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PROLOGUE
SIENA DEPIERO HELD her older sister’s hand tightly as they left their palazzo. Even though she was twelve and Serena was fourteen they still instinctively sought each other for support. Their father was in an even more mercurial mood than usual today. Their car was waiting by the kerb, a uniformed driver standing by the open door. Siena knew that her father’s bodyguards were nearby.
Just feet away from the car a tall young man with dark hair seemed to spring from nowhere, stopping their father in his tracks. He was gesticulating and calling their father Papà. Siena and Serena had come to a halt too, with burly guards standing between them and this confrontation.
Siena looked around the bodyguards. She could instantly see the resemblance of this young man to their father. He had the same shaped face and deep-set eyes. But how could he be related? Suddenly there was a dull crunching sound and the young man was sprawled on the ground, looking up with shock on his face, blood running from his nose. Their father had hit him.
Siena gripped Serena’s hand tight in shock at the sudden violence. Their father turned back and gestured angrily for them to follow him. The path was so narrow that they had to step over the young man’s legs. Siena was too scared to look at him—he was so wild and feral.
They were ushered into the back of the car and Siena heard their father issue terse instructions to his men. Just then she heard the young man roar, ‘I’m Rocco, your son—you bastard!’
When their father got into the car and it pulled away, Siena couldn’t stop herself from looking behind them. She saw their father’s men dragging the young man out of sight. She felt sick. Serena was looking stonily ahead but her hand gripped Siena’s.
Their father caught Siena by the ear painfully and jerked her head round. Siena clamped her mouth shut. She knew better than to make a sound.
He forced her to look at him. ‘What do you think you are doing?’
‘Nothing, Papà.’
His mouth was a thin line of anger. ‘Good, because you know what happens if you anger me.’
Serena’s grip on Siena’s hand was so tight she nearly cried out. Quickly Siena said, ‘Yes, Papà.’
After a long, tense moment their father let her go and faced the front again. Siena knew very well what happened when she angered him. He would punish her sister Serena. It was never her. Always her sister. Because that was what amused him.
Siena didn’t look at her sister, but they kept their hands tightly gripped together for the rest of the journey.
CHAPTER ONE
ANDREAS XENAKIS DIDN’T like the strength of the thrill of triumph that moved through him. It signified that this moment held more importance for him than he’d care to admit. Bitterly, he had to concede that perhaps it did. After all, practically within touching distance now was the woman who had all but cried rape for her own amusement, to protect her untarnished image in her father’s eyes. She’d merited him a savage beating, losing his job, being blacklisted from every hotel in Europe and having to start over again on the other side of the world. Far away from anyone he’d known or who had known him.
She was still exquisite. More so. Andreas had found himself imagining that she couldn’t possibly be as stunning as she’d been since he’d seen her five years ago. But she was. She was a woman now, not a teenager.
Her hair was so blonde it shone almost white under the soft lighting of a hundred chandeliers. It was pulled up into a high bun. She held herself with the same effortlessly regal bearing he’d first noticed in that glittering ballroom in Paris. His mouth compressed. She was a thoroughbred in the midst of lesser beings. He could see how women near her instinctively shut her out, as if sensing competition.
His eyes moved over the curve of her cheek and jaw. The patrician line of her nose more than hinted at the blue-blooded heritage of her Italian ancestry, diluted only in part by her half-English mother who had been related to royalty. Her skin was still pale and looked soft: as soft as a rose petal. Andreas’s belly clenched hard to recall just how soft it had felt under his fingers.
He’d touched her reverently, as if she were an ethereal goddess, and he’d felt as if he was marking her, staining her purity with his touch. His hands were fists by his sides now as he thought of how she’d urged him on with breathy, sexy entreaties in his ear: ‘Please…I want you to touch me, Andreas.’ Only to turn on him almost in the same breath and accuse him of attacking her…
She turned then, to face towards him, and that low, simmering anger was eclipsed when blood rushed to his head and to his groin, making him simultaneously dizzy and hard.
He couldn’t escape the impact of those huge, glittering bright blue eyes ringed with long dark lashes. But it was her mouth whic
h drew his gaze and kept it. Sinfully lush and pink. Just waiting to be kissed…crushed under his. Andreas had to consciously will down the intense desire. He was fast being reduced to the instincts of an animal, and he hated her for having this effect on him. Still. For ever, mocked the small voice in his head.
No. Andreas rejected it fiercely. Not for ever. Just until he’d had her. Until they’d finished what she’d started when she’d upended his life so cruelly and comprehensively. Because she’d been curious and bored. Because she’d had the power. Because he’d been nothing.
Resolve firmed in Andreas’s gut. He was far from nothing any more, and thanks to a cruel twist of circumstances Siena DePiero was reduced to lower than he’d ever been, rendering her exposed and vulnerable—to him.
Her blonde head dipped out of view momentarily and Andreas’s insides contracted with something indefinable that went beyond where he wanted to investigate. He didn’t like the fact that he was uncomfortably aware of other men’s interest, of their gazes after her, covetous and even lascivious. It made him feel possessive and that was not welcome.
She’d had the gall to play with him once. Andreas desired her. That was all. His eyes caught sight of her bright blonde head again and he watched and waited as she drew ever closer to him in the crowd.
* * *
Siena DePiero was in the act of navigating through the crowd with a heavy tray, trying not to upend the contents over someone’s feet, when a broad chest at her eye level stopped her from moving forward.
