Rich Man's Revenge

by Tessa Radley

  Rico noted that in the space of a day his father already looked much better. “She’s in New Zealand. We both agreed that I should get to your side as quickly as possible.”

  “But I am not dying. You should’ve brought her. I want to see this woman who will bear your children.” With a sly glance in Rico’s direction, he added, “Why only today the specialist was saying that I’m in very good shape for a man of seventy. Maybe I will come out to New Zealand and see this wife myself?”

  “Perhaps we wait awhile, Umberto,” Rico’s mother suggested tactfully.

  A remarkable recovery. Rico narrowed his eyes for an instant. Then shook his head. No, Umberto had suffered a stroke. That hadn’t been faked. But perhaps he’d exaggerated the severity?

  His father sat up, demanding that Bella rearrange the cushions. Rico stepped forward to help raise the back of the hospital bed. When everything was settled to his father’s liking, he said, “You’re an old rapscallion.”

  The guilty glance that Umberto shot him proved that his suspicions weren’t wholly unfounded. Umberto said quickly, “The news you bring makes me feel better already. You should get back to your new wife. Tell her the family demands to see her.” A grin lit up Umberto’s weathered face. “What is the lucky woman’s name?”

  “Danielle.”

  “Ah, Daniella—a good name, a good choice, my son.”

  “Danielle, not Daniella, Papa. It suits her.”

  “Ah, well. And her family name?”

  With reluctance Rico added, “Sinclair.”

  His sister gasped. Umberto’s eyes turned black. “Sinclair? This is the name of the family that—”

  His mother placed a restraining hand on Umberto’s. “Hush, you don’t let Rico talk.”

  “Si.” Rico stood straight, determined not to let his tension show. “She’s the sister of the girl who accused me.”

  Suddenly Umberto didn’t look so joyous. “Do you not make a mistake, my son?”

  Hell, yes. He’d done nothing but make one mistake after the other.

  He gave a small smile. “You’ll have to decide for yourselves.”

  “I want to meet her,” Bella chimed in. “Any woman who married you, big brother, must have special qualities.” The concern on his father’s face started to ease.

  “I’ll tell Danielle she has been summoned,” Rico said, even more determined now to stop Danielle’s plans for a divorce.

  “Grazie.” His father sounded supremely satisfied, and Rico shot him another sharp look.

  “Why do I get the feeling that the old man has been waiting for this day?” he murmured to his sister.

  “Maybe because I’m proving too slow to find a husband and Claudia is already married off. Of course, Claudia only has a daughter and that doesn’t count,” she replied sotto voce. “You—the last male in the D’Alessio line—were the final hope.”

  He grimaced. How could he devastate his family with the news that his wife would never bear his children?

  “Rico,” Umberto called. “You should tell the Ravaldi family of your remarriage. Alessandro will want to extend his felicitations.”

  Curtly Rico inclined his head. He’d been dreading that visit—he should’ve got it over with on his previous visit to Milan several months earlier. But seeing his brother-in-law would have opened raw wounds. After all, Alessandro had lost a sister, a sister whose well-being he’d entrusted to Rico.

  Rico’s hands fisted. That made it twice that women under his care and protection had died. Rose Sinclair and Lucia Ravaldi both gone.

  “I’ve an appointment to see Alessandro,” he revealed, hoping that his brother-in-law would not be too outraged by his second marriage. But his family’s delight in his newly remarried state had surprised him. Maybe even Alessandro didn’t expect him to mourn forever.

  A pair of wide grey-green eyes crept into his mind, and the dimple beside the irrepressible smile. Danielle. She’d deceived him. Yet she was sweet, kind and wanted nothing more than his happiness. She’d put up with a lot from him, while she’d been recovering from terrifying threats. His wife had guts.

  He should grab what was offered to him, take another risk. But what about children—an heir? He stared at his parents’ intertwined hands, watched as his father’s fingers tightened convulsively around his mother’s. Already Danielle made him feel so many things he’d never experienced before. The intense passion that sizzled when their eyes met, the melting warmth when he said something that made her laugh, the sheer pleasure he found simply being with her.

