by Tara Pammi
“I wouldn’t have held it against you. You’re a survivor, Natalie, just like I am.”
“Loyalty means something to me. Massimo’s a good man, Vincenzo.” She reached for his hands, as he’d done to her long ago. Hoping to get through. Hoping to stop this before more people got hurt. “Whatever you’re doing, he doesn’t deserve your hatred.”
He studied her slender hands in his, squeezed them and then slowly released each finger. Slowly but surely shutting the door in her face. When he looked up at her, there was such dark emotion swirling in the depths of his gray eyes. “This started long before Massimo became the financial force behind Brunetti Finances, Inc. But he’s a part of it. They all are. For years, they perpetuated what...” He looked away, as if to control himself. “This won’t stop because you like him. This won’t stop until...”
He stood up, and Natalie’s hopes dashed into dust.
She looked up at him in his black suit jacket and tailored trousers and expensive haircut, and the way he stood...her heart ached for whatever drove him to this. “Until what, Vincenzo? How much more hurt will you cause before you stop?”
He offered her his hand and Natalie stood up, their coffees untouched.
Suddenly, he felt like a stranger. Like he’d never shown her his true self. She wanted to run back to Massimo, and beg him to fix the whole sorry mess. And he would, she knew it.
He would at least listen.
Vincenzo took her elbow as they stepped away from the table. “Return with me. My jet’s waiting.”
Natalie stared back, stunned. “With you? What? Where?”
“I don’t want to leave you here, with them. Not after today, and not after... I want you far from here. Back in the States. Safe.”
His words pelted Natalie’s skin like small cold stones. She pushed away from his touch. “Vincenzo, please, put an end to this.”
“This doesn’t involve you. I’d hate to hurt you any more.”
“It involves the man I trust and if you do this... I can’t keep you a secret anymore. I won’t. He’s earned my loyalty. I work for BCS now. On a dollar-huge project for Fiore Worldwide Banks. I—”
“He won’t win that contract.”
Natalie felt as if he had punched her in the gut, as easily as he smiled at her. “Yes, he will. I designed it with him. I won’t let you steal this away from him. I won’t let you hurt him.”
And it would, she knew for sure.
Massimo prized that contract above his relationships. Above everything else.
“Massimo Brunetti is a genius who treats women no better than his father did. In the end, he is his father’s son. Prestige, family name, power, that’s all that matters to them. He will delete you as he does yesterday’s technology as soon as you become irrelevant. Come away, Natalie. I don’t want this on my soul.”
“Do you have a soul?” she whispered at him, and he flinched. “You can’t escape the consequences.” Tears filled her eyes. “I thought I could fix this, appeal to you. But I don’t know who you are.
“Don’t contact me. Don’t try to save me. Just...stay away, Vincenzo.”
* * *
The tap-tap of her pumps on the marble floor cranked up the panic running through her as Natalie walked into the sitting lounge. She came to a stumbling halt as four sets of gazes swiveled to her with a wide range of expressions.
The Brunettis were out in force.
She took a few more steps into the lounge, her heart beating so fast that she was afraid it would rip out of her chest. Massimo stood all the way at the back of the vast room, his back to her, the tension in his shoulders making her own tighter.
Her belly somersaulted with fear.
Did he know she’d gone to meet Vincenzo? How?
Leonardo seemed the most relaxed, sitting in an armchair, Italian-loafered ankle crossed over the other knee, swiping something on his cell phone. There wasn’t the usual cynical amusement or contempt in his dark gaze. Just plain curiosity. As if he were a predator deciding whether he wanted to rip her apart now or later.
She walked past him to where Massimo stood with his back to her.
“Massimo? What happened?”
He turned, and the fury in those eyes stopped Natalie in her tracks. The dark emotion touched all of him—those perceptive eyes, the bridge of his nose, that mouth that could curve with such wicked laughter—making him look so severe, so much like one of those portraits she’d seen in that long hall, contemptuous and arrogant.
The Brunetti aristocracy of so many generations that he thought he didn’t belong with. Men steeped in power and prestige and cruelty.
Dread knotted in her chest that she had to force herself to breathe first, but it was centered on what Vincenzo had let loose this time. “Massimo, why are you guys still here? I thought you were meeting the Fiore team for the official signing—”
“I canceled the meeting.”
“You canceled the meeting? Why?”
“Our security design for FWB was stolen from the network server and published on the Dark Net. A half hour before our meeting.” His body bristled with unspent fury. “A year’s worth of work out there for any hacker to go through, to target the banks. Thousands of customers’ financial information would have been in jeopardy. I had to disclose the hacking attack to them.
“The intricately detailed triggers you executed... I knew the plans were being stolen the minute someone tunneled in.”
“Wait? I don’t understand. That design was brilliant. The security layers literally incorruptible. You saw what I built...you went over that design with me with a fine-tooth comb. It can’t just—”
“I thought so, too. But then it’s not so hard if you handed over the blueprints to all the layers, is it? Or, say, if you logged into the server and created a tunnel for them to access it?”
