The Italian Billionaire's Disgraced Fiancée

by Betsy Swann

  ‘Ah, still pretending to be a sweet little virgin?’ A sharp laugh left his lips as he turned towards his desk and picked up this morning’s newspaper. He handed it to her, coming just close enough so that she could grab the paper and then stepping back as if she had some infectious disease he didn’t want to catch. ‘Even if you haven’t lied to my face, Carson has certainly made sure that you were no blushing flower when you left his bed this morning.’

  She looked at him blankly. ‘Carson? Who’s that?’

  ‘Too bad you didn’t bother to ask for his name before spending the night with him,’ Enzo bit out, his cold glare never leaving her. ‘Maybe you’ll remember when you look at the pictures.’

  Shaking all over, Izzy followed his advice. She gasped. ‘But this is… this can’t possibly be…’

  But it was. The first picture quite clearly showed Izzy wearing the short red evening dress with high heeled shoes and a satin ‘21st Birthday Girl’ sash across her chest. Her hands were clasped around the neck of a handsome man in his fifties, who carried her out of a nightclub. The second picture showed the same man carrying her from his limousine into a posh looking apartment building.

  ‘Mystery birthday girl gets carried over the threshold by Samuel Carson,’ read the headline. ‘After carrying the unknown beauty from VIP nightclub ‘Glitzy’s’ in his strong arms, the superstore tycoon couldn’t wait to bring his new lady back to his penthouse in one of the best addresses of Chelsea. No doubt well-known playboy Carson will give his Lady in Red a birthday night to remember…’

  Izzy raised her eyes from the page only to be confronted with the glinting cold in her fiancé’s eyes. ‘I don’t understand…’ she whispered, shivering with fear. ‘I don’t know this man. This isn’t me, Enzo. Trust me…’

  ‘Trust you?’ he snarled throwing her a freezing glance that sent an icy shiver down her spine. ‘Do you think I’m a fool? How dare you trying to tell me that you don’t know this man when you still wear that same dress you wore when you went up to his penthouse with him last night?’ He looked down her body in disgust, taking in the smeared make-up, the crumpled red dress, the mess she was in. ‘You’re nothing but a gold-digging slut, you even look like one. Stupid me, not to have noticed before. You must have been proud to have blinded me with your acting. Congratulations, you did well. Your little act that you were still a virgin was very convincing.’

  ‘Please believe me, darling, I’ve never seen this man in my life. I…I don’t know what to say, there must be some terrible misunderstanding. I’m sure these photos can be explained…’

  ‘Spare me your explanations,’ he bit out. ‘These pictures tell me everything I need to know. I’m only grateful that I found out what kind of woman you are before I was stupid enough to fall into your marriage trap, but you can forget about that now, as you probably have guessed.’

  ‘Enzo, please,’ Izzy urged. ‘I don’t know what these photos are about, but please believe me that I never…’

  ‘Slept with him?’ he interrupted, his mouth pressed into a hard line. ‘Quite frankly, I don’t care whether you slept with him or not. You can sell your body to as many rich men as you want as long as it’s not me.’

  ‘It’s not like that, really it’s not,’ Izzy whispered. ‘Please listen to me…’

  ‘Forget it’, he snarled. ‘Keep your lies and explanations to yourself. I don’t want to hear any of this. Just get out, Izzy. I hope I’ll never have the misfortune to set eyes on you again.’

  ‘Enzo, please, you can’t mean that,’ she gasped. ‘It wasn’t like that, I swear. In fact, I spent the night at the hospital…’

  ‘Get out,’ he interrupted her harshly. ‘Your five minutes are over.’

  ‘Please, Enzo, let me finish.’

  ‘How often do I need to repeat it?’ His lips were an unmerciful line. ‘Get. Out. Now.’

  ‘I tried to let you know’, she said in a desperate voice, ‘but I’d forgotten my phone, and the nurse couldn’t reach you because…’

  ‘I can’t believe you’ve stooped so low,’ he rasped. ‘Do you think I’m so gullible? So in love that you can dish up a sob story and the evidence will be forgotten, the photos showing where you have really spent the night?’

