‘Is that what caused it? Stress?’
‘We think so. My parents have had a lot to deal with recently.’
A very pretty hand fluttered to her mouth. ‘It wasn’t connected with them moving from the house, was it?’
Having the house stolen from them, I think you mean.
‘It was an accumulation of things.’
‘I can see how much your parents loved this house.’ She cradled her mug with both hands. ‘I know they felt it necessary to downsize but it must have been difficult for them.’
How she uttered that complete rubbish with a straight face beggared belief. But then, she was a Buscetta, a family which straddled the line between legal and illegal like a circus of tightrope walkers. Ciro’s father, Alessandro, had gone to school with Cesare. Even as a child Cesare had been a thug who’d terrorised everyone, including the teachers. Ciro had only met Cesare for the first time that day but his name had been synonymous with thuggery and criminality in the Trapani house for as far back as Ciro could remember.
He supposed Claudia had adopted the downsizing line as a way to salve her conscience. It had to be easier to sleep at night than admit the truth that her father had bribed a senior member of Alessandro Trapani’s staff to sabotage the business until he was on his knees financially and had no choice but to sell both the family home he’d planned to grow old in with his beloved wife and the business that had been in the Trapani family for generations.
Instead of unleashing the vitriol burning the back of his throat, Ciro kept his focus on the long-term objective and folded his arms on the table while he stared at her. ‘It was difficult. What makes it worse is that I wasn’t here for them. I should have been. That’s what sons do. They take care of their parents and shoulder their burdens. It’s something I’ll always have to live with but, for now, I have to look after my mamma.’
‘How is she coping?’ she asked softly.
He grimaced. ‘Not great. She’s staying with her sister in Florence and taking things one day at a time but I’m hoping she’ll be ready to move back to Sicily soon.’ Once I’ve taken this house back for her. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to depress you.’
‘Don’t apologise.’
‘I don’t know why I just told you all that. I don’t even know you.’ He made sure the look in his eyes told her how much he would like to get to know her.
The pink staining her cheeks told him she understood the silent message. Not only that she understood it but that she was receptive to it. Ciro, while not being a playboy of his brother’s standard, had never had a shortage of women willing to throw themselves at him. It was amazing what billionaire status coupled with looks the world considered handsome did for a man’s sex appeal. As such, he was something of an expert at reading a woman’s body language and the language he was reading from Miss Buscetta was one of interest.
He’d spent the past week learning as much as he could about her. He’d been disappointed to find there wasn’t much to learn. Educated in a convent until she was sixteen, she had, until only ten days ago, lived the life of a recluse in her father’s heavily guarded villa. He would bet his last cent that she was a virgin; a rosebud waiting for a man to set her into bloom. Only a man with immense wealth and a scandal-free history would be allowed to touch one of Cesare Buscetta’s precious daughters. A man such as Ciro himself.
A man like Cesare Buscetta saw nothing wrong with the games he’d played to wrench the Trapani family home and business from them. To him, it was just business. Ciro knew this because he’d done more than just investigate Claudia’s boring background. Before coming here he’d visited her father on the pretext of proposing a potential business deal. He’d held his nose and broken bread with his enemy because he’d needed to know how best to play the man’s daughter. If Cesare had treated him with suspicion he would’ve engineered a meet with Claudia somewhere else. But Cesare, so arrogant in the justifications of his own actions, had welcomed Ciro like a long-lost son. He’d even had the nerve to mention the school days he’d shared with Alessandro. To hear Cesare speak of it, those days had been full of high japes and escapades. He’d failed to mention his penchant for flushing the heads of the kids who refused to pay protection money to him down the toilet, or the time he’d threatened Alessandro with a knife if he didn’t complete a homework assignment for him.
When, at the end of their meeting, Ciro had casually mentioned he would like to pay a visit to his childhood home for one last sentimental goodbye, Cesare had immediately called the guards posted at the farmhouse to inform them that Ciro must be allowed entry if Claudia permitted it.
His lack of self-awareness was as breathtaking as his daughter’s faux sympathy.
Ciro lifted his cheeks into a smile at the woman who was as much his enemy as her father. ‘Ready to show me around?’
‘You know the place better than I do. I don’t mind if you want to say goodbye on your own.’
He shook his head slowly, making sure his eyes contained the right mix of interest in her and dolefulness at his situation. ‘I can think of nothing I would like more than for you to accompany me...but only if you want to.’
She fingered the end of her plait, then gave a tiny nod.
Walking through his childhood home with Claudia Buscetta by his side, her body language telling him loud and clear that she was attracted to him, Ciro suppressed the laughter that wanted to break free.
This was going to be even easier than he’d thought. It was almost anticlimactic how perfectly it was all falling into his lap.
* * *
‘You seem distracted, Princess.’
Claudia, who’d been daydreaming about a certain hunk of a man, looked at her father’s bemused face and felt a blush burn her cheeks. They were sitting in the smaller of the villa’s dining rooms at a table that could only seat twelve, her father at his customary place at the head, Claudia to his left. Dish upon dish of delicious delicacies had been brought out for them to share but she’d hardly noticed what she’d forked into her mouth. She felt as if she’d been floating ever since Ciro had left her home.
