by Dani Collins
She knew her face was falling into lines of panicked guilt, but couldn’t help it.
His nostrils flared and his jaw hardened. The death rays coming out of his eyes told her she’d be lucky to merely lose her job.
“This phone is mine,” she stammered, trying not to let him intimidate her. If she hadn’t already been violated, she might not have been so vehement, but he was going to have to knock her out cold to pry this thing out of her hand if he wanted access. “I get an allowance to offset my using it for company business, but it’s mine. You don’t have any right to look at it.”
“Can it clear you of suspicion or not?” His gaze delved into her culpable one.
She couldn’t hide the turmoil and resentment coursing through her at being put on the spot. “My privacy has been invaded enough.”
She was naked. On the internet. She supposed everyone in the building was staring at her image right now. Men saying filthy, suggestive things. Women judging whether her stomach was flat enough, saying she had cellulite, calling her too bony or too tall or too something so they could feel better about their own body issues.
Gwyn wanted to hang her head and sob.
All she could think was how hard she’d worked not to be pushed around by life the way her mother had been. At every stage, she’d tried to be self-reliant, autonomous, control her future.
Breathe, she commanded herself. Don’t think about it. She would fall apart. She really would.
“I think we have our answer,” Fabrizio said pitilessly.
She was starting to hate that man. Gwyn wasn’t the type to hate. She did her best to get along with everyone. She was a happy person, always believing that life was too short for drama and conflict. Being the first to apologize made her the bigger person, she had always thought, but she doubted she would ever forgive these people for how they were treating her right now.
A muted buzz sounded and Nadine looked at her own phone. “The press is gathering. We need to make a statement.”
The press? Gwyn circled around Fabrizio to the window and looked down.
Nadine’s office was midway up the tower, but the crowd at the entrance, and the cameras they held, were like ants pouring out of a disturbed hill. It was as bad as a royal birth down there.
She swallowed, stomach turning again.
Kevin Jensen was an icon, a modern day, international superhero who flew into disaster aftermath to offer “feet on the ground” assistance. Anyone with half a brain saw that he exploited heart-wrenching situations on camera to increase donations and boost his own profile, but the bottom line was he showed up to terrible tragedies and brought aid. He did real, necessary work for the devastated.
But lately Gwyn had been questioning how he spent some of those abundant donations.
Had this been his answer? A massive discrediting that would get her fired?
She hugged herself. This sort of thing didn’t happen to real people. Did it?
Her gaze searched below for an escape route. She couldn’t even leave the building to get to her rented flat here in Milan. How would she get back to America? Even if she got that far, then what? Look to her stepfather to shelter her? Who was going to hire her with this sort of notoriety? Ever?
She’d be exactly what she’d tried so hard to avoid being: a burden. A leach.
Oh, God...oh, God. The walls were beginning to creak and buckle around her composure. The pressure behind her cheekbones built along with weight on her shoulders and upper arms.
Nadine was talking as she typed, “...say that the bank was unaware of this personal relationship and the employee has been terminated—”
“Our client has stated that the photos were not invited,” Fabrizio interjected.
Gwyn spun around. “And your employee states that she’s been targeted by a peeping tom and an online porn peddler and a vengeful wife.”
Nadine paused only long enough to send her a stern look. “I strongly advise you not to speak to the press.”
“I strongly advise you that I will be speaking to a lawyer.” It was an empty threat. Her savings were very modest. Very. Much as she would love to believe her stepbrother would help her, she couldn’t count on it. He had his own corporate image to maintain.
The way Vittorio Donatelli continued to emanate hostility made her want to crawl into a hole and die.
“How long have you been with the company?” Nadine asked.
“Two years in Charleston, four months here,” Gwyn said, trying to recall how much room her credit card balance had for plane fare and setting up house back in Charleston. Not enough.
“Two years,” Nadine snorted, adding an askance. “How did you earn a promotion like this after only that short a time?” Her gaze skimmed down Gwyn’s figure, clearly implying that Gwyn had slept her way into the position. Night school and language classes and putting in overtime counted for nothing, apparently.
Fabrizio didn’t defend her, despite signing off on her transfer and giving her a glowing review after her first three months.
Vittorio’s expression was an inscrutable mask. Was he thinking the same thing?
A disbelieving sob escaped her and she hugged herself, trying to stay this side of manic.
While Vittorio brought his own phone from his pants pocket and with a sweep and tap connected to someone. “Bruno? Vito. I need you in Nadine Billaud’s office. Bring some of your men.”
“For my walk of shame?” Gwyn presumed. Here came the tears, welling up like a tsunami with a mile of volume behind it. Her voice cracked. “Don’t worry. I plan to leave quickly and quietly. I can’t wait to not work here anymore.”
“You’ll stay right here until I tell you to leave.” His tone was implacable, making her heart sink in her hollow chest while another part of her rose in defiance, wanting to fight and rail and physically tear at him to get out of here. She was the quintessential wounded animal that needed to bolt from danger to its cave.
