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Chapter 1
Rafael de Santis had never been a good man. On the outside he was the perfect son, managing the PR side of DS Corp, the biggest weapons and security company in the States, with a light, deft touch. Charming to all who met him. Handsome and smiling and polite.
Yes, on the outside he was the perfect de Santis prince.
But he knew what he was on the inside, and on the inside he was a wolf. Dark and hungry, the perfect predator.
It amused him that no one seemed to see the wolf behind all that perfection, though that had turned out to be a very good thing. Because if they had, he wouldn’t have been able to take over as CEO of DS Corp after secretly engineering his rich and powerful father’s downfall. No, they would have seen Rafe for what he was and would have tried to protect the old bastard from him.
Yet no one had. Not his older brother Lorenzo, who’d taken the bait Rafe had helpfully fed him and had had his father investigated on suspicions that the old prick was embezzling funds. Not Nero, his half-brother, whose tech genius had helped track down and get the evidence they needed to bring their bastard father down. Certainly not Xavier, his youngest brother, who was now living in blissful ignorance along with his wife on a ranch in Wyoming.
No one.
It had been the coup of the century, or at least the coup he’d been planning for a good five years. Taking back from his father everything that he’d been denied.
Except, not quite everything.
There was one thing he still wanted. One thing he’d been promised a long time ago, only to have it be taken away from him. Because he was “dangerous,” they said. “Too volatile,” they said. “A risk to everyone and everything.”
Fucking idiots. As if he’d forget that they’d sent him away, his mother and father who couldn’t be bothered to deal with him. Who’d banished him to his paternal grandfather’s for five years in order to “learn some discipline.”
Well, he’d learned. He’d learned a lot. All about what had been denied him and what he was owed. All the things he was going to take back.
Starting right now.
“Stop here, Clive,” he murmured to his driver.
“Yes, Mr. de Santis.” His chauffeur obediently pulled the limo up to the curb and parked.
“Keep the engine running.” He didn’t want this particular quarry getting away from him if she chose to run. Not that she could get far. Physically sure, but that wouldn’t last long. Not when she found out that he was now in control of just about every aspect of her life.
Really, it had worked out perfectly. Like all his plans did.
Outside the car, it was late winter and snowing miserably, little flakes settling on the dirty Hell’s Kitchen sidewalk. The building he’d had Clive park in front of was just as dirty and as unkempt, paint peeling from the walls, a couple of windows cracked. There were some homeless people huddling against Dumpsters on the curb, trying to get a little more shelter.
Rafe grimaced. This wasn’t the most salubrious of neighborhoods. Clearly he was going to have to have a word with her about visiting it. Get her some bodyguards. Or better yet, she really didn’t have to come here at all.
Yes, that was a better idea. She’d see the wisdom of it, he had no doubt. Most people understood and agreed when he explained things to them. Very rarely did they argue with him, and when they did, he soon made them see the error of their ways. Pleasantly and with a smile, of course. Always with a smile.
The door of the building opened abruptly and a woman came out.
She was very small, very slender. Very delicate. She was swathed in a heavy black wool coat, her legs covered in blue denim, a red scarf wound around her neck. Her blonde hair was coiled tightly in a neat little bun, a rich gold against the red of her scarf, bright as coins. Lying across one arm was another splash of vivid red, a cloak of some sort by the looks of things.
Rafe smiled.
Ella Hart, the daughter of one of his father’s oldest friends. Twenty years old and a dancer with a minor New York dance company, she was small and precise and utterly lovely.
She was also the second thing he wanted most in the entire world.
His parents and hers had been good friends once, and when the Harts visited the de Santis household, Rafe often found himself being followed around by a bright, inquisitive two-year-old girl. In fact, it happened so frequently his father often jokingly told him to watch out when she grew up, because that was his future wife.
Rafe had never minded. He thought she was sweet. Ella had never thought of him as the middle child and not as interesting as his oldest brother, or as immediately charming as his youngest. For some reason she just liked him, holding out her chubby arms whenever she saw him.
Until his fourteenth birthday. When the emotions he could never seem to control got the better of it him and he lost it, punching a hole in the wall of the dining room. He couldn’t even remember what he’d been so angry about, only that he’d been brightly, incandescently full of rage and it had to come out somehow. Ella had been there and had burst into tears, and everyone had come running, thinking that he’d hurt her somehow.
He hadn’t, of course, but Ella had been stopped from visiting him after that and he’d been sent to his grandfather’s. He hadn’t returned to New York until he was nineteen, and by then he’d learned how to control those overwhelming emotional storms. How to smile and be polite. How to sit still and do what he was told. How to wait and to plan and to manipulate. He knew who his enemies were now, and like his grandfather had drummed into him, all he had to do was be patient and it would come to him. Everything he wanted would all come to him.