  Suddenly—unexpectedly—he missed her desperately.

  A car horn hooted outside.

  Damn. Her ride had arrived earlier than yesterday. Danielle splashed more water on her face. The evidence of her sleepless night was there for the world to see in her sad, reddened eyes. A dull ache reverberated through her head. She contemplated climbing back into bed, drawing the covers over her head and letting the day pass in a hazy slumber.

  But work was waiting for her. She had to forget Rico and submerge herself in her career. Except, the prospect of a Sinco directorship no longer held the same appeal. She would look for another job. Fly a little. At least then she’d no longer be sitting next to the empty office of her tall, dark and dangerous lover.

  As the horn sounded again she grabbed her briefcase and rushed through the front door. “I’m sorry, Tymon, I overslept.”

  A new chauffeur wearing reflective sunglasses stood beside the open door of the car. Ken Pascal must’ve accepted her misgivings about Bob Harvey. She suppressed a grin. The new chauffeur apparently fancied himself as a Hollywood FBI extra. Dimly she noticed the car was different, too. She dived into the back, only to find herself alone.

  “Tymon?” she asked, panic rising. The wide back seat was empty. She tried the door. It was locked. Frantically she thought back, her mind buzzing. How long had it been since she’d last heard Tymon? At least fifteen minutes. He’d shouted up the stairs that he’d made her breakfast—not that she’d had time to eat it—and then there’d been silence. Was he in on this, too? Or was he hurt? Her mind shied away from the possibility that he might be dead.

  Danielle banged her briefcase against the tinted windows, but they were solid. The partition that separated her from the driver was a dark pane that revealed nothing. “Let me out!”

  The car speeded up. Breathing deeply, the taste of fear like cold metal in her mouth, she tried not to let panic debilitate her. This was what Rico had been waiting for. This bastard had toyed with her for far too long. Well, she’d had enough. He wasn’t going to get the better of her.

  “You’ve remarried? May I offer congratulations?” Alessandro embraced Rico, and the tension that had coiled through Rico all day started to ease.

  “Thank you.” Rico stepped back, relieved to see Alessandro smiling at him, his fierce tawny eyes filled with pleasure.

  “You’ve been a stranger for too long, Rico.”

  “I should’ve visited earlier,” he acknowledged. His guilt hadn’t allowed it.

  “I’ll never understand why you didn’t accept my offer of assistance. It would’ve secured you the best defence lawyers in the world.”

  Rico shrugged, unwilling to reveal how reluctant he’d been to sponge off his wife’s family, how foolish he’d been to believe Robert Sinclair’s bluff. But if it had been true…

  The thought of a world without Danielle made him shudder. Then he hadn’t known of her inner strength, had only seen her as one of life’s victims. “Lucia didn’t believe in my innocence in the end, so what was the point in trying to prove it to a roomful of strangers, hmm?”

  “Rico,” Alessandro’s gaze was level, “I’m going to say this only once. You’re alive, you have a life ahead of you. Let Lucia go. Remember what you shared but don’t idealise her.”

  “I don’t want to forget her, Alessandro,” Rico said, wishing the pain would go.

  “I know. I loved my sister and I miss her, too. But I wasn’t b
lind to her shortcomings. Don’t think I don’t know that she could be incredibly headstrong.”

  Rico had to laugh at Alessandro’s knowing expression. “Sometimes,” he conceded.

  “Many times!” Alessandro cast his eyes heavenwards. “And she had more than eating disorders…and bouts of depression…she was always insecure. Dio mio, I remember how pathologically jealous she was—terrified that she’d snatched you too young, that one day you’d fall for a younger woman.”

  Startled, Rico stared at Alessandro. “That’s insane.”

  “It’s true. Why do you think she was so furious about the whole debacle? It was her worst nightmare come true. She thought she’d driven you away by her foolish jealousy.”

  “I loved her. I would never’ve been tempted by another woman,” Rico said, angry at the very idea that his loyalty, his honour, was at issue. Although in the deepest corner of his brain a splinter of guilt festered. He hadn’t been totally unaware of the eighteen-year old Danielle. How could he forget the anguish that had melded them together while her mother died? And he remembered too damn well how little she’d worn in his room that night, her wide grey-green eyes full of adoration. But he would never have betrayed Lucia.

