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PROLOGUE
BENEATH HIM, MADRID sparkled like a thousand jewels, the night lights twinkling against the inky black of the sky. It was a city of history, a city rich with stories, but in that moment Antonio Herrera was conscious of only his own history.
A history that had been defined by a family feud, a hatred that was as ingrained in his heart and soul as any one man could ever have felt. Some might say that his life had been charmed, but Antonio knew the truth. Hatred for the diSalvo family ran through his Spanish blood, poisoned his mind, and he would stop at nothing to fight this war. No, to end it.
His father had been destroyed by diSalvos’ machinations. A corporate empire, decades in the making, had been systematically pulled apart, and it had needed Antonio to set things to rights. At eighteen, he’d taken over the business, side-lining his father to arrest the financial bleed. He’d triaged their losses, strengthened their assets, and now, at thirty, he was a single man in charge of a billion-euro corporation, known the world over for being a titan of all types of industries.
His eyes drifted to the gleaming oak of his desk, and the file that had arrived that afternoon.
How strange the timing was. Less than a month after his father had died—a man who had been made to suffer at the hands of the diSalvos, a man Antonio would do anything for—and she had been found.
After a year of searching, a year of waiting for his elite investigator to turn over some hint of the elusive woman, and finally he had some answers.
Amelia diSalvo. Or Amelia Clifton, as she was calling herself. But a name changed nothing—she was still undeniably a diSalvo.
The missing piece of the puzzle, the woman in control of the vital shares he needed to take the jewel in the diSalvo empire into his own hands—Prim’Aqua—the shipping company that had, at one time, been owned jointly by the diSalvos and the Herreras, until both patriarchs had fallen in love with the same woman and bitterly broken their business alliance, turning friends into sworn enemies.
And now, this diminutive woman owned the shares Antonio needed, and he’d stop at nothing to convince her to sell them to him.
He stared at the photograph, looking for any resemblance to her half-brother Carlo.
There was none. Where Carlo was cast from a similar Mediterranean mould as himself, with dark hair, honeyed skin and jet-black eyes, Amelia was fair and slight.
Like her mother, he thought, remembering the world-famous supermodel who’d evidently, at one time, been the mistress of Giacomo diSalvo. Only Penny Hamilton had been tall and Amelia was tiny—as diminutive as some kind of fairy, he thought, looking at the way she was walking down the street in this photograph. It must have been a warm day, for she wore a simple cotton dress with thin straps and buttons down the front. It fell to just above her knees and the sun streamed from behind her, showing her tantalising silhouette through the dress’s fine fabric.
A jolt of very masculine awareness splintered through him. Desire? For a diSalvo? How could that be, when she was part of the family that had set out to destroy his?
Regardless of his determination, his body tightened and his eyes lingered a little longer than was necessary on the photograph, taking in the details of her pale peaches-and-cream complexion, a smile that was wide on a petite angular face, hair that was long and blonde—whether it fell naturally in those loose Botticelli curls or had been styled that morning, he would only be able to say after he’d met her in person.
And that would be soon.
In a small English village near Salisbury there was a billion-pound heiress, the daughter of a world-famous British supermodel and an Italian tycoon, a woman who’d been born into wealth and a blood rivalry. And she would be the key in winning this ancient family war.
His eyes dropped to the photograph once more. She was beautiful, but beauty was not uncommon. She was also a diSalvo, and for that he would always hate her. For one night, though, he would appeal to her sense of decency, he would implore her to return to him what should always have been his. And if she didn’t, he’d find another way to secure the shares.
One way or another, he would succeed. Because he was Antonio Herrera, and failure simply wasn’t an option.
CHAPTER ONE
IT HAD BEEN a perfect day. Warm and cloudless, so that the late afternoon sun filtered through the windows of her home, bathing it in a timeless golden light. But as the evening had drawn around her, the sky had clouded over and the air had begun to smell different, a portent of summer rain.
The first day of school holidays had been everything Amelia could have hoped. She’d slept late, read a book from start to finish, walked into the village for a cider at the local pub, and now she was home, making a fish pie with episodes of The Crown playing in the background. She’d seen the whole show already, but she loved to have the television on for company—and who better to keep company with than the Queen?
She scooped some flour from the canister in her fingertips and added it to the roux she was stirring, thickening it and breathing in the aroma gratefully—she always made a roux with garlic and saffron, and the fragrance caused her stomach to give a little groan.
Yes, the first day of school holidays had been deliciously perfect, Amelia told herself, ignoring the little pang of emptiness that pushed into her mind. It was only that a month and a half was a very long time to have off work, particularly when work was the purpose for one’s life.
Teaching wasn’t necessarily a calling for everyone, but it was for Amelia, and the idea of having seven whole weeks out of the classroom wasn’t a prospect she entirely relished.
She’d been invited to Egypt with some of the faculty, but she’d declined. She’d done enough travelling to last a lifetime—a childhood that had seen her dragged from pillar to post depending on where her mother’s latest assignment or lover had taken them, Amelia preferred to stay right where she was, in this charming village in the middle of England.
Her bluebell-shaded eyes drifted around the cottage, and a rueful half-smile touched her pink lips. It was pretty safe to say that Bumblebee Cottage was as far from the life she’d experienced as a child as possible. Her first twelve years had been spent mostly in five-star hotels, sometimes for months at a time. School had been a luxury her mother hadn’t seen the necessity of, and it was only Amelia’s keen desire for knowledge and the never-ending string of questions which Penny had no patience for that had led to the hiring of a tutor for Amelia.
But then Penny had died, and twelve-year-old Amelia, already so like her supermodel mother, had been shunted into another life completely. As rarefied and glamorous, but so much more public. In the wake of the supermodel’s drugs-related death, Amelia had been followed everywhere she went, and her father—a man she hadn’t even known about—simply hadn’t been able to comprehend what life had been like for the young Amelia.
Talk about going from the frying pan and into the fire! If being the daughter of a woman like Penny Hamilton made Amelia a magnet for paparazzi, then becoming a diSalvo made her even more so.
And she’d been raised, from that moment, as a diSalvo. Loved, adored, cherished, but she couldn’t outgrow the feeling that she didn’t really belong.
She hadn’t belonged anywhere until she’d moved to this tiny village and taken up a teaching position at Hedgecliff Academy. Unbidden, her eyes drifted to the fridge and the artwork that covered it. ‘Thank you’ pictures from the students she’d taught, colourful drawings with their childish swirls and squiggles—happy pictures that almost always made Amelia smile.
Fish pie finished, Amelia slipped the dish into the old Aga—it had come with the cottage and she couldn’t bear to modernise the thing when it worked perfectly—and then stared around the room for a few moments. It was ridiculous to feel so lonely already.
The summer holidays had just begun. Only the day before she’d been surrounded by twenty-seven happy, curious eight-year-olds. Besides, she was the one who’d turned down invitations for the summer break. She had elected to stay at home.
So what good was it to dwell on the gaping void of people and company in her solitary existence? She’d chosen this life.
She’d turned her back on her father, her half-brother and the world they inhabited.
And she wouldn’t have it any other way. Would she?
* * *
The cottage could not have been quainter if it had been brought to life from between the pages of a Beatrix Potter storybook. Stone, painted a pale cream, roses in the front garden, wisteria scrambling over an arch that led to the front steps and a thatched roof that showed the house to be two-storey, with little dormer windows shaped into the roof. Lights were on inside, making the cottage glow with a warmth that did something strange to Antonio’s chest.
He studied it for a moment, a frown on his face as, for a brief and uncharacteristic moment, he rethought the necessity of this.
