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‘You resign from your job.’
‘Resign? Are you out of your mind?’ Mina gasped in disbelief.
‘If you don’t resign, conscience demands that I drop a warning word in the relevant quarter,’ Cesare delivered in a grim undertone. ‘Finance manager—you? Sì…I know that you’re in line for promotion. And there is no way I can stand back and let you get your greedy little paws into charitable funds.’
Mina had been sitting there staring woodenly out through the windscreen, determinedly not looking at him. Now her head spun round as though he had jerked a wire. ‘Are you actually insinuating that I can’t be trusted with money?’ she spelt out in a strained whisper, her wide eyes incredulous at the suggestion.
‘I know you can’t be trusted.’ Cesare slanted her a look of stony derision. ‘Nor am I impressed by this infantile act of innocence. You committed a criminal offence four years ago and the law may not have been fast enough to pick up on the trail…but I was,’ he drawled in a seething undertone, shooting her a smouldering glance of menace. ‘I still have the evidence that could send you to prison——’
‘Prison?’ The single word exploded from between her dry lips, shrill and strangled, as she stared back at him in disbelief.
‘Insider dealing. The courts frown heavily on the offence. You could still be tried for it.’
Every scrap of colour had drained from her cheeks. Mina tried and failed to swallow. Insider dealing. He was accusing her of having used confidential information to trade for her own benefit on the Stock Exchange. The practice was illegal.
‘You’re crazy…I would never have done anything like that,’ Mina protested in a voice that was weak from sheer shock that he could believe her capable of such an act.
‘You’d have done it more than once if I’d given you the chance,’ Cesare asserted with icy bite, his profile golden and granite-hard in the street-light slanting through the windscreen. ‘But I didn’t. I sacked you and you took your ill-gotten gains and disappeared off the face of this planet!’
‘That’s not true. There weren’t any ill-gotten gains because I didn’t do it!’ she exclaimed shrilly, her heart pounding madly with fright against her ribcage.
Cesare’s ice-cold stare told her just how unimpressed he was by her protests.
‘I thought you sacked me because—because I slept with you!’ She had to force out the statement and she couldn’t bring herself to look at him.
‘Dio mio! The jury will surely break down and cry when they hear that defence,’ Cesare said with flat derision. ‘It is on record that you were sacked for gross misconduct.’
‘I know, but I——’
‘Popular report suggests that some prisons harbour big butch women. At seven stone and built like a doll, maybe you should consider getting into training.’
Mina was in such turmoil that she shrank back against the passenger door in horror. ‘I’m not going to prison…I haven’t done anything!’
‘Well, you’re certainly not about to do anything in the charity world.’ Cesare shot the assurance at her with cold threat. ‘With your talent for accounting, you could work any number of scams. I want you out of there as of now——’
‘But I haven’t done anything…I’m not dishonest!’ Mina slung back at him in helpless repetition and growing apprehension.
‘If you push me I’ll tell Haland, and I can back my allegations up with cold, hard evidence,’ Cesare returned with slashing cool. ‘And a man like Haland, with all those fine, upstanding principles, might just feel that when he’s informed of an illegal act it is his duty to report it to the authorities——’
‘And if you were so convinced I was guilty, why didn’t you call them in?’ Mina demanded wildly, fighting to find some angle on which she could base a defence.
‘It would have been like reporting a murder without the corpse. You’d vanished like a thief in the night.’ Cesare lounged back with indolent relaxation and surveyed her intently, eyes slivers of molten gold beneath the luxuriant fringe of his ebony lashes. ‘And I did entertain myself briefly with a vision of you becoming a prison mascot, but ultimately it didn’t satisfy me. I think the punishment should fit the crime——’
‘I haven’t committed any crime…why won’t you listen to me?’ she gasped.
‘You used pillow-talk for profit——’
‘Pillow-talk?’
‘You ripped off that information like a professional. You made a fool of me. I could have been dragged down in the dirt with you. Guilty by association. I have no doubt you intended to say that you traded on my behalf if you were caught,’ Cesare told her very softly, every accented syllable dropping into the throbbing silence. ‘Pull the dumb dizzy blonde act and insist you had no idea that what you were doing was against the law.’
‘You’re out of your m-mind!’ Mina was white, barely able to vocalise.
‘Say you were seduced, used,’ Cesare continued with harshened emphasis, pinning her to the spot with smouldering dark golden eyes that burned. ‘If you were a man I’d have killed you…but you’re a woman and I intend to use you exactly as you used me…’
CHAPTER TWO
‘I BEG your pardon?’ Mina was still reeling with shock, her brain thrown into total chaos by the shattering accusation that Cesare Falcone had dropped on her four years after the event.