To Nadine, he added, “Confirm the photos belong to one of our employees. For privacy and legal reasons we have no other comment. Ask the reporters to disperse and enlist the lobby guards to help. Issue a similar statement to all employees. Add a warning that they risk termination if they speak to the press or are observed viewing the photos on corporate equipment or company grounds. Oscar, I need a full report on how these photos came to your attention.”
“Signor Jensen contacted me this morning—”
“Not here.” Vittorio moved to the door as a knock sounded. “In your office. Wait here,” he said over his shoulder to Gwyn, like she was a dog to be left at home while he went to work. He urged the other two from the room and pulled the door closed behind the three of them.
“Yeah, right,” Gwyn rasped into the silence of Nadine’s empty office, hugging herself so tightly she was suffocating.
A twisting, writhing pain moved in her like a snake, coiling around her organs to squeeze her heart and lungs, tightening her stomach and closing her throat. She covered her face, trying to hide from the terrible reality that everyone—everyone in the world—was not only staring at her naked body, but believing that she had had sex with a married man.
She could live with people staring at her body. Almost. They did it, anyway. But she was a good person. She didn’t lie or steal or come on to men, especially married ones! She was conservative in the way she lived her life, saving her craziest impulses for things like her career where she did wildly ambitious things like sign up for Mastering Spreadsheets tutorials in hopes of moving up the ladder.
The pressure in her cheekbones and nose and under her eyes became unbearable. She tried to press it back with the flats of her hands, but a moan of anguish was building from the middle of her chest. A sob bounced like a hard pinball, bashing against her inner walls, moving up from her breastbone into her throat.
She couldn’t break down, she reminded herself. Not here. Not yet. She had to get out of this place and the sooner the better. It was going to be awful. A nightmar
e, but she would do it, head high and under her own steam.
Gritting her teeth, she reached for the door and started to open it.
A burly man wearing a suit and a short, neat haircut was standing with his back to the door. Guarding her? He grabbed the doorknob, keeping her from pulling it open. His body angled enough she could see he also wore some kind of clear plastic earpiece. His glance at her was both indifferent and implacable.
“Attendere qui, per favore.” Wait here, please.
She was so shocked, she let him pull the door from her lax grip and close her into Nadine’s office again.
Actually, it slipped freely from her clammy hand. The room began to feel very claustrophobic. She moved to the window again, seeing the crowd of reporters had grown. She couldn’t tell if Nadine was addressing them. She could hardly see. Her vision was blurring. She sniffed, feeling the weight of all that had happened so deeply she had to move to the nearest chair and sink into it.
Her breath hitched and no amount of pressure from her hands would push back the burn behind her eyes.
The door opened again, startling her heart into lurching and her head into jerking up.
He was back.
CHAPTER TWO
GWYN ELLIS LOOKED like hell had moved in where her soul used to be, eyes pits of despair, mouth soft and bracketed by lines of disillusion. Her brow was a crooked line of suffering, but she immediately sat taller, blinking and visibly fighting back her tears to face him without cowering.
“I want to leave,” she asserted.
The rasp in her voice scraped at his nerves while he studied her. Vixens knew how to use their sexuality on a man. If she was a victim, he would expect her to appeal to the protector in him. Either way, he wouldn’t expect her to be so confrontational.
Gwyn was a fighter. He didn’t want to find that dig-deep-and-stay-strong streak in her admirable. It softened him when he was in crisis control mode, trying to remember that she had, quite possibly, colluded to bilk the bank and a completely legitimate nonprofit organization of millions of euros in donations.
“We have more to talk about,” he told her. He had made the executive decision to question her himself, like this, privately. And he wasn’t prepared to ask himself why.
“An exit interview? I have two short words,” she said tightly.
That open hostility was noteworthy. Oscar Fabrizio had been full of placating statements until Paolo had been patched through on speakerphone. Then Oscar had seemed to realize he was under suspicion. He’d asked for a lawyer. Sweat had broken across his brow and upper lip when Vito had ordered his computer and phone to be analyzed. Both were company issued and it had been obvious Oscar was dying to contact someone—Kevin Jensen perhaps? A plainclothes investigator was on the way. A full criminal inquiry was being launched down the hall.
While here...Vito was sure she was an accomplice, except...
“You say you had no knowledge of those photos,” he challenged.
“No. I didn’t.” Her chin came up and her lashes screened her eyes, but there was no hiding the quiver of her mouth. She was deeply upset about their being made public. That was not up for dispute. “They were taken after a massage. I didn’t know there was a camera in the room.”
The images were imprinted on his brain. The photos would have made a splash without Jensen’s name attached, he thought distantly. She was built like Venus.
But he saw how they could have been taken during a private moment and manipulated to appear like shots between lovers. He had made certain presumptions on sight: that she was not only having an affair with a client, but was engaged in criminal activity with him. If Jensen was prepared to steal from charity donations, would it be such a stretch to photograph a banking underling in an attempt to cover it up?
Powerful men exploited young, vulnerable women. He knew that. It was quite literally in his DNA.