‘I had a visitor today,’ she confessed, knowing she wasn’t telling him anything he didn’t already know.
‘Ciro Trapani?’
‘Papà...’ She tried not to cringe as she made her revelation. ‘He’s asked me on a date.’
Her father’s beady eyes gleamed. ‘And what did you say?’
‘That I would think about it. But really, I wanted to ask you first.’
‘Good girl.’ He nodded his approval. ‘And what answer do you want to give him?’
She closed her eyes then blurted it out. ‘I want to say yes.’
‘Then say yes.’
‘Really?’ She didn’t dare expel a sigh of relief. Not yet. Her father took overprotectiveness to unimaginable heights. That Claudia was an adult had not changed this. Unlike her highly educated, clever sister who could, if she ever felt it necessary, break away from him and be self-sufficient, Claudia could not. She was dependent on him for everything. He’d gifted her a home but if she wanted the funds to maintain it and clothe herself, she needed to be as obedient as she’d always been, hence why she was at his dining table sharing a meal with him rather than eating dinner in her own home. He’d called not long after Ciro had left, inviting her over. Refusal had not been an option.
She loved her father...but she feared him too. Sometimes she hated him. The yearning for freedom and independence had been growing in intensity since adolescence, but she could never act upon it. She had never rebelled and never said no to him. She’d never dared. ‘You don’t mind?’
‘He’s a hardworking businessman from a good family—apart from his brother, that is—and with a good reputation. He’s very rich, did you know that? Worth billions. And he’s at the age when a man wants to settle down and find a wife.’
‘Pap
à!’ She felt her cheeks go crimson again.
Her father poured himself more wine. ‘Why would he not consider you for a wife? You have impeccable pedigree. You’re from a good, wealthy Sicilian family and you’re as beautiful as your mother was.’
Claudia refused to show any of her distaste at this supposedly flattering assessment of her attributes, especially when her father so clearly admired Ciro enough that he had no objection to him taking his youngest daughter out.
‘It’s only a date,’ she reminded him quietly. Her first ever date.
‘My marriage to your mother started with a date. Her brothers came as chaperones.’ He raised his glass to her. ‘Go on your date but remember who you are and where you come from and the values I’ve instilled in you. They’re values a man like Ciro Trapani will appreciate.’ He downed his wine in one large swallow.
CHAPTER TWO
CLAUDIA SAT CONTENTEDLY at her childhood dressing table while her sister plaited her hair. It was something Imma had done for her hundreds of times throughout her life but never on a day like today. Claudia’s wedding day. Their father had wanted to fly a famous hairdresser over from Milan to do her hair but on this, Claudia had got her own way. She wanted her big sister to do it.
‘Any nerves?’ Imma asked as she wound the thick plaits together, cleverly binding them with diamond pins that should—if all the practice they’d put into it worked—sparkle when the sun or any form of light fell upon them.
Claudia met her sister’s stare in the mirror. ‘Should I have?’
‘I don’t know.’ Imma smiled. ‘I’ve never been in love. I just wondered...you two have only known each other such a short time.’
‘I’ve known him for two months.’
‘Exactly!’
‘What’s the point in waiting when we both know what we feel is true?’ Claudia said simply. ‘I want to spend my life with him. Nothing will change that.’
She’d known by the end of their first date that she was half in love with Ciro. He made her feel giddy, as if she could dance on air. For the first time too, she’d sensed an escape route from her life. He’d proposed two weeks later, having already asked her father’s permission. The speed of the proposal had taken her aback but she hadn’t hesitated to say yes.
Until Ciro had come into her life, she’d been trapped. Her life had had no meaning and no means of getting any. What kind of employment could a woman unable to read or write and who struggled with numbers get? Claudia lived in luxury but it was a gilded cage without freedom. Only a year ago she’d come to the conclusion that she should hand herself to God and work for Him. The nuns who’d tried so hard to educate her at the convent school lived a simple, peaceful life. She loved them all and still spent plenty of time with them. Her father would have been delighted to have a nun for a daughter. After all, Claudia was named after a vestal virgin. In the end, Imma had talked her out of it. She would be joining for the wrong reasons. Claudia loved God but taking vows should be a vocation, not an escape. It would be wrong.
This marriage would be an escape too but her feelings for Ciro were so strong that it couldn’t be wrong, could it?
Finally, she would have freedom from her father’s all-seeing eyes. It was a shame that she’d spent little time with Ciro since his proposal but he’d been incredibly busy with his business, working hard to clear his diary for the wedding and their honeymoon.
Imma, keeping her hold on Claudia’s hair steady, leaned forward to place a kiss on her cheek. ‘I know you love him and I don’t want to put doubts in your mind—I’m just being overprotective. I worry about you.’
‘You always worry about me.’
‘It’s part of the job of being your big sister.’