  Izzy stared at him, chilled with horror, and had no idea what she could possibly say. He was breaking up with her, only hours after her father had died, and she had no words left. She even felt too weak to argue about it. What had happened to ‘for better and for worse’? What had happened to mutual trust?

  ‘So you…you don’t love me anymore?’

  ‘What do you think?’ His unforgiving tone told her all she needed to know. ‘Have a good look at those pictures again, and I’m sure you can come up with the answer yourself.’

  Abruptly he turned to face the windows again, leaving her to stare at the dark silhouette of his back.

  ‘I guess my five minutes are truly over,’ she whispered, her eyes swimming with tears. Her desperate silent prayer that he might change his mind and take her into his arms after all was not answered. There was nothing left for her to do but leave.

  ‘Good-bye, Enzo,’ she said, but his only answer was silence.

  Izzy didn’t know how she managed to get out of the ‘Vallorini’ her head held high and without breaking apart in front of the beaming staff and the elegantly dressed guests crossing her path. She had never felt so utterly shocked and miserable in her life. Within a few hours she had lost the two men she had truly loved. They’d been her only family, her everything. It was almost too much to take in.

  The fresh air combined with the overpowering noise of the frantic London traffic woke her from her shell-shocked state as soon as she stepped outside. She pressed the newspaper with the upsetting pictures to her chest.

  There was only one move of action she could take now.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Enzo didn’t turn when the door closed behind her. His lips firmly pressed together, he stared into the grey clouds hanging above Green Park, their colour reflecting the state of his mind. So that was it. She had vanished from his life. Izzy had gone, just as he had intended her to do. This was what he had wanted, wasn’t it? So why did he feel so utterly miserable now, as if his heart had frozen over?

  He raked his hair with his fingers. First his parents and now Izzy… What was it about him that people he truly cared about couldn’t love him back? If his parents were still alive, he could have asked them why they’d left the family mansion to Luca instead of him; to the younger brother, who didn’t even want the house, while Enzo had loved everything about the beautiful home he grew up in.

  His parents had adopted him as a baby while Luca was their biological son. Whenever they had the opportunity, they had told him that they loved both their sons the same. Enzo had believed them until the solicitor had read out their final will after the funeral. Well, they were dead now and it was too late to question their decision.

  Izzy isn’t dead, he heard a little voice in his head. You could have asked her to tell you what happened.

  But he had, and she’d only come up with a series of lies. Or hadn’t she? Enzo furrowed his brow. He had confronted her with these sleazy pictures of her and Samuel Carson, and the only explanation she’d come up with was that she didn’t know the man. That she’d spent the night in the hospital.

  How stupid did she think he was?

  And if it was the truth? The little voice asked again. What if the woman in the pictures really is somebody else?

  Enzo felt cold sweat break out on his forehead.

  It couldn’t be, could it? She’d even been wearing the red dress she was wearing in the photographs. No question, Izzy was a gold-digger who’d eagerly jumped into bed with the next rich guy who was unfortunate enough to cross her path. Then again…Dio! Why would a gold-digger leave her billionaire fiancé for a much older model like Carson, a notorious playboy who might never put a ring on her finger? Had he got it all terribly wrong, after all? />
  Enzo reached for the phone. His cousin regularly employed a private investigator, and that was exactly what he needed now, and pronto.

  Enzo came straight to the point.

  ‘Could your private eye find out whether a young woman called Izzy Jones spent last night in hospital?’

  ‘Do you know which hospital?’

  Enzo was relieved when his cousin didn’t ask why he wanted to know or what role Izzy played in his life. ‘She was in Suffolk yesterday but she’s in London today, so any hospital between Suffolk and London might be the one.’ He sighed. ‘Just check them all.’

  ‘That might take a while. Izzy… Is that her proper name, or is it short for Isabel or something?’

  Enzo blanched. So much for whirlwind romances. He didn’t even know his fiancé’s first name.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ he growled. Why the hell had he never asked? ‘Izzy, Isabel, Isobel, Elizabeth…’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ his cousin interrupted. ‘I’ll sort it out.’