  “I know that.” Alessandro patted his shoulder. “I never doubted you for an instant. And I told that to Lucia. But she wanted to make you sweat—to suffer.” He sighed. “What people do to their loved ones makes me pleased I’ve never risked matrimony. And here you are, ready for love again.”

  “I don’t l—” Rico bit off the rest of the denial, before he had to face a barrage of questions about exactly why he had married Danielle. Suddenly his reasons didn’t seem terribly honourable.

  Her clear eyes, the up-tilted chin, the wicked sense of humour, should’ve warned him that she’d never be a pushover. But had he looked for the signs? No, he’d simply steamrolled her into what he wanted, giving little in return.

  Alessandro was right. He had a second chance at happiness. It was time to say goodbye to Lucia.

  When his cell phone started its insistent ring, Rico impatiently checked the identity of the caller, about to divert it to voice mail. But when he saw the Auckland number displayed, his heart started to pound. “D’Alessio,” he answered curtly.

  “Rico!” The use of his first name captured his attention, but it was the stark pain in Robert Sinclair’s voice that made his knees go weak. The older man’s next words drove all thought out of his head, until all that remained was cold, numbing agony.

  “Hey—” a hand shook him “—are you okay?”

  Rico wrenched his mind away from the horrors he was imagining and stared into Alessandro’s concerned eyes. His mouth felt parched and he swallowed, his chest burning. But he dared not reveal the depth of his pain, in case he never managed to bottle it up again.

  Instead he said in a dull, lifeless tone, “My wife has been kidnapped.”

  Twelve

  “Y ou!” Danielle climbed out of the car and squinted through the dusk at the man in front of her. With the wraparound sunglasses and chauffeur’s cap gone, his narrow face and high forehead rendered him instantly recognisable. Not Bob Harvey. “Why are you doing this, Jim?”

  The scars crisscrossing Jim Dembo’s face twisted into a vicious mask. “Look at me. I’m a mess. My life is a mess. You and your family got off scot-free.”

  “Hardly. My mother died in the accident that did that to you.” She gestured to the disfiguring marks. “I heard her final gasp while you were lying unconscious in the driver’s seat.” She struggled to breathe, the memory stabbing at an unhealed corner in her heart.

  For a moment he looked uncertain. “Don’t try to talk your way out of this,” he snarled. “I know how your family operates. Plenty of promises to good ol’ Jim and then not much more.”

  Jim had been well compensated. But no one knew better than she that money could never heal the trauma he’d suffered. “I’m so sorry for what happened to you. We were all victims of a drunk driver. It could’ve happened to anyone.”

  “You owe me! I’ve waited a long time for someone to pay.”

  Another man out to use her as a scapegoat. Danielle gritted her teeth against her angry response. But when he produced a gun, she stilled, her gaze fixed on the weapon like a snake on a snake charmer. Surely he didn’t intend to kill her? Hadn’t she read that kidnapped victims were more valuable alive than dead?

  “Move!”

  Frightened, Danielle scanned the surroundings. A short distance away a small wooden hut huddled in a thicket of rimu trees. Not the kind of place where she wanted to die. “Who owns this place? You?”

  She wanted to keep him talking, to establish herself as a person in his eyes rather than a thing he could readily dispose of. But Jim didn’t respond. Instead he grabbed her and shoved her forward.

  Once inside the hut she blinked to accustom her eyes to the dim light. In a corner lay an old mattress topped with a heap of blankets. A collection of tools gleamed on shelves against the furthest wall. Screwdrivers, a hammer and an array of power tools. A first-aid box peeped out from under a coil of rope. On the lowest shelf there was a line of small empty glass bottles, the kind that roadside stalls used for honey and jam. The rest of the shelves were packed with tins of provisions, enough to feed a small army under siege. A burst of dismay filled her. Jim had planned this. She struggled to suppress the fear spewing against her innards. “Now what?”

  “We wait.”

