A Ring to Take His Revenge

by Pippa Roscoe

  Because although he was an experienced man, and he’d had his fair share of women, nothing he’d seen until that moment had made him want to back a woman into the nearest room, throw out any people in the near vicinity and rip the clothing from her body.

  And Antonio had the unnerving suspicion that she knew it too. She was taunting him in that dress, making him want to take back his promise from only hours before...the promise that they could only ever have one night. Because right then he wanted to live that night over and over and over again.

  He watched her walk over to Bartlett, rather than avoiding the man as he himself had done so far. He nearly flinched when she laid her hand on his arm, offering him a smile that was both familiar and pleased. When she whispered something in his ear, eliciting a fond reaction from Bartlett, Antonio nearly broke a wisdom tooth because his jaw was clenched so hard.

  ‘She’s making some powerful friends, Arcuri,’ Dimitri warned. ‘You’d better watch out.’

  Antonio couldn’t take his eyes off her as she turned in their direction and wove through the tables dotted between them. And she held his gaze for all she was worth, right until she stopped barely a foot away from him. Then she turned her amazing smile on his companions.

  * * *

  ‘Gentlemen,’ Emma said by way of introduction, ‘how far into the celebrations are we? Starting gate or halfway?’

  ‘A little bit of both. Emma, I must say, you look ravishing!’

  ‘Why, thank you, Dimitri. As always, you look devastatingly handsome.’

  ‘Careful—if you carry on being so charming I might have to steal you away from Antonio myself.’

  She laughed, and laughed even more when she heard Antonio’s answering growl. If she’d ever wondered what it might feel like to be the centre of his world... Well... She was beginning to feel it now.

  ‘What’s your poison, Emma?’ Dimitri asked, and for all the outward brooding she had seen in him from across the bar when she’d first entered, there was something almost kind in his eyes.

  She took in their glasses, and the outrageously expensive bottle of whisky, but decided against the heady amber liquid she now associated with dark nights and deep secrets.

  ‘Prosecco, please.’

  The barman nodded, and placed a full flute on the bar.

  She turned to Danyl. ‘Your Highness,’ she said, with a small bow of her head, knowing from experience that anything more overt would rankle. For someone who held such a public position, the Sheikh of Terhren was a deeply private man.

  ‘My assistant wishes to pass on his congratulations and his immense relief,’ said Danyl. ‘He is very much looking forward to a time when he no longer has to do battle with you. You have knocked his considerable confidence in his own abilities.’

  She knew it was flattery, gentle and teasing, and it felt so good to be amongst Antonio’s friends. It wasn’t often that she saw this side of her fiancé—her boss—she hastily corrected herself. Though she couldn’t really say that he was her boss any more. Last night had put an end to that and replaced stern reminders of her place with delicate strands of hope. Hope that this could be so much more.

  She turned to greet Antonio and the words stuck in her throat. He looked so sexy, so powerful. He hadn’t changed, as she had, and was still dressed in the same dark trousers and shirt open at the collar that he had been wearing earlier that day. But where before there had only been traces of stubble, now a dark shadow covered the planes of his cheeks and strong jawline and her fingers itched to reach out, to touch the deliciously rough edges.

  She didn’t have to wonder what he thought of the dress. It was all there in his eyes. It was the same struggle she’d had when she’d looked in the mirror before coming to the bar. Was this the right thing to do? Was she brave enough to take what she wanted and damn the consequences?

  Looking at Antonio in that moment, she felt a smile pull at the edge of her lips. One that found a quick answer.

  He leaned in and bent his mouth to her ear. The warmth of his breath threw cold shivers down her back as his words reached her.

  ‘You’re going to pay for wearing this dress later,’ he warned darkly.

  ‘Is that a promise?’ she enquired innocently, while the devil in her danced.

  ‘Oh, so much more than a promise, Emma,’ he said, before returning to the circle of his friends.

  Something like relief spread through her chest. It was all going to be okay. Dimitri pressed her glass into her hand and drew back to make room for her at the bar. No, she decided, it was going to be more than okay.

  * * *

  Antonio watched Emma chat happily with two of the world’s most powerful men and wondered how she could ever have doubted herself. The promise he’d made to her, warning her that it would only ever be one night, was turning to ash, leaving only the taste of anticipation on his tongue. He wanted her. He would have her. Tonight.

  And suddenly it seemed that it was all possible. That he’d get the Bartlett deal, that he would wreak his revenge on his father, that he might even get to keep Emma for a while. He could certainly make her happy—perhaps help her tick off some more of the things on her Living List.

  Pleasure uncoiled in his chest—a different kind from what he was used to. This wasn’t the thrill of the chase, or the knowledge that he had won some kind of challenge. It was the kind of pleasure he’d experienced only a few times as a child at being given something... Something precious...a gift without strings. And he wanted to unwrap that present. Right now.

  * * *

  Some hours later Emma was making her way back to the bar from the bathroom when the concierge found her.

  ‘Ms Guilham, there is a package for Mr Arcuri at reception. We didn’t want to interrupt him.’

  Emma looked in Antonio’s direction, and seeing him surrounded by his friends, laughing with a lightness she hadn’t seen from him for quite some time, she understood the concierge’s quandary.

