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PROLOGUE
The news came to him while he was in the middle of a meeting with the President of the United States.
Three sentences that instantly managed to turn the blood in his body ice cold.
Jane has been attacked. She’s alive. But in hospital.
He’d had no qualms on walking out on one of the most powerful men in the world. Nothing mattered to him as much as the safety of his ex-wife. Though their marriage had ended three years earlier, he had vowed to protect her for the rest of her life.
The idea that she’d been hurt now because she had once been Mrs Carlo Santini filled his mouth with a metallic taste. It was fury, and it was adrenalin.
He’d had no business marrying her. Someone like Jane Lang didn’t belong in his world. With her sweet smile and naïve outlook on life, she’d stood out like a wildly growing rose in the middle of a manicured lawn.
And yet, he’d wanted her.
She’d been nineteen and he a cynical, wealthy twenty nine year old. He’d been used to getting what he wanted, and had seen no reason that she should be any different. He’d sought her out, because their secret past had demanded it of him, but he’d never told her that. Instead, he’d overpowered her with love and desire, and he’d proposed.
If he’d known that marrying her would rob her of her sweet smile and naïve outlook, might he have reconsidered?
He’d never know the answer to that. That called for speculation, and Carlo dealt with fact. All he knew for sure was that he had been selfish enough to take her as his wife without properly preparing her for what lay in store. A nineteen year old virgin, who’d grown up without much love or affection, had been powerless to resist the full charms of Carlo Santini. He’d promised her the world, and very quickly disappointed her. For that one year, she’d tried. He saw now, with hindsight and a greater understanding of what life had been like for her, how hard she’d tried. And how much that trying had cost her.
As his private jet cruised along the tarmac at London’s City airport, he swore one thing.
Jane must be made safe, at all costs.
She was no longer his wife, but she would always, until his dying breath, be his responsibility.
CHAPTER ONE
“Try to stay calm, Jane. Your husband will be here soon.”
Blood was clumped against Jane’s pale blonde hair, and a persistent ringing sound in her left ear was making hearing difficult.
She opened her mouth to speak but the tube they’d inserted made it impossible. Her pale blue eyes were round like saucers as she stared up at the young man with the kind smile. His white doctor’s coat was splattered in red. Her blood? She eyed it apologetically then winced, when the sudden movement sent a blinding pain shooting through her.
“You gave your neighbour quite a fright,” he continued, looking past her now, as he pushed the bed she lay on through a set of double doors. They banged loudly against the end of the metallic frame as she whooshed through, and Jane jumped.
It brought back a memory. Something cold and heavy being pounded against her face. It made no sense. She closed her eyes, trying to catch the threads of memory. But it was all jumbled up. Like a mirror that had been splintered in the middle, only shards of her day remained. She remembered getting dressed earlier that day. Lingering over what to wear, and what the weather would do. London was, of course, notoriously difficult to predict. She remembered that she’d been at lunch. Alone. And she remembered the waiter; a man with dark hair and black eyes. He’d reminded her, at first, of him. Carlo Santini. Only at first, because no one was exactly like her powerful ex-husband. But what had she done between getting dressed, and going to lunch? And, crucially, afterwards? What had happened that she’d been bashed over the head, and rendered unconscious?
“You’re going to be fine.” The doctor promised, clicking the bed into place against the wall. “I’m going to run a few tests and then come back with some news.”
Jane couldn’t speak, so she nodded. It hurt.
“Try not to do that.” He smiled, and his face crinkled to form two perfect dimples in his cheeks. “You’ll be able to talk again soon. Until then, I want you lying here admiring the spectacular wallpaper.”
Her gaze flicked to the pale yellow surface, and then back to the doctor. With her eyes, she showed both agreement and amusement. Almost as soon as he disappeared through the doors, a nurse entered.
“’Ello, darlin’,” she said, reaching for Jane’s chart and reading the doctor’s hastily penned notes. “I see those medics have gone and tubed you.” She rolled her expressive brown eyes towards her greying hair and then reached for a pair of gloves. “I can get that out for you now.” She came to stand over Jane, and made a tsking sound as she examined the head wound.
Jane had never known her parents. Instead, she’d spent time in a series of foster homes, until she’d finally been old enough to free herself from the system. But this woman reminded her of what a mother should be. Her face was pleasingly lined, around the eyes and the mouth. It spoke of a life spent smiling. “Quite a ding you’ve got here,” she said with a shake of her head, as she put her fingers on the edge of the tube. “Doctor Mark will fix you right up, though. He’s the best in the business.”
Jane would have smiled if she had any freedom of movement in her lips. Despite the fact she couldn’t speak, the nurse continued to chat, as she went through the instructions for removing the tube. It was painful and uncomfortable, but Jane was glad when it was out. She coughed, and instinctively looked around for water. The nurse poured a small measure into a plastic cup and handed it to Jane.
She wrinkled her nose as she drank it. Her throat was so badly scratched by the tube that she didn’t even mind that the water tasted like the Thames.
“How do you feel?” The nurse asked sympathetically.
Jane tried to clear her throat, but that burned even worse. “I’ll live,” she croaked, her usually refined accent coming across as just a whisper.
“That’s the spirit. My name’s Deb, and you can call on me anytime. The police want to have a word with you regarding the incident.”
“The police?” She arched her brows expressively. “I don’t know what I’ll be able to tell them.”
“I expect anything might help. I’ll tell them to come through when they arrive. At this time on a Friday though, it could be a while.”
Jane lifted a finger and touched her hair. It was bright red from the blood that had spilled out of her skull. She would discover, in the coming days, that it had stained not only her hair, but also the black and white tiles that lined the portico of her Kensington townhouse.
“Oh, and your husband’s been notified. Or
rather, I spoke to someone on his staff.”
“My husband?” She remembered then, the doctor’s assurances earlier, that Carlo would shortly arrive.
Deb nodded, sending her wiry hair shooting out like a thousand little jacks in boxes.
“But…” she lifted a slender hand to her neck, in a futile attempt to ease some of the pain she was feeling. “We’re divorced,” she finished weakly. Three years later, it still hurt to say those words.
Deb frowned. “He’s listed as your next of kin on the admission forms.”
“I didn’t fill any forms out,” she persisted, and her body began to shake at the very idea of seeing Carlo Santini again. For she had not set eyes on him since that last fateful morning in Rome. When she’d finally got it through her head that their marriage was a sham.
Why he’d married her was still a mystery.
But that he’d been wrong to do so was obvious.
“This isn’t your first time at the hospital.”
Oh, God. She blanched; her face was so white she almost faded into the bed. The miscarriage. Her stomach ached as she remembered her last time inside these butter yellow walls. “Carlo, my ex-husband… he doesn’t know about the baby.” She linked her fingers together in her lap and fidgeted them furiously. “Please, Deb…”
Deb closed the door and stepped back into the private room. Yes, she was a maternal person; clearly empathetic now in the face of Jane’s visible pain. “Don’t worry, darling. He might be your husband but your hospital records are still something we keep private. Unless you tell him, he won’t find out.”