  According to the luminous markings on Danielle’s watch, forty hours had passed since Jim had snatched her. Chilled to the bone by the mountain air, she twisted restlessly on the lumpy, musty mattress. Earlier she’d had a bout of coughing that made her stomach heave. Jim had jerked her up, unlocked the door and thrust her out. He’d waited while she’d finished retching in the stand-alone toilet before leading her back inside.

  It had to be nerves because she’d eaten nothing despite Jim’s anger at her refusal. She didn’t want food. She wanted Rico—the security of his arms. But Rico was on the other side of the world, taking care of his sick father, convinced that she was already instituting divorce proceedings.

  Danielle shivered. Thinking about her circumstances was not helping. Eventually, in sheer desperation, she started talking. “What does your wife—Jenny, wasn’t it?—think of what you’re doing?

  “My bloody wife left me!” Jim’s violence made Danielle flinch. He punched a number into his cell phone and thrust it at her. “Here, you tell the bitch what’s happening.”

  A sleepy female voice answered and Danielle asked, “Is that Jenny?”

  “Who is this?” Danielle’s heart sank at the suspicious anger in the other woman’s voice. “My God, do you know what time it is?”

  “It’s important.”

  “It better be bloody critical.”

  Slowly, Danielle said, “Your husband made me call.”

  “My husband? You mean Jim? He’s not my husband. I divorced him four months ago.” A pause followed. Then, “What’s he done? Is he in trouble?”

  “Jenny, I need you to stay calm. My name’s Danielle—”

  With a curse Jim grabbed the phone and yelled wildly, “Jenny, I’ve kidnapped a woman. And I’m not going to release her until you agree to come back to me. If you keep refusing, I’m going to start cutting little bits off her and posting them to you—so you better come round fast.”

  Danielle heard the wail and the sobs that followed.

  Jim snapped the phone off. “That’ll teach the bitch.”

  Sick bastard! He wouldn’t get his wife back like that. Danielle bit back the comment. Provoking him would serve no purpose—he was clearly out of control. Far better to come up with a plan to get herself out of this mess. In the dark outside she’d have a better chance to escape. Perhaps if she told him she needed the toilet…

  Casually she picked up the jacket she’d taken off because it was tight and constricting, and slipped it on. She’d need all the warmth she could
get out there in the hills.

  “Next call.” He sounded more confident, almost cocky. Shoving the phone into her hand, he said, “Dial your father. Tell him that I want two million dollars tomorrow night at six. Hand the phone to me so that I can give the location for the drop off. Make sure he knows that after six you lose a finger every hour, then your toes, then your ears, then your eyes. I’ll send them to him in jars.

  Danielle’s gaze slid to the shelves. To the row of ominously empty jam jars, then to the power tools below. Her teeth started to clatter at the sight of the shiny skill saw. Even the first-aid box assumed a new menace. Nausea threatened again, and her stomach churned.

  A metallic rasp sounded. She turned her head. Jim brandished the gun. “Make sure he understands I’m serious. You won’t have long to talk, because I’m not giving the bastards the chance to get a trace on me. If you tell him who I am or where you think you might be, I’ll shoot you, understand?”

  Dumbly she nodded, her head spinning from the instructions, the horror of what he planned to do.

  “Okay, now phone.”

  She dialled the familiar number, praying that her father would be in. Two, three, four rings. Come on, Daddy. Five. Six. Her shoulders drooped as she waited for the answer service to kick in. The click of the handset being lifted was music to her ears. She felt breathless with relief.

  “Hello?” a familiar voice said.

  “Rico…?” she gasped out. He was back!

  “Danielle, where you are?” Rico’s voice rang with urgency.

  Danielle hesitated, glanced sideways. Jim raised the gun, the round dark hole at the end of the barrel staring at her. Fear, corrosive and sharp burned her throat.

  “I don’t know,” she choked out.

  “You’re being threatened!”

  “Yes,” she confirmed, and gave Jim a conciliatory smile.

  Jim grabbed the phone from her, and her gut-wrenching despair shocked her. She needed to hear Rico’s voice, to draw strength from him.