The Flaw in His Marriage Plan

by Tara Pammi

  Alex was numb with shock and betrayal.

  “Cristo, Alex! What are you doing with him? Why—?”

  “I...if I organize a taxi out to the airport, can you get me out of here, Massimo?” Alex cut him off. God, she needed to get out of here. Now. Before Vincenzo came back. Before he charmed her again with his sweet words and addictive lovemaking.

  “Of course. I’ll... Alex, is everything okay?”

  “Just...please, get me out of here. Now.”

  “Okay, bella. Just sit tight. Give me a few minutes to organize you a flight. Alex, whatever it is, Leo and I will fix it. We’re here for you.”

  Alex ended the call before she started bawling on the phone. Before...

  What had she done?

  Why hadn’t Vincenzo even mentioned the Brunettis? Why was he attacking them like this? There was no chance it could be a mistake. Massimo and Leo had been having troubles at the company for more than a year now. Even Alex had been peripherally aware of it.

  And now the man she’d fallen for so hard, the man she’d married so quickly, far from being the romantic prince she’d thought him, was in truth the enemy.

  But even hours later, as she flew home to Milan, without having even breathed a word to Vincenzo, Alex couldn’t help wishing it was all a mistake.

  That Vincenzo was not the man who had been wreaking destruction on her adopted family.

  That he was not the man who remained a serious threat to Leonardo’s CEO position on the BFI board.

  That he was not the man who had been unerringly finding weak spots in one of the most powerful families in Milan and hitting them where it hurt the most.

  CHAPTER TWO

  VINCENZO STARED UP at the villa on the shores of Lake Como. The villa that had been the seat of the Brunettis’ power for nearly two centuries.

  He walked up the very marble steps where his mother had stood and begged Greta Brunetti to believe that her son, Vincenzo, was the old woman’s grandson, sired by Silvio Brunetti.

  Greta’s own flesh and blood.

  But two decades later, as he walked up the same steps again, there was no fear or doubt in him. Soon this would all be his. Power and confidence surged through him as he walked in through the huge archway into the lounge.

  Of course, his sweet wife, Alessandra, had hastened his arrival by running away and hiding here. He didn’t quite mind the acceleration in his plans though.

  He enjoyed walking into the lounge to see them all assembled there—the matriarch, Greta Brunetti; her grandsons, Leonardo and Massimo Brunetti; their wives, Neha and Natalie, and, amidst them, sitting on the chaise longue, was Alessandra.

  She looked up as he entered. And he found his pulse started racing, like a schoolboy’s. Instead of the anger he had nurtured from the moment he’d returned to find her gone, he felt a pang of concern.

  Her eyes were puffy and red rimmed. Light brown hair pulled into a messy bun that highlighted the sharp cut of her cheekbones. A loose sleeveless T-shirt and denim shorts with pink flip-flops completed her ensemble.

  No makeup touched the flawlessly boned face, no designer clothes showcased her stunning beauty, and yet she looked like a million dollars.

  Hurt shimmered in those eyes as she held his gaze without blinking. As if she meant to look straight into his heart. As if she was trying to search for a speck of honor within him.

  But she would fail. There was no honor in him. None at all.

  He swept his gaze over her entire length and found a little satisfaction in spotting the diamond still shimmering brilliantly on her left hand.

  Mine, she’s mine, he wanted to growl like a savage beast.

  “Running away without a word, Princess? This marriage thing is new to both of us, si, but we clearly need some ground rules,” he mocked, refusing to acknowledge the two men standing there like sentinels, guarding her.

  Leonardo Brunetti, CEO of Brunetti Finances Inc. A financial conglomerate that was synonymous with prestige in the rarified circles of Milan, the man he intended to replace. And Massimo Brunetti, the brilliant, technical mind behind the highly successful cyber arm of BFI—Brunetti Cyber Services—and the man that had captured his past associate Natalie’s heart.

  Men who had everything that should have also been his.

  Men he intended to take everything from.

  “You think there’s any ground to stand on after what you’ve done, V?”

  If she’d yelled it at him, he would’ve felt much more in control of the situation. But the shaken whisper... He didn’t quite know to handle it, to stop it from disarming him. “Come, cara. Whatever questions you have, I’ll answer them in privacy.”

  “You had numerous chances to do it in privacy. To explain what the hell you’ve been doing to my family. To at least...hint to me that you’ve been turning their lives upside down. You lost all those chances. You lost...” She bit her lip, her chest rising and falling. A wet sheen coating her eyes. “Just tell us...why.”

  “Why what?” he said through gritted teeth. Maledizione, he shouldn’t have waited to explain it all to her when he so badly needed her to understand his point of view.

  “Why’ve you been targeting them?” Frustration raised her voice. “Why did you arrange for Natalie to take down BCS before she fell in love with Massimo? Why did you use Neha’s bullying stepfather to spy for you? Why did you buy up BFI stock until you could square off against Leo for the position of CEO?”

  “I thought all those actions were quite self-explanatory,” he said smoothly.