Natalie stared at him, her mouth opening with an inaudible gasp, her brain processing his accusation over and over again. Because he couldn’t be saying what he was saying, could he? “You’re blaming this on me?” Her throat was achy and full of tears and she looked around as if she could gather strength from something or someone, but instead only saw the accusation now in their eyes.
“You think I... I gave them access to the server? I let them in? I helped steal plans I toiled over with you for the last few weeks?”
“It happened when you returned from your secret meeting and accessed the server for the plans.”
Vincenzo had played her so well. “You can’t... I did log on to it. I accessed the plans, yes, but only to make sure the security layer was tight. Something he said made me realize they might not be as safe as we thought. You can’t think—”
“Something he said? Or something he asked you to do? Is it that much of a stretch for me to believe that you followed the instructions the man gave you when you met him this afternoon?”
Accusation after accusation and Natalie had nothing to fight them with. She’d been so foolish. God, if only she hadn’t gone to meet Vincenzo this afternoon, if only she...
“Massimo, I didn’t. I didn’t betray you. I know how this looks, okay? But I—”
“Who did you meet this afternoon?” he finally said. As if she were a stranger. As if he hadn’t made love to her this morning.
“Vincenzo. His name is Vincenzo Cavalli.” His name dropped into the silence with the same effect as if a meteor had crashed through the roof, into the room. Natalie saw Leo coming alert, clicking away on his phone, but nothing could tear her gaze away from the cynicism in Massimo’s own gaze.
“There, I said his name.”
Massimo smirked, and she hated everything about it. “Did he give you permission now that he has done irrevocable damage to us?”
“He sent me an encrypted email, asking me to meet him, and I—”
“Then why didn’t you tell me? Crist
o, you were in bed with me when you got that email, weren’t you? You smiled at me, you kissed me, and you lied to my face. You promised your loyalty was mine. You promised...” He thrust his fingers through his hair roughly, shaking. “You could have told me he contacted you. You could have told me where to find him. You could have solved this problem for us. But no...instead, you decided to protect him. Instead, you chose him.
“I trusted you. I let myself feel...but in the end you picked him. You jeopardized everything I’ve worked for, all these years. Leave, Natalie.”
“Don’t say that. Please, Massimo, I want to help you fix this. I can help—”
“Get out. Get out before I—”
“Before what, Massimo?” she shouted back, tired of his accusations, tired of being afraid. Tired of...the emptiness that waited if he kicked her out. “What would you do to me?”
“Call the polizia on you. Have you arrested for corporate espionage, for breaking a hundred confidentiality agreements, for selling your loyalty. I don’t think you stopped being a thief.”
If he had slapped her, Natalie would’ve been less shocked. Less hurt. Pain came at her in huge, rollicking waves, twisting her belly, knocking her out at her knees. “How... That’s so unfair. You can’t... I can’t believe you would throw that at me? Knowing why I did it. Knowing... I trusted you to understand. To...”
He searched her face, studied the tears running down her cheeks. Maybe, for a second, he even softened. Natalie saw the familiar Massimo, the Massimo she loved with her whole heart, in his eyes before he shut it down. Before he shut that part down. Or maybe it was all her foolish hope. Her blinders still on when it came to him. “You didn’t trust me with it, either, cara mia. You hid it. And you defended yourself, as you always do, when it came to my notice.”
“Massimo, think it through before—” Leo chimed in.
“Now you support her, Leo?” Massimo’s voice was cutting, so full of bitterness. “When all along you’ve been asking me to throw her out? When she’s proved you and Silvio right? When my allowing her into all this, when my trusting her, trusting my emotions, is what brought us to this?”
With one last look at her, Leonardo walked out.
Massimo tucked his hands into his pockets, every inch that ruthless, powerful stranger who had cornered her that first night. “This is my fault. All mine.
“From the moment you came into my life, you never told me the truth.
“Why should I not believe that you engineered this? Why should I not believe that when I realized you were a liability...you jumped back to his side, you looked out for yourself once again?”
It was over, Natalie knew then. He wouldn’t believe her. He had decided to not believe her. He had decided to finish this.
He had decided, maybe even before this, that she wasn’t good for him, that he was done. And nothing she said would change his mind.
Her tears, her begging, nothing would dent that resolve she saw in his eyes.
Nothing... She wiped away her tears, anger rescuing her from the pit of self-pity and pain. Anger made her straighten her shoulders. Anger made her aggressive, see clearly. Anger made her realize how worthless she’d thought of herself when it came to him.
Anger made her realize how she’d strived to become worthy of him, how she’d foolishly assumed that he’d love her if she wasn’t a liability anymore. She was done. God, she was so done with him, with thinking that she was less than him. “This is so convenient for you, isn’t it?”
“Convenient?” he said, sneering. “You ruined a project that I’ve been working toward for a decade. You ruined my chance to—”
“To what? To prove to your father that you’re not the sick runt he calls you still? To prove that you’re better than Leonardo? To join those heartless, arrogant, bloated with power ancestors that are hanging on that damned wall?