“Are you picturing me naked?” she challenged bitterly, but her chin crinkled and she fought for her composure a moment, then bravely firmed her mouth and controlled her expression, meeting his gaze with loathing shadowing the depths of her brown eyes.
Such a contrary woman with her wounded expression and quiet, forest-creature coloring of dark eyes and hair, then that devastatingly powerful figure of generous curves and lissome limbs.
“Wondering if you are having an affair with Jensen,” he replied.
“I’m not!” There was a catch in her voice before her tone strengthened. “And I wasn’t trying to start one, either. I barely know him.” She crossed her arms. “I actually think he’s been skimming funds from his foundation for himself.”
“He is.” He steadily returned the shocked brown stare she flashed at him. Her irises had a near-black rim around the dark chocolate brown, he noted, liking the directness it added to her subtly tough demeanor.
Her pupils expanded with surprise, further intriguing him.
“You know that for a fact?” Her brows were like distant bird wings against the sky, long and elegant with a perfect little crook above her eyes. She was truly beautiful.
He wanted her. Badly.
He ignored the need pulling at him, stating, “We also know someone in the bank is colluding with him. We’ve been conducting an extremely delicate investigation that blew up today, thanks to your photos.”
Vito was angry with himself. He was a numbers man, calculating all the odds, all the possible moves an opponent might try, but he hadn’t seen this one coming.
“I’m not colluding with anyone!” Her expression was earnest and very convincing. But he was a mistrustful man at heart, too aware of the secrets and lies he lived under himself to take for granted that other people weren’t self-protecting or withholding certain facts to better their own position.
“And yet you won’t let me look at your phone,” he said pointedly.
Her jaw set and she turned the device over in her hands. With a shaky little sigh that smacked of defeat, she tapped in her access code, surprising him with her sudden willingness.
“Look at my emails,” she urged. “You’ll see I was counseling him that certain requests could be interpreted as shady.” She offered him the phone.
Gwyn didn’t know much about climbing out of a hole, but she knew you had to bounce off rock bottom, so she went there. At least this humiliation was her choice and only between the two of them, now that the room was empty. At least she was getting a chance to speak her side. Maybe he’d see that she didn’t have anything to hide except a stupid attraction. Hopefully he’d read between the lines and also see that she wasn’t the least bit interested in stupid Kevin Jensen.
Still, it was hard to sit here with the anticipation of further shame washing over her. He would see that her handful of texts and emails with friends back home were innocuous and seldom. She was friendly with many, but actual friends with very few. It was a symptom of moving so much through her childhood, as her mother had tried to find better positions for herself. Gwyn kept in touch with people she liked, mostly through social media, but she didn’t bond very often. She had learned early that it hurt too much when she had to move on. The person she was closest to, her stepfather, didn’t “do” computers. They talked the old-fashioned way, over the phone or face-to-face.
If Vittorio glanced through her social media accounts, he’d see she followed liberal pundits and quirky celebrities. If he looked at her apps, he’d discover she kept her checking account in the black, played Sudoku when she was bored, read mostly romance and had finished her period three days ago.
And if he looked at her photos, he’d see that she had been taking in the sights of Milan on lunches and weekends. Sights that included his extremely handsome head shot hanging in the main foyer of the Donatelli International building.
Her cheeks stung as she waited out his discovery of the incriminating photo. She’d taken it in a fit of infatuation the other day. After passing the fountain in the lobby a million times since her arrival, she’d noticed someone tak
ing a selfie with the burbling water in the background. It had made her realize she could pretend to take a selfie and capture the image of her obsession on the wall.
Why? Why had she followed through on such a silly impulse? It had been as mature as pinning up a poster of a movie star in her bedroom and talking to it.
Especially when he’d been so dismissive the one time she’d smiled at him, like he couldn’t imagine why she, a lowly minion, would send such a dazzling welcome his direction. He worked at such a high level in the bank, he barely showed up to the offices at all. He didn’t consort with peasants like her.
How many times had she even seen him since arriving here? Four?
She mentally snorted at herself. Like she hadn’t counted each glimpse as if they were days until Christmas. She looked for him all the time. It was a bit of a sickness, really. Why? What on earth had convinced her that she had anything in common with a man like him?
Her heightened awareness of him picked up on the subtle stillness that overcame him.
She refused to look at him, certain he was staring at his own image. He must be thinking she was a weird, stalker type now. By any small miracle, was he also noticing that she didn’t have those stupid nudes on there?
“Today is full of surprises.” Vittorio clicked off her phone and tucked it into his shirt pocket, drawing her startled glance. His hammered-gold eyes held an extra glitter of male speculation, something dark and predatory, like he’d just noticed the plump bird that had landed nearby.
Her stomach swooped.
“Did you read the emails?” she asked shakily.
“I glanced over them.”
“And?”
“They appear to support your claim that you weren’t involved.”
“Appear to support,” she repeated. “Like I wrote those emails as some kind of premeditated attempt to cover my butt?” Her translucent skin was growing pink with temper. “Look, you have to know it’s tricky to tell a client an outright ‘no.’ I’ve been trying to do it nicely while Mr. Jensen and Signor Fabrizio—”