  Alessandra stood up and took a step forward, breaking away from the group. The subtle scent of her hit him, bringing with it such vivid sensations of entwined damp limbs and sinful pleasure. Of long, warm nights and warmer sheets and soft gasps. Of intoxicating smiles that chased away the web of loneliness he hadn’t even realized he’d woven around himself.

  He saw the pulse at her neck flutter rapidly but when he raised his gaze to hers, the sheer depth of dismay in her eyes was a stinging slap to his senses. The same eyes that had looked at him with such affection and desire...

  “You think this is all a joke?”

  He tucked his hands in his pockets to stop himself from reaching for her. “It is not a joke, Alessandra, least of all to me. If it’s still not clear, then let me make it so.

  “I have spent most of my life working toward this moment. Moving people and contracts and money like chess pieces just to arrive at this point.

  “I intend to take over as the CEO of BFI. I intend to own the company outright. I intend to drive every Brunetti from the company until it’s all mine. Only mine.”

  One lone tear drew a path over a sharply defined cheekbone. “Why?”

  “I believe in taking what’s mine. Especially when it’s been denied me for so long. Especially...” He lost the fight against himself and reached out to catch the tear with his finger. Skin like silk beckoned a deeper touch, and he gave in to that too. Damn it, he’d never intended to hurt her.

  He rubbed the line of her jaw with the pad of his thumb, marveling again at how much he wanted her to lean into his touch, how much he wanted her to take that last step and mold her glorious body against his. How much he wanted her to look at him as if he were her hero.

  But he’d never aspired to be a hero in his life.

  In fact, he was the furthest thing from being a hero. He didn’t believe in self-sacrifice or putting someone else before him or in the happiness of others enriching his own.

  No, he believed in taking, possessing, having. And keeping hold of what was his.

  “Especially...when I’ve made a commitment to having it in my life in the first place,” he finished slowly, his voice gone all deep and rumbly.

  A quick intake of breath. A parting of those luscious lips. A quick rush of color into her cheeks. She swallowed and looked u
p. And for an infinitesimal moment, he knew she was as lost in him as he was in her. In the magic they created together. In the indescribable, illogical thing between them that had made him take such a big step.

  That made him stand here explaining himself to her even after she’d run away from him without a word.

  “Alessandra?” Greta broke in, puncturing the magic.

  Alessandra laid those doe eyes on him. “You think BFI should be yours?”

  “Si. Since it was Silvio Brunetti that seduced my mother with a hundred lies, got her pregnant and then discarded her like yesterday’s trash.

  “Since my mother was called a whore, and she and I were accused of being beggars and liars and kicked out into the street by the woman you consider a stepmother. Since I was denied all of this privilege growing up, I decided that I wouldn’t be satisfied with just a small part of it now.

  “I want to see every last Brunetti walk out of this house, their heads hanging in shame.

  “I am going to take it all.”

  “That’s...” Her eyes wide in her face, Alessandra looked like he had sucker punched her. Her tall body swayed where she stood. When he took a swift step toward her, she jerked away, her beautiful face contorted in shock. “Greta would never do something like that. She welcomed me with open arms when I came here to live with my father, her second husband. She’s more than a stepmother to me. She loved me even more than...”

  Whatever defense Alessandra wanted to offer on behalf of Greta died on her lips as she turned to face the older woman. A soft gasp escaped her mouth, her body bowing as if against a sudden, forceful gale.

  Truth shone in the older woman’s eyes, the only remainder of an encounter she’d probably never given another thought to. Whereas it had become the foundation of his life.

  The dirty accusations. The supposed higher ground of privilege. The utter lack of sympathy.

  The entire room filled with a vibrating sense of shock, all heads turning toward Greta with various degrees of accusation. Except Alessandra. Even in the face of the older woman’s guilt plainly written on her face, Alessandra still looked disbelieving. She looked as if she were the one dealt the hardest blow. Something he hadn’t accounted for and should have.

  Even the legendary Brunetti brothers looked horrified, their gazes alternating between their grandmother and Vincenzo in a parody that he would’ve laughed at any other time. A string of colorful curses spewed from Massimo’s mouth while Leo stared in numbed silence.

  “We could do a DNA test, if you want to lend legitimacy to my taking over what should be mine,” Vincenzo added dismissively. “I’d quite like to keep my mother’s name though. There’s a certain poetic justice in heading the prestigious BFI with her name, si?”

  “We will take your word for it, Cavalli, though you’re quite the spiteful bastard,” Massimo said evenly.

  “That’s mighty grand of you since your father and grandmother denied my mother even that small decency,” he couldn’t help adding, the very thought of the blankness in his mother’s eyes filling his throat with a corrosive taste he’d lived with for far too long.

  “And me, V?” Alessandra said in a soft entreaty. “Where do I fit into this sordid tale?” For all it was asked in a tremulous voice, it reverberated around him as if it had been fired out of a gun.

  His gut tightened, a cold, clammy feeling drenched his skin. A feeling he tried to battle and dominate into submission. He found he had no answer to give her right then.

  At least, not one that wouldn’t shatter the painful hope glimmering in her eyes.

  Not one that he could articulate in so many words.

  Not in front of all of them.

  She nodded as if he’d given her a clear-cut answer. As if his silence didn’t end up damning him after all. And then she fled.

