by Tara Pammi
He could imagine her leaning on her desk, worrying her lower lip, wondering what to say and what not to. “I thought it was better that way, to have some distance. Because, as good as it was, it was also...a bit emotional for me. It’s been a while and it came on top of everything. I don’t want to make you feel as if I want more than you’re willing to give. I never—”
“Cristo, Neha! Did it occur to your overthinking mind that I wanted you there the next morning?”
He’d no idea what to make of her silence except that he’d stunned her. “I told you in the greenhouse that I was okay. It would have been just...” A sigh and then the sharp inhale. “Leo, I... The truth is I’ve been only with two other men in my life and I thought I was going to marry one of them. Sex is emotional for me, and with you, it’s like a minor earthquake, both physically and in other ways. I needed the distance. To keep things in perspective.”
“I wanted to take you to bed again, a proper bed this time. If you were still willing.”
Another silence. Another few seconds wondering what she was thinking. “Oh.”
“Instead, you ran away with Massimo.”
“I didn’t run away, I just—”
“I want to see you this Friday. Be ready, I’ll pick you up at work.”
Another long pause.
Cristo, he should have just flown into London to see her instead of engaging in this conversation over a ridiculous phone call.
“I have plans on Friday. Saturday, I’m meeting with the publicity department to shoot some pics for the new book, and then in the evening—”
“You’re the boss. Take one Saturday evening off.”
The urge to ask her to make herself available rode him hard. He held himself back.
Why couldn’t he? Was it because they hadn’t established that this was a relationship? He had no hesitation to call it that because he wanted her.
“I can’t take any more days off because I already flew twice to Milan and...” He heard someone call her name and then she was rushing through her words. “I’ll look at my calendar and text you.”
“You’ll text me a fifteen-minute window where we can conceive our child in the most efficient way possible?” He regretted the words the moment they were out.
Dio, he sounded like a spoiled, privileged, puffed-up man determined to have his own way.
But instead of being offended, her laughter filled the line. “I like you like this, all grumpy and...frustrated?” When he grunted, she laughed again. “My calendar is full just as yours is, you know that. To beat a dead dog, this is the reason I’m trying to revamp my entire lifestyle.”
God, the woman was as graceful as she was beautiful. “My continued frustration because of your unavailability will mean everything will go too fast when you’re in my hands, bella.”
She gasped—that hoarse, throaty sound that played over his nerves as if she’d run those long fingers over his clenching muscles. “Then we’ll go fast to relieve your...frustration the first time and then take it slow.
“Now, unless I want to scandalize my team by sprouting more sexual innuendo over the phone and give them enough to sell to a tabloid, I really must go.”
“Bene. Remember, don’t engage with Mario without me.”
“Okay.”
“Call me any time you need me. If you can’t reach me, call Massimo.”
“I will.”
“Ciao, bella.”
“Leo?”
“Sì?”
“Thank you.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever been thanked so many times for sex, cara. It is annoying the hell out of me.”
She laughed and the carefree quality of it made him smile. “No, I’m not thanking you for the mind-blowing sex. Although you give it good. I meant...for checking up on me.” A catch in her throat.
He waited, instinctively knowing that this was harder for her to do than ask him to make love to her. Knew that she’d gone so long without leaning on anyone that it had become a way of being. Because he was exactly like that.
“I feel a little less alone than I’ve felt in a long time, like the future I want is really in my grasp. We work really well as a unit. On so many levels, y’know. I’m just...”
Leo stayed silent, trying to dislodge the unfamiliar tightness in his chest. He didn’t know how to give voice to emotions. Even with Massimo, it was only this past year, once his brother had fallen for Natalie, that they’d put into words the divide their father had caused between them and all the steps Leo had taken to build a bridge to Massimo.
Even that night in the greenhouse, all Neha had done was to broach the topic of his mother. Not so out of context because, Dio, he’d commanded her to cut her own mother out of her life. He had shut her down so curtly that it was a surprise she hadn’t taken it as an insult. But in that moment, like right now, Leo couldn’t open up.
Couldn’t tell her that he liked hearing her say it so openly. Liked that she’d always been honest with him.
He had a sense of what was right and wrong, though he didn’t know where it came from because all Silvio had taught him in his formative years had been how to wield power. Greta had taught him how to do the right thing by the Brunetti name no matter what. Greta’s second husband, Carlo, had tried to nurture the little good that had been in Leonardo.
But no one had taught him how to let another human being close, how to process, much less express, emotions like fear and need, so he’d simply buried them all for the sake of survival.
And now, Leo wanted to say something meaningful, but all his energies went into burying the weight he felt on his chest. On fighting the web into which Neha drew him so easily, so effortlessly. So he stayed silent and he sensed her confusion in the pause.
“I have to go now,” she whispered softly.
Without a reply, Leo hung up. And for the first time in his life, he wondered if there would come a day when Neha would ask something of him and he couldn’t give it.