Except Ella hadn’t. When her parents came to visit, she was never with them, and when he’d asked her mother why, she’d merely replied with some such bullshit about Ella being too young for social gatherings. Or she was tired. Or she had schoolwork to do. There was always some excuse.
No one ever told him the truth, though he knew the real reason all the same. They didn’t want her to see him because they thought he was dangerous.
For years he’d accepted that, because he had no choice. Tried to forget about the only person who’d ever liked him for who he was, even though she was only a little girl. But even so, she’d lodged in his brain and he couldn’t seem to get rid of her.
Then things changed after her parents died unexpectedly within weeks of each other, and his own father had been appointed her guardian. And although she didn’t come to live in the de Santis household since she had a grandmother who was looking after her, she did make the odd social visit.
Except, she wasn’t the same bright, sparky little girl that he remembered. At thirteen, she was pale and anxious-looking, wouldn’t look at him when he tried to talk to her, wouldn’t respond to any of his questions. In fact she seemed to be hugely uncomfortable in his presence, as if she couldn’t wait to get away from him.
He’d tried to connect with her a number of times after that,
tried to be charming, using all his newfound people skills to get her to open up, but she never did. It only seemed to make her more uncomfortable, which unfortunately only made him want to push harder, and so for both their sakes, he’d left her alone.
At least until his father had attended one of her recitals and he’d gone along as the dutiful son, expecting to be bored of his mind since he’d never much like ballet.
Yet he hadn’t been bored. In fact, from the moment she’d stepped out on stage, he’d been captivated. She wasn’t anxious or pale or quiet, the way she always was around him. No, she was passionate and intense. Joyful and free. Powerful and strong, and at the same time, precise, graceful, and perfectly controlled.
He hadn’t been able to look away.
He’d gone to every one of her performances after that. Every single one. He’d always hated sitting still and he always had to make a conscious effort to do so, but when he watched her dance it was as if the thing inside him that was always in constant motion, always turning, always moving, finally stopped. Finally rested. He never had to work at sitting still when he watched her dance. It came naturally. More, he wanted to.
It had been when she was eighteen and he was watching her perform in Romeo and Juliet that things changed. The male dancer who’d been Romeo had taken her in his arms and there had been passion in every single one of his movements, in her too. There had also been a bed, and a kiss and . . . something inside of Rafe had suddenly become aware.
Aware of her lithe, slender body. Her long legs and graceful arms. Her small, high breasts. The supple muscularity of her.
She wasn’t a girl. She was a woman.
He’d always felt drawn to her, even when she’d been a little kid. She’d been the only person who never been afraid of him, who’d simply liked being with him, and when he watched her dance, she stilled the restlessness inside. Made him feel at peace.
But it was in that moment, where he saw her as the woman she was, not the child he’d once known, where everything had crystallized for him.
He wanted her. He wanted her to be his.
He’d gone to his father that night to ask permission to court her, because as her guardian his father had the power to make things difficult for both of them.
Yet his father had refused. Ella’s own father’s dying wish was that Rafe stay away from her, and Cesare was determined to make sure that happened. Nothing Rafe said could make the old prick change his mind. Cesare had even gone so far as to say that if Rafe came anywhere near her, it wouldn’t be Rafe who would suffer, it would be Ella.
He’d had to keep his distance from her after that. Had to bury his fury, pretend it didn’t matter.
He continued to attend her performances however, and as time passed, he did what his grandfather told him to do. He watched. He waited. And he planned.
Ella would be his. She would not be denied him. All he had to do was wait for his moment.
In the meantime he saw her at family gatherings, trying every so often to draw her into conversation. But it didn’t work. For some reason she avoided him like the plague. Which only made him more determined since it was clear to him that they’d turned her against him somehow.
He would change that. He’d turn her back. He had to.
Perhaps even today, if he was lucky.
Ella didn’t see the car—or if she did, she paid it no attention—as she turned and began to walk down the street.
“Slowly beside her, please Clive,” Rafe murmured.
His driver nodded and the limo began to glide along the curb, keeping pace with her steps.
Rafe leaned forward and pressed a button. The window lowered. “Miss Ella Hart,” he said conversationally as she walked. “Fancy meeting you here.”
She flicked a glance at him, gray eyes like quicksilver in the winter light, but she didn’t stop. “No, thank you.”
“Really? You’re going to pretend you don’t know me? I’m wounded.”
“You’re not wounded.” She didn’t even glance this time, her attention resolutely ahead, continuing to walk as if there wasn’t a long black limo keeping pace with her like a shark swimming close to the shoreline.
He laughed, a thrill shooting down his spine. She was treating him with the same distance she always did, cautious little thing that she was, but unluckily for her, it wasn’t going to work this time. He was done with distance. The time for that was at an end, and the sooner she knew that the better. Though, if he was honest with himself, he wouldn’t mind if she continued to resist. He’d always rather liked the chase.