  ‘Are you happy for me to sign for it?’ she asked, and when he agreed she followed him out of the bar and through the much quieter halls to Reception.

  The sudden silence of the corridor made her feelings of happiness seem so much bigger, so much harder to contain. She had enjoyed talking to his friends, the feeling of being amongst them. The bond they shared was so clear and so strong it was a wonder to her. And she questioned for the first time whether perhaps it was she who had caused the distance between her and her friends from school, that perhaps she had kept that distance.

  Emma decided that enough was enough. No more hiding when there was so much joy, so much of this indescribable feeling to experience.

  The concierge reached behind the desk and produced a thin manila envelope, along with an electronic pad for her to sign on receipt.

  She gently pulled the envelope open and, seeing the name ‘Bartlett’ on the cover sheet of the papers in neat handwritten capitals, didn’t think anything of it. Not for a moment did she consider that it was something she shouldn’t see.

  But as she pulled out the documents inside the folder she realised just how wrong she had been.

  CHAPTER NINE

  ANTONIO HAD STARTED to wonder where Emma had got to about an hour ago. Danyl had left—he was returning to Terhren—and Dimitri had turned his attentions to a rather beautiful Iranian woman.

  Antonio had no intention of blocking his pursuit. Ever since Dimitri’s imprisonment a cloud had hung about him. And the news of his half-brother’s involvement in his imprisonment had not done as much as he’d thought to lighten it.

  Unease started to nibble at the edges of the excitement he’d felt earlier in the evening. It wasn’t like Emma simply to disappear. He knew he hadn’t missed her amongst the glittering, bejewelled guests at the Hanley Cup’s closing party. He had lost that sense of her. That he could feel her presence should have been
warning enough. But the fact that he couldn’t...

  He made his way back to the suite, his heart pounding, aware that something must be terribly wrong. Which was perhaps why he was not surprised to find the rooms shrouded in darkness when he entered.

  Emma stood in front of the huge windows, illuminated by the bursts of lightning that fired through the night sky. The storm that had been promised was finally breaking.

  His gaze caught a glimpse of the private investigator’s dossier on the side table—open. And that was the moment he knew that everything he thought he might have had, everything that had made him feel so much hope, was about to slip through his fingers. Not just the Bartlett deal, but Emma too.

  In the time it took for another burst of lightning to burn through the night-time sky he realised suddenly just how much she had come to mean to him—how much he wanted her to be his. And not just until after the deal...after Hong Kong. He wanted to show her the world. He wanted to help her achieve everything on her Living List. He wanted to make her his for ever.

  But then he saw her bags, packed and waiting by the door to her room, and knew he’d been foolish to allow himself to think such thoughts. He could never have her—not whilst seeking his father’s punishment. He could never have her and still do the things that needed to be done—to become a monster to catch a monster. But it didn’t stop him from wanting to try.

  ‘What is this?’

  Her voice cut through the silence. The question echoed in the burst of thunder that rolled across the race course outside.

  ‘Emma—’

  ‘What is it?’ she demanded, her voice suddenly more powerful and commanding than the elements raging beyond the windows.

  ‘It’s a file I requested to be compiled on Bartlett.’

  ‘Do you not think that you offered the best deal to Bartlett?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you not think that you deserve to win this contract on your own merit?’

  ‘Yes,’ he growled, his anger, his fear, all working to meet her tone.

  ‘Then explain to me what that is.’

  ‘It’s insurance.’

  ‘Insurance?’ she spat.

  He had never heard her tone so dark, so angry, and he hated that he had made it so. Hated that he had tainted her in any way because of his need for revenge.

  ‘That isn’t insurance. That is the complete and abject desecration of a person, Antonio. Your PI has dug up dirt on Mandy Bartlett and—what? You were going to use it to blackmail Bartlett into letting you invest in his company?’

  He met her accusations with silence. There were no shields to protect him from the truth of her words.

  ‘Is this because of what I said the other night? Because I followed her on social media and saw that she was young and foolish?’

  The heartbreak in Emma’s voice was too much for him to bear. But he simply couldn’t tell her that she was wrong.

  ‘Did it give you a lead to where your PI should look?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, the word drawn from the very depths of his soul.

  She turned her back to him and finally he glanced at the open folder—pictures of a young student spilled from it. Snapshots of a small blonde partying with her friends. And while one or two showed a happy, fun-loving girl, a few he could see peeking out beneath showed that she had started to experiment with drugs, that images of her scantily clad, showed her in poses that were highly salacious.

  The thought of sharing them with the girl’s father turned his stomach.

  But the accusation, the pressure of the weight in Emma’s eyes made him angry. Angry that his father had forced him to this—angry at himself. So he turned that anger and used it against Emma.

  ‘It’s hypocrisy. That I needed you to make me seem more palatable to Bartlett when his daughter is—’

  ‘Stop,’ Emma commanded, her hand coming up between them to accentuate her words unconsciously. ‘Stop right there. It’s not hypocritical to hold to a moralistic lifestyle while another human being chooses not to. This is a young girl taking a bad path. Those frozen snapshots aren’t the whole picture of who she is and what she will be. Though they will be the only picture if you give them to her father.’

