Wedding Night Ultimatum
Clare Connelly
Prologue
WITH NEWS OFhis grandfather’s cancer diagnosis still ringing in his ears, Massimiliano Moretti had wasted no time flying to London and seeking her out. He didn’t pause to question the wisdom of his plan. Nor to think through the details of how this would work.
Sixteen years ago, he had succeeded in arresting his family’s disastrous financial situation through sheer grit and determination, and then, over the course of several years, had taken what was left of their once great fortune and turned it into the kind of wealth that was impossible to fathom. He was now one of the richest men in the world, and he’d achieved that in part because he had followed his gut. His instincts.
And right now, they were telling him he had little time left to fix things for his grandfather.
While he had more than restored their family’s financial health, it was their social standing that the older Moretti obsessed over. Once upon a time, the Moretti family had been considered nobility, admired and respected not just in Italy but across Europe and the world. Until Massimiliano’s father had betrayed every single one of their aristocratic friends, stealing from them and then running away to avoid paying for his sins. The shock waves had cut through their entire world, destroying everything.
With his father absent, it had been Massimiliano and his grandfather, Antonio Moretti, who’d been left to bear the brunt of their one-time friends’ anger, to be excluded and ostracised, left out in the cold. The damage had been wide-reaching, and Massimiliano’s life had been changed in many ways. He’d had to see his grandfather shrink in on himself, becoming a shadow of the great, strong man he’d once been. The woman he’d thought he loved had turned her back on him, refusing to have anything to do with the son of a thief. Where Massimiliano had learned to thrive from the challenge presented to him, and grown from the anger of his heartbreak, the older Moretti had been too devastated and destroyed.
Massimiliano had always intended to pave the way back for the Moretti name. Not that he cared at all for such idle concepts as ‘honour’ and ‘bloodlines’, particularly after seeing how shallow these people were. Yet, to his grandfather, these concepts mattered.
Which meant Massimiliano was intent on making them happen—and now, with urgency.
He was thirty-five and had not thought of settling down once, since that time when his fiancée dumped him, forced into walking away from Massimiliano because of his father’s sins.
He no longer believed in something as antiquated as marriage. And yet, he understood the way these old Italian families worked. So many were crumbling under the financial pressures of maintaining their vast estates, too proud to downsize, too poor to maintain and repair as needed.
Such as the Rossi family, he thought, staring into the small London diner, at the waitress wiping tables. She had fair hair, like starlight, and an ethereally slim build. Her skin was pale and cheeks rosy, classic peaches and cream, undoubtedly from her English father’s side. But there was something in the shift of her features, the straightness of her patrician nose, that spoke of her proud family, of the Rossis.
Did she even realise she was practically royalty? That in Italian circles, her family name was spoken with hushed reverence? And did she know her grandparents were on the brink of financial ruin?
Would she care? Enough to fall in line with his plan?
He strode towards the door of the diner, lips pursed in a determined line. He was counting on the fact that she would. Because he intended to marry Amelia Rossi. In making her his bride, his family would once more have something society valued, and his grandfather could rest, when it was his time, in peace.
Chapter One
THE DOOR SLAMMEDshut in the autumnal breeze, and Amelia groaned under her breath. There were ten minutes left before closing and she’d been hoping to make it out on time for once. What were the chances a patron would appear at this late hour?
She pasted a smile on her face at the same time she balled the cloth into her palm, and turned to scan the shabby diner.
But the second her eyes landed on the man just inside the door, every cell in her body seemed to jolt into hectic disarray. He wasnothinglike their usual guest. This man was almost impossible to describe. She’d seen handsome men before. On television, usually, or occasionally in the wild, in the distance, on the Tube, or at a bar, but this man was something else. He wasn’t just handsome, he was scorch-your-eyes-out hot, with his tall, broad frame, and dark, swarthy complexion. His hair was thick and a deep brown, almost black, his eyes obsidian, his jaw square, as though it had been sculpted by clay to be as imposing as possible, and his cheekbones were slashed high in his face.
He wore a suit that was definitely not off the high street, and his shoes were polished to a gleam.
She didn’t know how long she stood there, staring at him, lips parted, before she collected herself and said, ‘Hiya. Can I get you something?’
His dark eyes narrowed, so a shiver ran the length of her spine. Not from fear, but rather because of the electricity that seemed to have dumped itself into the small room.
‘You are Amelia Rossi,’ he said, disapproval in the deep and accented syllables. She startled at the jarring use of her mother’s maiden name.
‘Amelia Redgrave,’ she corrected automatically, even when she knew it couldn’t be a coincidence. Somehow, and for some reason, someone from her mother’s past had reached out to her.
One corner of his mouth moved in what was almost a sneer, but he covered it quickly. ‘Your mother is Aria Rossi?’
Amelia’s heart began to thump. She’d stopped thinking of herself as a Rossi a long time ago, had wilfully turned her back on her Italian heritage, just as her mother had turned her back on Amelia.
‘Why are you asking?’
He moved deeper into the diner and, somehow, having his immaculate form in the room made her aware of things she wasn’t usually. Like how shabby it was. The flickering fluorescent light above the counter. The faint smell of bleach, from the kitchen.
She refused to feel ashamed, though. Why should she? Amelia had an honest job, and she was working her fingers to the bone at it. Because it felt good to be busy. Good to be distracted. Important not to have too much free time to think about her dad’s death after a long battle with cancer, and how empty her life now was.