“Your chance to prove to yourself that you’re a Brunetti through and through—cruel and power-hungry and looking for any excuse to push away anyone who cares about you?”
“You’ve no idea.”
“Of course I do. This project means everything to you. I was there. But...it is also such a good reason to push me away, too.
“Look in your heart and tell me you truly believe that I sold you out to him? This is not about me. This is about you.
“Because you feel something for me, too. A weakness that could weigh you down. Because I was becoming a liability to your goddamned reputation, your pursuit of billions, your ambition with my petty theft record. A liability to what you think Massimo Brunetti should be.
“Anything’s better than examining what you feel for me. Anything’s better than letting yourself love me. Anything’s better than becoming what your father thinks you are.
“Because Brunetti men don’t have weaknesses. Because Brunetti men are monsters.
“You act like you’re better than them all but...you’re the worst of them. You know better and you still cling to it. There’s a little good in you and you kill it every chance you get.
“I fell in love with you. I was twisting myself up in knots that I wasn’t good enough for you...but you’re the one who doesn’t deserve me. You’re not the man I thought you were.
“Congratulations, Massimo. At least there will never be a doubt in your mind that you’re a Brunetti, after all.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
MASSIMO STARED OUT the window of his office at Brunetti Towers in the financial district of Milan, not really seeing the noisy crowds of tourists and locals.
The city’s financial pulse—something he had always felt so strongly, something he’d strived to be part of for so many years, left him feeling nothing but emptiness. The villa, his flat in Navigli, even his lab—his lab, which had always been his sanctuary... Guilt haunted him, consumed him, ate through him.
Leo had probed and pushed and, in the end, given up. It wasn’t as if BCS would die without him at the helm for a week. Vincenzo Cavalli could raze BCS to the ground for all Massimo cared.
He hadn’t eaten or worked or slept in so many days. In the two weeks since he had thrown his dirty accusations at Natalie.
She’d been right.
He’d behaved worse than his father or Leonardo. He had always thought himself as better, prided himself that his mother raised him with different values, had assumed that when the right woman came along—someone with class, and sophistication, and someone who understood that her place would always be second to his ambition—he would treat her well.
For all his arrogance and ambition, instead he’d found a woman who was fire and passion and love. When push had come to shove, he had proven himself to be worse.
The first day when he’d discovered that Vincenzo had hired a consortium of hackers to leak the security designs, using Natalie’s past hacker activity as the key, he’d made a hundred excuses for his behavior.
She had been the gateway for them to steal the plans. He had never been taught how to process his feelings for a woman, especially such a complex one. She had come into his life at the wrong time. Part of it was her fault because she had gone to see Vincenzo behind his back...on and on and on.
He had prioritized the wrong thing in life. Looking for ways to end the one thing that made him look deep into himself, to reach for something he might not be capable of.
He was a Brunetti man who courted power, prestige and billions because he’d been terrified that if he wasn’t the most powerful of them all, then he was nothing.
And yet, she had found something in him to like. To love, even.
“I fell in love with you,” she had thrown at him, so full of pain, her eyes big and bright, bowed by his cruel words. But not broken.
Because she was right. He was the worst of the Brunettis, after all. He was the one not worthy of her.
She had survived with her heart whole, and co
urageous.
And if it took him the rest of his life, he’d spend it making himself worthy of her.
* * *
After numerous calls from his secretary and Leonardo poking his head into his office all of four times for an urgent meeting, Massimo forced himself to move.
He owed Giuseppe the courtesy of showing his face, even if the association they had both sought was a pile of ash. Pushing his gray suit jacket on, he ran a hand over his jaw.
Cristo, he must look like he’d been living under the green moss under the crappiest rock after his trip to New York and back to Milan in the space of thirty-six hours. Exhausted, he couldn’t sleep because he hadn’t found her. He’d even made a trip to see her little brother but Frankie hadn’t heard from her except the usual, weekly check-in call.
Where the hell was she? Had she gone back to Vincenzo, knowing now that Massimo didn’t deserve her?
Nauseated by his thoughts, he walked into the conference room and grabbed a bottle of water.
Giuseppe and Leo sat on the opposite sides of the long conference table with Franco next to Giuseppe and... Natalie next to Leo.
His heart thumped so hard against his rib cage that Massimo dropped the bottle of water. It hit the carpeted floor with a soft thump, rolling away with a swish. And he had the most ridiculous notion that it was his heart and he wanted to groan and laugh and share it with her, but he had hurt her with his cruel words.
Perversely, he’d never been so cruel to anyone else in his life, only the woman he loved. If that didn’t tell him everything that was wrong with him...
He wanted to tell her he had all the time in the world to listen to her now but only silence was left. She’d taken joy and light with her.
Dressed in a white dress shirt that hugged her slender frame and black trousers, and hair—Dios mio, that wavy, thick hair, bunched into a sophisticated knot at the top of her head—she looked like composure, and sophistication, and brilliance and beauty and heart, all combined into a complex woman.