“I am. Seriously. Especially when we’ve known each other . . . what? Eighteen years?”
Ella stopped, straight-backed and slim like the dancer she was, and turned to face the limo. Clive, who was very, very good at what he did, braked right on cue.
“What do you want, Rafael?” Her porcelain doll features were arranged in an expression of polite, if slightly exasperated, enquiry.
She never called him Rafe, the way everyone else did. She always called him Rafael. So scrupulously polite and reserved, keeping that very measured distance between them.
He almost smiled. She wasn’t going to be happy when he showed her he wasn’t going to allow her to do that anymore, that was for sure.
“‘Rafael,’” he echoed, mimicking her. “So formal. You used to call me Wafe when you were two. I liked Wafe.”
She glanced away, obviously not liking the reminder. “Like I said, what do you want?”
“What makes you think I want anything?” He leaned one elbow on the window frame, watching her. “Maybe I just want to observe you leaving your dance rehearsal.”
If she was surprised that he’d known where she’d been, she didn’t show it. “That would make you creepy.”
He let his mouth curve. “I’m already creepy.”
“Hey, I didn’t say it.” She began to turn away.
“Ella.” He didn’t raise his voice, but he said her name like he was tasting it, watching the way she stilled in response. Which was interesting.
“What?” She had her back to him, her shoulders gone tight.
Well, he’d always known she was uncomfortable around him. Sadly for her she was about to get a whole lot more uncomfortable.
“I need to talk to you,” he said. “Now is good.”
She didn’t turn. “About what?”
“Not here on the street. It’s too cold.” He pulled the door handle and pushed open the limo door. “Get in the car, where it’s warmer.” Not that warmth was going to make what he had to say any easier, but hey, it was the thought that counted.
Her shoulders remained stiff. “I have to get home, sorry.”
Of course she was wary. And she should be. He wasn’t here to be her friend the way he had been when she’d been a child. No, he had a plan he’d put into motion and now that plan had come to fruition, and it definitely wasn’t friendship he wanted from her. Not anymore.
“Hmmm,” he murmured. “Are you sure you need to get home? I guess you do if you’re worried about all those emails you sent my father.” He sighed. “So many emails and not a single reply. . . .”
She’d gone motionless. Like a deer scenting the presence of a predator. How very apt.
“Now, I could tell you what happened to all those emails,” he went on, because he had her and they both knew it, “but only if you get into the car. Of course, if you have something better to do . . .”
Slowly, Ella turned around. There was a crease between her brows, suspicion glittering in her eyes. “What do you know about those emails?”
He shook his head. “Oh no. Get in the car and I’ll tell you.”
“No.” She lifted her chin in a sudden show of defiance. “Tell me now.”
But it was too late for that. Far, far too late.
Rafe reached for the door handle and took hold of it. “I know what you want, Ella. I know about Paris. I know about the summer intensive at the Paris Conservatory of Dance.�
�� He paused, holding her gaze. “I know you want to go. Desperately.”
She’d gone pale. “But . . . I sent those to your father. How do you know about them?”
Poor thing. This was going to come as a hell of a shock. He almost felt sorry for her. Or at least if sympathy was an emotion he allowed himself, and since it wasn’t, he didn’t.
“As I’m sure you’re aware, my father had to step down as CEO of DS Corp for . . . health reasons. I’m afraid he’s also had to step down from a number of other responsibilities as well. Namely, being your guardian.”
Her eyes went wide. “No, that can’t be right. My lawyers would have said something to me and I haven’t—”
“They would have said something to you if I’d let them. But I didn’t let them. I thought you’d rather hear the news from me personally.”
Her pale, elegant throat moved. “Wh-What news?”
Red Riding Hood? It was time to meet the Big Bad Wolf.
“What news?” he echoed, and this time when he smiled, he allowed himself to show a little teeth. “The news that I’m your new guardian, of course.”
* * *
Ella stared into the mesmerizing silver blue gaze of the man in the limo, and felt her blood run cold.
It couldn’t be true. It couldn’t possibly be true. Rafael de Santis could not be her guardian. It was ridiculous. When her father had discovered that he had terminal cancer when she was only thirteen, he’d entrusted her guardianship to Cesare de Santis, not to Cesare’s son. Not to Rafael, whom her parents had told her to stay away from because he was so volatile and dangerous, and definitely not to be trusted.
“No,” she said, because she could think of nothing else. “That’s not possible.”
Rafael merely gave her that white, wolfish smile. “I’m afraid it is. So, do you still have somewhere else to go? Or perhaps you’re ready to get into the car and talk now.”
Ella’s blood got colder, turning to ice water in her veins, her fingers becoming numb where they clutched the Red Riding Hood costume she’d been taking home to show her grandmother.
The Big, Bad Billionaire Page 1