  After ending the call, Enzo put his phone back into his jacket and stormed out of his office.

  ‘Please cancel my appointments for the next three hours,’ he told his red-haired personal assistant without even stopping to look at her and strode towards the lift. If anyone in this world knew which beauty had warmed Samuel Carson’s bed last night, it was Carson himself. All he had to do was ask him, and that was exactly what he was going to do. Only then could he be certain that he hadn’t made the worst mistake of his life.

  The headquarters of Carson’s superstore emporium were housed a brisk twenty-minute walk from the ‘Vallorini’. Enzo had hoped that the physical exercise would calm him down, but by the time he reached his destination he was far from being relaxed. Gold-digger or no gold-digger that was the question, and like a drowning man he clutched at the hope that he’d gotten it all wrong. That is was all a terrible misunderstanding, and that against all odds Izzy was the lovely, innocent girl he’d fallen in love with.

  Dio, please let it be a mistake…

  Never before in his life had his heart ached like this, never had he felt so desperate. Even if it now turned out that he had accused Izzy of something she had never done, would she be willing to come back to him after all he’d said to her? He shuddered at the memory of the terrible words he had thrown into her face without even checking her explanations about her whereabouts the previous night. Never again would he allow himself to get so carried away by his emotions. After seeing these pictures in the morning papers, the apparent proof of her betrayal had turned him into a raging mess. Him of all people, a man who was known for his fairness and careful consideration.

  Enzo was just about to cross the street when he saw the huge glass door of Carson’s office building open on the other side of the road and Carson stepped out, his arm around Izzy’s shoulder.

  Enzo froze. So it was true, the two of them did know each other. Izzy had lied to him. The realisation hit him like a sledge hammer.

  Dio, and he had nearly convinced himself that she had been innocent after all…How stupid could a man be?

  Without them noticing, he followed them to one of the little café bars in a side road, where Carson and Izzy sat down at a table in the window and ordered some food. With clenched fists, Enzo watched the older man speak to Izzy and smile at her, and her smiling back at him with a warm expression in her eyes. The same way she had looked at him so many times before. It all had been nothing but an act…

  Enzo felt the bitter taste of bile rise into his mouth. Furiously, he pushed open the door of the café and stormed in.

  ‘Surprise, surprise,’ he bit out as he reached their table. ‘The happy couple having lunch together. Strange, isn’t it, Izzy, after you tried to convince me this morning that you didn’t have a secret lover? That you didn’t even know Carson?’

  ‘Enzo, please…’ Izzy whispered and stood up, nervous red streaks forming on her cheeks. ‘You’ve got it all wrong. Samuel isn’t…’

  ‘So it’s Samuel now?’ Enzo snarled. ‘I must admit the speed at which you get cosy with a complete stranger and call him by his first name seems almost professional to me.’

  She looked at him with an expression of disbelief in her eyes and something else that he couldn’t quite name, but that looked a lot like pain. ‘Professional,’ she finally repeated. ‘Like a whore, you mean?’

  He didn’t bother to answer. His silence would be answer enough.

  Carson rose to his feet. ‘Please Mr Vallorini, let me explain…’

  Enzo silenced him with a swift movement of his hand. ‘If you think I want to listen to your seedy explanations, you’ve got another think coming, Carson,’ he said. ‘So do me a favour and keep out of this. This is between me and my ex-fiancé.’

  Izzy stared at him in silence with trembling lips, her chin tilted up defiantly. Then she pulled her diamond engagement ring off her finger in a swift movement and held it out to him, its fiery sparkle that had meant to represent the eternal gleam of their love now mocking his eyes.

  ‘I guess this is why you came after me,’ she said with an icy cool in her voice that only underlined the calculating nature she’d kept hidden from him until this morning. ‘Take it and leave. Just get out of my life.’

  ‘So now you’re playing the innocent party in front of your boyfriend?’ Enzo snatched the diamond ring from her fingers and let it slide into the pocket of his jacket. ‘I wouldn’t have thought you’d stoop so low and, quite frankly, I can’t thank my lucky stars enough that I found out about your character before it was too late.’