  She was almost out of breath. She desperately wanted him to see what he was doing, to see where he was going. It was a path she wasn’t sure he was going to come back from.

  ‘Mandy Bartlett is a young girl making mistakes and hopefully she will learn from them. What she is not, Antonio, is a pawn to be used in a sick game between you and your father.’

  ‘It is not a sick game, Emma. My father deserves to burn in hell for what he did.’

  ‘Because he left you? Antonio, I realise that it must have—’

  ‘No!’ he roared. ‘This isn’t about him leaving, nor blackening my mother’s name, nor forcing us to leave our home. Dio, we could have handled that. But Cici... She had more than just nightmares after the divorce,’ he said, his voice hoarse with the emotion he had bottled up for years.

  * * *

  As if it were yesterday he remembered his mother’s frantic phone call from Italy, just six months into his time in New York, begging him to come home immediately. She had been incoherent, and the only thing he’d managed to gather was that Cici was in hospital.

  Nothing—nothing—had ever made him feel so terrified as those seven hours on the private jet Danyl had secured for him.

  Until he’d seen the sight of his sister’s small, impossibly emaciated frame. The doctors had explained that she must have been hiding it for years.

  Antonio had known exactly how long she’d been hiding her eating disorder from them. At sixteen she’d weighed less than she had at thirteen, when Michael had changed their lives for ever.

  And he’d not known. He’d not seen it.

  His mother had been as truly shocked as he, and together they’d spent the next two weeks not leaving her side. The sounds of his sister’s sobs had cut him deeply. He just hadn’t been able to comprehend the negative sense of self coming from his once fun-loving, happy sister.

  She had taken all the hurt and all the pain of her father’s rejection, of being cut off from her friends and the life she had once known, and turned it in on herself. And he’d felt...angry and furious. He had known exactly who was to blame and had vowed to have his revenge.

  Antonio hadn’t realised that he’d been speaking—saying the words of his mind out loud to Emma in the suite—until he felt the rawness in his throat, saw the gathering tears framing her eyes.

  She crossed the distance between them in quick strides and wrapped her arms around him. Her body gave warmth and life to his that had turned so cold. She pressed kisses to his neck, pulling his mouth to hers, and he greedily consumed what she had to offer.

  This kiss was so different from those that had passed between them before. Not one borne of a selfish need for satisfaction, of the infernal heat of their desires, but one of warmth, of comfort, of support and the one thing he could not bring himself to name.

  He sought out the areas of her skin not concealed by the lace fabric of the dress. He needed to feel her beneath him, to take every comfort she was offering and more. In their kiss he tasted the salty sweetness of her tears, evidence of her grief for him and perhaps even of his own.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered against his lips. ‘So sorry that you and Cici had to go through that.’

  And he felt it down in the darkest part of his heart—her words beginning to shine a soft light on a place he’d thought unreachable. The place he’d thought irrevocably damaged by his father, by shock and fear for his sister.

  * * *

  Emma’s heart had wrenched open at the sight of Antonio in such pain. He was on a precipice—one foot on land and one hovering above an abyss. Her only thought at that very moment was to comfort, to lov
e the man she knew he could be—the man torn apart by a sense of injustice, the man who was devastated by the consequences of the careless actions of his father.

  Her hands traced the lines of his strong jaw. His skin was cold to her touch, as if his memories had leached the warmth from his body. She imbued her kisses with every emotion she felt for him, desperate to show him that love had the power to heal. Not with words. Antonio wasn’t ready for words. But with actions, deeds.

  For just a moment he seemed simply unable to accept what she had to offer, and she wondered if she might not be able to reach him. Then, on a deep shudder, as if a barrier had fallen down and crumbled through his body, she felt his hands on her body. Touching, caressing, pulling her towards him.

  Soft warmth turned to molten heat and threatened to consume them both whole.

  Pulling him gently within her embrace, she walked them backwards towards her room, sidestepping the bags she’d placed there only an hour before. She drew him further, feeding him with need and desire and the love she felt for him.

  Her hand went to her hair, releasing the pins that held it in place, allowing it to tumble down around her shoulders and arms. She found the discreet zip hidden at her side and pulled it down, peeling the lacy fabric from her skin.

  His gaze seared her as she stood before him but she bore it, stood tall and proud beneath it. Wearing only panties and her heels, she felt no sense of the self-consciousness she had experienced the first time they had come together. There wasn’t even a thought to her breasts or her femininity. There was only her need for him, her love for him, and it felt more powerful than anything she had experienced before. She revelled in the way his gaze ravaged her body—not just one part, not just that part, but all of her. As if he were seeing her for the very first time.

  But he seemed struck still by the storm of emotion she read in his eyes. Not unsure, but unmoving. So she crossed to him, her hands going to the buttons of his shirt, undoing them so that she could feel the warmth and heat of his powerful chest. She marvelled at the light but rough dusting of hair beneath her fingers, at the way his heart raged beneath her hand. She followed the hollowed dips to the waistband of his trousers and unbuckled their fastening.