The Billionaires' Club: Return of Her Italian Duke (The Billionaire’s Club) / Bound to Her Greek Billionaire (The Billionaire’s Club) / Whisked Away by Her Sicilian Boss (The Billionaire’s Club)

His body tautened. “That’s when I realized I had left you behind for good. You wouldn’t be able to come to me, nor I to go to you. My ache for you turned into excruciating pain.” Hot tears stung his eyes. “Gemma—I swear I didn’t know how I was going to be able to handle the separation.”

Hers filled with tears, too, revealing the degree of her pain.

“You and I had grown up together and lived through everything. I was tortured by the knowledge that until the situation within my own family changed, our separation would have to be permanent.”

“When I first heard you’d gone, I thought I was going to die.”

He reached for her hand, enclosing it in his. “I would have given anything to spare you that pain. There was no way to know how soon we’d ever be able to see each other again.”

She gave his hand a little squeeze before removing hers.

“You can’t imagine my panic. I feared you would hate me forever for my inexplicable cruelty in telling you nothing. There’d be no way you could forgive me. But I didn’t know how else to keep you safe from my father’s wrath. To my sorrow, you didn’t escape it entirely.”

“You know what hurts the most, Vincenzo? To realize our teenage love wasn’t strong enough in your mind to handle telling me the truth before you ever left Italy.”

“I thought I was protecting you.”

“I realize that now, but why did you lie to me again the other day about your reasons for leaving?”

“Again, I wanted to shield you from so much ugliness.”

“Did you think I’m not strong enough to handle it?”

“I know you are, Gemma. Forgive me.”

“Of course I do,” she cried. “Finish telling me about New York.”

“It was a different world. I checked into a hotel and called my grandfather Emanuele to let him know where I was, knowing he wouldn’t tell my father. After talking with him, I phoned my grandfather in Padua to thank him for all he’d done for me...all he’d tried to do for my mother.”

“He must have been so thrilled to hear from you.”

“When he knew I had escaped, you should have heard him weep.”

“Oh, Vincenzo. To think he’d lost his daughter at your father’s hands. It’s so terrible.”

He could feel her grief. “It was over a long time ago, Gemma. Later I placed an ad in Il Giorno, needing to talk to Dimi. Four days later the call came. The first thing I demanded was to hear news of you!”

She’d buried her face in her hands. “What did he tell you?”

“Dimi couldn’t give me any information. He said that while an intensive search of the countryside had been going on for me, he’d arranged to leave the castello that morning with Zia Consolata. He realized that if he didn’t get them out of there, he would be my father’s next victim.”

“I can’t bear it, Vincenzo.”

“The news was devastating to me. He’d promised to watch out for you. Instead you were gone, and he had to leave, too.”

“I’m so sad that you and your cousin will always carry those scars.”

He took a deep breath. “I cringed to realize the suffering my disappearance had brought on everyone. And worse, knowing I couldn’t comfort you. Neither could Dimi. He tried looking for you.”

She dashed the tears from her eyes. “I can hardly stand to think about that time, but I have to know more. How did you survive when you got to New York? You’d never been there before.”

Her interest thrilled him, because until he’d told her the truth, she’d refused to listen to anything.

“Don’t forget I’d been making plans for a whole year. As soon as I arrived, I checked into a hotel Dimi and I had picked out, then had my funds electronically transferred from Switzerland to a bank in New York. Two days later I applied to take the SAT college entrance test.”

“You’re kidding—”

His brows lifted. “You can’t go to college without sending in the results.”

He felt her eyes play over his features. “With your education, you must have been a top candidate.”

“Let’s just say I did well enough to get into NYU, but I didn’t receive the results for eight weeks. During that waiting period, I purchased a town house in Greenwich Village.”

“What was it like?”

“The architecture is nineteenth-century Greek Revival, with three bedrooms. I wanted to have enough room for Dimi when he was able to join me. But of course that never happened because he didn’t want to move my aunt, who preferred being in her own palazzo.”

“Of course. I’m so sorry. Tell me about the university. What courses did you take?”

“Business and finance classes. Thanks to my grandfather Nistri, who was my business model growing up, I started buying failing companies with his money and turning them around to sell for profit.”

She let out a cry. “Nistri Technologies is your corporation!”

“One of them. My nonno was brilliant and taught me everything he knew. Little by little I started to build my own fortune and planned to pay him back every penny once I’d made the necessary money. But he died too soon for that to happen.”

“You’re a remarkable man.” Her voice shook.

“No, Gemma. Just a lucky one to have had a mother and grandfather like mine. He had a contact at NYU who taught an elite seminar for serious business students. This revered economics professor formed a think tank for his most ambitious followers and told us to visualize our greatest dreams.”

“Is that where you met your friends?”

“Si. For different reasons, Takis and Cesare came to the States from Greece and Sicily to study and work. Like me, they wanted to make a lot of money. This seminar that brought us together was a complete revelation to the three of us. We grew close, and they went on to become wealthy, highly successful hotel and restaurant entrepreneurs.”

“As did you. Why was this professor so effective?”

“No particular reason except he was brilliant. We learned it wasn’t good enough to want to make money. You’ve got to know how to get it, how to deal with brokers, renovate, assess the value of property, how to buy, sell and secure a mortgage. He sounded just like my grandfather.”

“Was that period of your life good for you?”

“Very good in some ways. Our mentor drummed into our heads how to cut costs, decide how much risk to assume in investments and balance our portfolios in order to impress anyone. His final rule was ingrained on my psyche. ‘You must find out if your friends can be loyal.’”

“You and your partners must be very close.”

“I trust them implicitly. That means everything. When I brought them together with my idea to buy the castello, I hadn’t seen either of them in at least two months and had missed them. They got excited when I showed them pictures.”

“There’s no place like it.” Her eyes glistened with unshed tears. “After the pain you and Dimi endured at the hands of your fathers, I’m glad you’ve found friends like that.”

“So am I.”