  Without another word, he strode out of the café and onto the pavement. Hot anger was raging through his body, and not just mere anger. Jealousy, the green-eyed monster, threatened to consume him alive, a feeling totally alien to him. He had never been jealous in his life, but now that wretched engagement ring seemed to burn a hole in his pocket. All because of a woman who clearly was not worth his emotions.

  His phone rang.

  ‘No luck,’ his cousin’s voice drifted through the receiver. ‘Just some guy with the name of Jones, who died last night in one of the Suffolk hospitals, and a few elderly patients, none of them called anything even close to Izzy. Unless you are talking about the Isabel Jones currently giving birth in the labour ward of…’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Enzo interrupted. ‘I knew this would be the outcome anyway, I just wanted to make sure. So thanks. If I can ever return the favour…’

  ‘Thanks for the offer. I’ll keep it in mind, if I’m next in need of a plush hotel suite for me and one of the delightful Miss Jones of this world.’ His cousin chuckled. ‘What is she, blonde, red-head, or brunette?’

  ‘Mind your own business.’

  Rolling his eyes, Enzo cut the connection. His three cousins, with whom he and Luca had grown up, were notorious womanisers, who wouldn’t dream of tying the knot. They had all but winced when Luca had surprised the family by introducing his beautiful new wife, actress Rebecca Morton. Enzo sighed. He certainly wouldn’t admit to any of them that he had gone as far as putting an engagement ring on Izzy’s finger. Luca, yeah…that was something else. Luca was a married man and in love. He would understand but not his cousins.

  His phone went off again.

  ‘How’s Vegas, Luca?’ Enzo enquired after a quick glance at the display.

  ‘I’m back in London,’ his brother replied. ‘I returned home early and shit, Enzo, all hell has broken loose.’

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Two years later

  All hell had broken loose?

  Enzo froze, his eyes locked at the dome of St Peter’s Basilica glistening in the morning sunshine outside his office in Rome’s flagship Vallorini hotel. A terrible sense of déjà vu crept up his spine as he held his mobile phone against his ear. Luca had uttered exactly the same words when he had phoned two years ago in London, moments after Enzo’s final encounter with Izzy and her aging playboy lover - and what a hell that had been, ultimately
costing them their home, the beloved Suffolk mansion that had been in their mother’s family for generations. The house now belonged to Rebecca Morton, Luca’s greedy ex-wife, as part of their divorce settlement.

  He frowned. He would not allow his brother to land them in such a mess again, that was for sure.

  ‘So you have had a fling with your personal assistant,’ he repeated, ‘until you surprised her up close and personal with Nick Hetherington in the box room of your office.’

  ‘Yes,’ Luca confirmed. ‘And now I don’t know what to do.’

  ‘Forget her, of course. What else?’

  Luca sighed. ‘It’s not as easy as that. Obviously you didn’t listen to a single word I was telling you, so let me say it again: I wanted to propose to her tonight. Everything was prepared, the ring, the champagne…but now I’m confused. My heart tells me to marry her anyway, to forgive and forget, but can I really still trust her?’

  ‘Marry her?’ Enzo gasped in shock. ‘Are you nuts, after all you went through with your darling ex-wife? You can’t possibly think of tying the knot again.’

  ‘Bella is completely different, Enzo. You can’t compare her with Rebecca. Bella is one in a million. Trust me she is the sweetest, most innocent…’

  ‘Innocent!’ Enzo couldn’t believe what he was hearing. ‘How can you call her innocent after you found her cheating with Hetherington? Are you crazy?’

  ‘That’s just it, crazy,’ his brother confirmed. ‘I’m crazy in love and want to spend the rest of my life with her, or at least that was the plan. Now, one minute I want to go down on my knee and propose, and the next I’m not so sure any more. I can’t believe Bella made a pass on Hetherington. He must have lured her into that box room and...’

  Enzo took a deep breath. This Bella had done a good job turning his brother’s head. To contemplate marriage even though she’d been unfaithful right under his nose… It was unbelievable.

  ‘So what exactly do you mean by all hell breaking loose, then?’ he asked, trying to keep his voice as calm as possible.