  * * *

  Alex suppressed the tears that threatened with a deep breath and a big gulp of water. God, she’d cried enough over him in the last week.

  She looked out of the French doors at the neatly maintained acreage around the villa. The greenhouse that Leo had had restored on the grounds. The ancient wine cellar that had been restructured and repurposed to serve as brilliant Massimo’s state-of-the-art computer lab.

  The pride and sense of history of this place was in their blood. It was their legacy. Their place in the world.

  A place, and a sense of belonging, that Vincenzo had been cruelly denied. Along with his share of the legacy. She’d never forgotten the utter sense of inadequacy, the powerlessness when she’d discovered as a teenager that her mother’s husband, Steve, the man she’d always thought was her father, actually wasn’t—remembered the desperate need to belong somewhere, anywhere, completely.

  She could imagine the pain and loss a little boy might feel being rejected by his family, the scars that would carry over to the man. But to destroy Leonardo and Massimo after all these years... She couldn’t abide that. She couldn’t.

  “You have to stop running away from me, cara mia.”

  The deep, bass voice carried over to her on the soft breeze from the open doors, playing over her spine as if she were a set of piano keys and he the maestro.

  She stayed with her face averted from him. Like a coward. No, a woman who knew her own weakness and was assembling her armor. But it was time to decide.

  To look into the eyes of the man who’d seduced her so thoroughly that she’d lost all her hard-earned common sense and rushed straight to the altar with him.

  “You left me no choice,” she said. Even after she’d learned the truth, even on the long flight from Bali, even the past couple of days until Vincenzo caught up with her, there had been a small part of her that hoped that they’d all gotten it wrong. That the man she’d fallen for and married in secret wasn’t the same man ruining the very people she loved.

  “If I’d stayed in Bali, you’d have gotten the boxing match you’ve been asking for and I’d have beaten you to a pulp the way my mind’s working right now.”

  His laughter enveloped her. Her spine stiffened, but she was no match for the frissons that husky sound created in her. Or the scent of him that twisted like a screw in her lower belly. Or the memory of the warmth of that tight body covering her like a favorite blanket.

  The explosive chemistry between them had been instantaneous, all-consuming, mutual. And apparently, had no intention of abating even when her heart felt bruised inside her chest and her brain rebelled.

  “Then maybe I’d have deserved it.”

  “You think it’s that simple?” she said, turning around, frustration driving the words out of her. “That I yell at you, or scream at you, or pound that gorgeous face into mush and then we’re even?”

  Their eyes met across the room and held. That stillness she found fascinating about him descended again. He reminded her of a jungle cat—all restless energy and contained violence, preparing every single move for an attack.

  A white shirt unbuttoned showed off the tanned V of his throat, with an enticing glimpse of curls at the bottom. Dark smudges under his eyes told their own tale—he was as much of a workaholic as her.

  He looked a little rumpled after the long flight chasing her, coming after the fact that he’d been working straight for thirty-six hours when she’d left him. The gray of his eyes deepened—the only signal in all his stillness that betrayed him. That told her he’d been just as consumed by what was between them as she had.

  Even now as she looked at him, there was no doubt what her foolish heart and her greedy body wanted.

  More of what he’d made her feel. More of those warm, lazy nights. More of the man who’d promised her she’d never be alone again.

  More of him.

  She cleared her throat, ashamed of how little control she had around him. “Natalie spent a lot of hours—at the risk of increasing wrath from Greta and Leo and even Massimo
—trying to convince me that you’re not the utter monster your actions prove. That long ago, you were the only protector she’d known against a cruel world. That she owes you a lot. At a time when there was nothing she could do for you in return.”

  His gaze became opaque, but Alex noted the stiffness of his shoulders. “Didn’t she tell you that I did demand a price for all that I’ve done for her, in the end?”

  “You’re surprised she stuck up for you. Are you that much of a villain then?”

  “I don’t know if I’m a villain, Princess. But I’m definitely not a hero,” he said, walking into the expansive room and completely owning it in a matter of seconds.

  Greta had gone to great pains when Alessandra had moved in to create a welcoming space for a lost teen. Every inch of this room had been a haven to a girl whose own mother had broken her heart repeatedly.

  “I thought Massimo had all the rights to Natalie’s loyalty,” he said so softly that she could barely make out the words.

  “I’m sure they wish it was that simple, that one emotion for one person could trump or cancel out the emotion you feel for another. But it doesn’t work like that, does it?”

  His head jerked. She’d chinked that armor, she was sure.

  But when he spoke, his voice was as cool as ever. “I will admit I do not have much experience with emotions and family and all the complex, twisted drama that comes with it, si? So, no, I’ve no idea how it works.

  “But if Natalie’s misguided loyalty toward me—she was a fierce little thing even as a teen—paints me in a different light in your eyes, then I will thank her for it.

  “Don’t look for redeeming qualities in me that don’t exist, cara. Don’t forget either that I’m the same man you married recently.”

  The sheer arrogance of his statement swept through Alex like a wave threatening to drag her under. “You expect me to just shove everything you’ve done to them under the rug and carry on with you as though nothing has happened?”