* * *
Even having been prepared for the meeting, Leo felt a strange reluctance when Mario walked into his office at the appointed hour wearing a self-satisfied smile that Leo wanted to wipe off with his fists. He had never liked Mario—too smooth in hiding the oily nature beneath, even when he’d been Silvio’s cohort in any number of activities.
Mario’s true nature had been revealed when, at the first sign that Silvio was going down all those years ago, the man had immediately cut any ties and jumped ship. Leo had always wondered how much Mario had known about and hidden Silvio’s activities even then, but there had never been any proof of his complicity.
Now, knowing how the older man manipulated Neha, using her affection for her mum, Leo knew his estimation was right. Mario was of the same ilk as Silvio, a man who preyed on weaker people. Except much cleverer.
With a full head of gray hair, strong, sharp features and a fit body, at sixty-five, Mario was considered a handsome man.
“It is a good thing you scheduled this,” he said, strolling in and going straight for Leo’s leather chair at his desk. The CEO’s chair. While Leo stayed at the sitting area. “Ever since the spectacle you made of her at the party, I’ve been meaning to have a word with you.”
“A spectacle of whom?” Leo asked.
“My stepdaughter, Neha, that’s who.”
“I don’t understand.”
Mario grunted, coming away from Leo’s desk. “Her mother and I worry about her. She hasn’t been—” he pretended concern so well here that if he hadn’t known his true colors, Leo would have bought it “—well these last few months. She’s not operating at full judgment.”
“Are you saying something’s wrong with Neha?”
“Ah, so she didn’t let you see that, did she?” he said with unconcealed satisfaction. “But no, the girl hasn’t been well.”
&nb
sp; “She’s not a girl, Mario. She’s the CEO of So Sweet Inc. She’s the engine that keeps your empire running.”
Pure evil glinted in Mario’s eyes. “Neha hides it well, even from her mother, but I know something’s wrong with her. Clearly, these anxiety attacks have messed with the good sense God gave her.”
“Anxiety attacks?” Leo asked, stunned.
“She had one a few months ago, when she was in China. Her assistant told me even though Neha ordered her not to.
“She’s not operating properly. Or she’d have realized you’re just playing with her. That you’re using her to get at me. And that she’ll be shown to be a fool in front of the whole world when you dump her and move on.” The pure cunning in Mario’s shrewd gaze sent a shiver even through Leo. “Maybe I should just wait for this whole thing to play out to its natural ending. Let her learn that lesson publicly, despite her mum’s constant worries.”
So her mother did worry about Neha. That would be of consolation to Neha, but it wasn’t anywhere near enough to cancel the pain the woman caused her own daughter. “What lesson would that be, Mario?”
Mario waved a hand through the air between them imperiously. “She’s always had a thing for you. Follows your affairs quite religiously. Thinks the world of you, thinks she has you in her corner, sì?”
Fury rose through Leo and he barely stopped himself from turning away in disgust. What kind of a man betrayed his stepdaughter’s confidence like this to a man she was in a relationship with to be used as ammunition? What kind of a woman tied her daughter up in such a man’s toxic shadow? Dio, how had Neha stayed sane all these years?
“She looks like she’s falling apart at the seams. That joy, that sparkle of hers is gone.”
Massimo’s words came at him with a painful clarity he had been missing before.
“I’m not surprised you figured out her little thing for you and decided to use it to advantage,” Mario went on, without missing a beat.
Leo held up a hand. “You think I’m using Neha’s...admiration for me to lure her into a relationship to some nefarious purpose?” That the man had hit his eventual goal on the nail only made Leo’s hackles rise.
Mario shrugged. “It’s what I’d have done. Your plan has one big loophole, though. You will tire of her when you realize she gives you no leverage with me and then dump her. The girl will be heartbroken and then she will know where her loyalties should lie. A lesson she needs reminding of.”
That Mario would relish Neha’s downfall with such glee sent bile through Leo. All his careful plans crumbled to dust in the wake of the fury coursing through him. “I wouldn’t be so quick to decide that,” he said, the words sticking to his throat like thorns. But a man like Mario only understood his language.
He wasn’t going to betray to this snake of a man what regard he had for Neha, how she consumed his every waking thought and how that regard for her was only growing with every glimpse into her life. “There are many advantages to be had in an ongoing association with a successful, beautiful woman like Neha. Especially a woman who would go to any lengths for me, it seems.” He mentally apologized to her for it. “I wouldn’t make bets on how long our relationship will last, Mario.”
Mario’s handsome face transformed in a mere moment into something ugly. Somehow, he wrangled his temper back under control to say, “What will it take to...shorten the duration of your relationship with her?”
“How did you know that BFI’s systems had been cyber-attacked two times?”
“A rumor.”
“Impossible. Only four people knew about it. Me, Massimo, the woman who did the attack and the man who engineered it. Which means the source had to be that man.”
“This whole meeting is a waste of—”
“What did Vincenzo Cavalli offer you? BFI’s CEO chair? More stock in BFI?”
Mario examined his buffed nails at leisure. “I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Basta, Mario! If you know what’s good for you, tell me where I can find him and why he’s bent on ruining BFI.”