Their eyes met again in the mirror and in that look Claudia knew they were both thinking of their mother. She’d died when Claudia was three. Imma, only eight years old herself at the time, had taken on the role of mother. It was Imma who had cuddled her when she cried, Imma who’d cleaned her childhood cuts and grazes and kissed them better, Imma who’d taught her the facts of life and prepared her for the physical changes adolescence would bring. There was no one in the world Claudia loved or trusted more than her sister.
Visibly shaking off the brief melancholy, Imma put the last pin in Claudia’s hair. ‘It’s just as well you’re sure about Ciro after all the money Papà’s spent on the wedding.’
They both laughed. Their father’s love of spending money was legendary but for Claudia’s wedding he’d outdone himself. Insisting on footing the bill for it, in the space of five weeks he’d overseen what would undoubtedly go down as the Sicilian wedding of the century. Claudia had woken in her childhood bed that morning to the sound of a helicopter landing on her father’s private helipad. She’d looked out of the window to see five Michelin-starred chefs hurrying behind the huge marquee in which the wedding celebrations would take place. Behind that marquee and out of her eyesight was another marquee that had been turned into a kitchen fit for an army of top chefs—another three helicopters dropped the rest of them off shortly after—to create the wedding banquet of which dreams were made and the evening buffet that would follow.
Claudia would have been content to have a simple wedding but had gone along with her father’s plans to turn it into an extravaganza because it made him happy. Ciro hadn’t minded either, content to go along with whatever she wanted, and so that had settled it.
As much as it made her all fluttery inside to know that for this one day she would be the princess her father had always proclaimed her to be, the greatest excitement came from knowing that in a few short hours she would be Ciro’s wife.
She would be free...
* * *
Ciro walked through the villa’s garden to the private chapel at the back with his brother.
‘How much of his blood money has he spent on this?’ Vicenzu muttered under his breath.
‘Millions.’
They exchanged a secret smile.
Ciro still had trouble believing how easily his plan had knitted together. He’d assumed it would take months before he could propose with a good degree of certainty that Claudia would say yes but by the end of their first date she’d been like a puppy eating out of his hands. Cesare had been less than subtle about his wish for Ciro to marry her. He didn’t know whether it had been father or daughter who’d been the keenest for them to marry. Cesare’s insistence on paying for the entire thing had been too delicious for Ciro to put up more than a half-hearted effort to get him to change his mind.
Cesare’s vast extravagance on this sham of a wedding meant Ciro did not have to fake his smiles. Every step taken through the villa’s transformed garden felt lighter than the last. Vengeance took many forms, some more palatable than others.
Another helicopter delivering another batch of guests flew overhead when they reached the chapel. The sound of rotors had been a background noise for the past hour.
The chapel too had been spruced up for the occasion. The white exterior had been freshly painted while inside the long wooden pews had been re-varnished, the stained-glass windows scrubbed and every religious artefact polished. When they entered it, the opera singer flown in from New Zealand to sing while Claudia walked up the aisle was performing vocal exercises accompanied by a world-famous pianist.
Before long, the chapel was filled with people there to witness the happy union between Ciro and Claudia. He cast his eyes around, satisfaction filling him. These people were the people Cesare held most dear, the people he loved to throw his weight around with and the people he wanted to impress. Once Vicenzu had fulfilled his part of their vengeance, all these people would know Cesare had thrown his money on a sham. And if there was a nagging sense of guilt lining Ciro’s guts at his pretence, one look at his mother overrode it.
She sat in the front row next to his aunt. They’d flown in earlier that morning from
Florence, their arrangements the only aspect of the day Ciro hadn’t let Cesare control. Grief had marked her previously youthful, happy face with lines that would be permanently etched into her skin. She’d been surprised at his sudden intention to marry but too heartsick to ask any questions. Even if his intentions towards Claudia had been genuine, he doubted his mother would have had the emotional energy to invest in the ceremony as anything more than a spectator. There had been mild surprise that Ciro was marrying the daughter of her husband’s childhood nemesis but other than that, nothing. Their father’s lawyer had been correct—their father had kept the sabotage he’d received at the hands of Cesare’s hired thugs to himself. His mother had been unaware of the immense pressure her husband had been put under. Ciro and Vicenzu were of the opinion to never tell her.
When this was done, once Claudia signed the family estate over to him as she’d promised—God, how easy was this? The suggestion had even come from her!—he might consider nominating himself for an acting award.
She’d kept up the naïve, unspoilt, wide-eyed act beautifully too. No doubt she was waiting for his ring on her finger before showing her true nature. She’d been a little too thrilled at his marriage proposal, given after he’d asked her father’s permission. Cesare had pretended to mull it over but Ciro had read the delighted dollar signs in his greedy little eyes. They had both agreed, at Ciro’s suggestion, that a joint business venture should be put on the back burner until after the wedding.
It would be put on the back burner for ever. Only when Vicenzu got the business back for them too would their vengeance be complete. Only then would they confront Cesare and his daughters with the truth and watch the dawning realisation that they’d been played at their own game but that this time the Buscettas had lost.
A Baby to Bind His Innocent Page 2
