your father had successfully negotiated the loan he needed to save his company only to instantly remove all the money and put it somewhere else.’

Lizzy suddenly needed to sit down somewhere. The only chair handy was the one placed several feet away from the desk. She sank into it. Her head was swimming, the complicated puzzle of what was really going on here beyond her stunned capabilities right now.

‘Your brother is the only other person besides your father authorised to access this account. Put it all together, Elizabeth,’ he encouraged. ‘It does not take much effort to calculate that your brother has taken the money to fund his romantic elopement with Bianca. If you did play a part in their disappearance then I hope you have taken into account that you have been left here to carry the can.’

At that precise moment Lizzy didn’t care what position she was sitting here in. She was worried about her father. If— when—he found out what Matthew had done he was going to—

‘Of course, I must also point out that if you are genuinely innocent of any role in this, then you are still about to carry the can,’ that oh, so hateful voice injected, ‘because I want reparation for being taken for an idiot, and if that means putting you into Bianca’s wedding dress and marrying you in her place, then that is what is going to happen.’

‘For goodness’ sake!’ She jumped to her feet. ‘Don’t you think this situation is bad enough without you trying to fly to the moon?’

He laughed! Lizzy couldn’t believe she was hearing it! ‘You have a quaint way of expressing yourself.’