“Or what?”
“Your golden goose is in my hands, Mario. I can turn her head whichever way I want.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“You and I both know Neha’s tired of it all, sì? Of the rat race, of the eighty-hour-week grind, of you running her life... What do you think it would take for me to nudge her into taking a more permanent holiday from So Sweet Inc.?”
A vein dangerously popping in his temple, Mario looked ready to explode. “Neha would never do anything that would hurt her mother.”
There it was... Mario’s means of manipulating her again and again. “Not the first time a weak woman’s so in love with the wrong man that all sense deserts her, is it?” Leo said.
Mario’s skin flushed, confirming his own awareness of his wife’s sheer inability to see what Mario was doing to her own daughter. “So you’re your father’s son, eh? You would use a foolish woman for your own power play, then? Is it any wonder Cavalli is out to ruin you all? Don’t forget I know all of Silvio’s secrets, Leo. Secrets even you don’t know.
“I can lead you or Cavalli to them. It’s your choice.
“Dump Neha. Walk away from anything to do with her. End this thing publicly. And maybe I’ll think about what I can tell you.”
Leo stood up from his seat. There was only so much he could pretend before his skin crawled. Only so much he could do to turn a snake like Mario. “I’m nothing like my father. I don’t make deals with bullies.”
“He’s got it in for your entire family, and he’s not stopping any time soon,” Mario retorted, finally showing his true colors. “Think about it, Leonardo. Think about what your temporary association with Neha will cost you.
“You consider yourself honorable, sì? Think about what this association with you will cost her...because both you and I know, in the end you’ll move on to the next woman.
“She’s already crumbling. Where will she be when you’ve dumped her and she’s all alone in the world?”
With that warning, the hateful man exited his office, leaving Leo shaking with fury and guilt.
It took Leo more than a few minutes to calm down, to bring his mind back to rationality. Maledizione, he hadn’t meant to throw Neha’s retirement plans in Mario’s face so soon. But the way the man had spoken of Neha, Leo couldn’t regret his loss of temper.
Mario’s words only confirmed Massimo’s and his suspicions.
Their father was at the heart of all this.
Leo needed to visit Silvio, ask him to remember the Cavalli family, get him to sign the will transferring his stock to Leonardo and Massimo equally.
It was also the only chance to ask Silvio about something that Leo had buried deep down for years. A chance to open up the past again and let it rake its fingers through his present.
Cristo, but he was sick of having to deal with the fallout from his father’s actions. Dio, all his adult life he’d spent rebuilding what Silvio had destroyed, cleaned up what Silvio had corrupted, had taken on the responsibility of BFI on his shoulders.
No, he wanted to leave the past where it was. He had never wanted less to see the man he’d worshipped for half his life and abhorred the rest of it. He refused to let the past leave a mark on him. Or on Neha for that matter.
She’d had an anxiety attack...
It was the last piece of the puzzle of those shadows in her eyes. But Leo couldn’t muster anger that she’d hidden it from him. Could understand the kind of defenses Neha had built around herself after being let down by a parent...
All he felt was a certain resolve that she needed his protection. Especially now that Mario knew of her retirement plans.
From her own stubborn clinging to her self-sufficiency to begin with. From her mother’s manipulations.
The
ir child, whether she retired in a few weeks or not, would always need protection from Mario’s hateful shadow. From Neha’s own inability to cut her mother out of her life.
And there was only way to achieve it.
The idea of marrying Neha, instead of knocking him back, built in his head like a tsunami, gaining momentum with each passing moment. It was Neha herself who’d made that decision so easy.
She’d never ask him for what he couldn’t give. She’d proved in the last two weeks how rational she was. They’d have a solid foundation for a marriage—respect, passion and a mutual desire to do the best by their child.
Suddenly, there was a future he could see when he closed his eyes, a future he wanted for himself. Not just the ashes of the past. Their child would be part of a family unit and have everything Leo had never had and desperately craved for as a child.
* * *
Leo stood inside the grand entrance hall of Neha’s Mayfair apartment complex and studied the high, domed ceiling and the dark stained oak curving staircase with pleasant surprise. The expansive cream Nettuno marble floor with the black onyx squares popping the monotony screamed understated luxury.
He’d recommended the property a few years ago when she’d asked him about investment advice, since Mayfair had been on the cusp of rivaling Knightsbridge as the area for luxury residential homes. The value of the two-bedroom flat she’d purchased had only gone up.
After facing down Mario two days ago and still digesting the disgusting lengths the man could sink to, his admiration for Neha grew boundless.
How much of a fight had she had to put up to buy such expensive property in her own name? What had Mario already unleashed in the last week that Leo had been gone?
He had the concierge let her know that he was waiting in the lounge, aware with every breath that the sense of urgency he felt to see her, touch her, was something he’d never experienced before. Now that he had a plan in hand, Leo couldn’t wait to put it into motion.
His breath caught when she stepped out of the lift, her hair shining like a silky black curtain.
