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His thoughts tumbled about in his head like dice.
Of course Leonie had been familiar to him. Hehadmet her. But it had been years ago, and she’d been that little girl in the photo—a kid of around two or three, initially, when her father had first approached him.
He’d been seventeen at the time, and had just lost both his parents in a car accident. Victor de Riero had paid him a visit not long after the funeral, ostensibly to bury the hatchet on the ancient feud the Velazquez and de Riero families had been pursuing for centuries.
Cristiano had been only too happy to do so, having no interest in old feuds and still grappling with the deaths of his parents and the shock of suddenly having to take on the responsibility of a dukedom. He’d welcomed Victor’s interest in him gratefully, listening to the older man’s advice and accepting his help, thinking the other man was doing it out of the goodness of his heart.
But he hadn’t known then that there was no goodness in Victor’s heart, or that the flames of vengeance for the de Riero family still burned in him hot and strong.
In fact it hadn’t been until Cristiano had married, three years later, that he’d discovered the truth about Victor de Riero’s interest.
In that time, though, he’d met Victor’s wife and his small, sparky daughter. Cristiano hadn’t taken much notice of the daughter—kids hadn’t been on his radar back then—but then Victor’s wife had disappeared, taking the girl with her, only for both to be discovered dead in a fire a week or so later.
Cristiano had tried to be there for Victor the way Victor had been for him, after his parents had died, but he’d been in the throes of first love, and then early marriage, and hadn’t paid as much attention as he should have.
He hadn’t paid attention a year or so after that, either, when he’d gone to Victor for advice when his marriage to Anna had run into trouble. If he had, he might have noticed how much his wife had enjoyed Victor’s company—how, at social occasions, she’d spent more time talking to him than she had to Cristiano.
He might have become aware that Victor had never planned on burying the hatchet when it came to their family feud but had only been lying in wait, lulling Cristiano into a false sense of security, waiting for the right time to take advantage of a vulnerable young man.
And finally he had found that advantage in Cristiano’s wife. Because it had been his lovely wife Anna that Victor had wanted, and in the end it had been his lovely wife that he’d taken—Cristiano’s already pregnant wife.
Along with Cristiano’s son.
Cristiano paced to the bookshelves again, memories he’d long since suppressed flooding like acid through him.
Victor turning up at Cristiano’s Barcelona penthouse, flanked by bodyguards and cloaked in triumph, revealing the final piece of his plot like a pantomime villain. Rubbing salt into Cristiano’s wound by telling him that his seduction of Anna had all been part of their blood feud, and then rubbing glass into that same wound by telling him that Anna was pregnant and the child was Cristiano’s.
He would bring up Cristiano’s child as his own, Victor had said. He would take something precious from a Velazquez after a Velazquez had ruined the de Riero family a century earlier, by stealing the dukedom from them.
Cristiano had barely heard the man’s reasoning. He’d been incandescent with rage and betrayal. It had been wise of Victor to have brought bodyguards, because he hadn’t been at all sure he wouldn’t have launched himself at the other man and strangled him.
Your anger has always been a problem.
Yes, and he’d been on fire with it.
For two years he’d used almost the entirety of his fortune trying to get his son back, but Victor had falsified the paternity tests Cristiano had demanded, paid any number of people off, and Cristiano hadn’t had a leg to stand on.
Eventually he’d crashed a party of Victor’s, intent on stealing back his son from the man who’d taken him—but when he’d approached the boy, the child had run from him in fear. Straight to Victor.
‘This is the reason, Cristiano,’Anna had flung at him, as she’d tried to calm the hysterical child in Victor’s arms.‘This is the reason I left you. You’re dangerous and you only end up scaring people. Why can’t you leave us alone?’
Well, she’d got her wish in the end. After that—after seeing the fear in his son’s green eyes—he’d left the party. Left Spain, vowing never to return.
For his own sanity he’d excised all knowledge of his son from his heart, scoured all thoughts of revenge from his soul. He had found other ways to kill the pain lodged inside him like a jagged shard of broken glass. Pleasure and lots of it had been the key, and soon enough the edges of that piece of glass had dulled, making him look back over the years and marvel at how it had ever been sharp enough to hurt.
But it was hurting now. Because of her.
He came to the bookshelves and turned around, pacing back to the desk once more.
If he’d had any sense he’d have got rid of her the moment that sense of nagging familiarity had hit him, but he hadn’t, and now she was here. In his house. And he was certain it was her.
A member of his staff had managed to track down the man who’d told Victor that Leonie and Hélène de Riero had died in a fire, and the man—once some money had been waved in his face—had admitted he’d lied. That Hélène de Riero had paid him to report her and her daughter’s death to her ex-husband for reasons unknown.
Of course Cristiano would need DNA confirmation, which he’d get easily enough, but he was sure already. No other woman he’d ever met had had hair that colour or those jewel-bright violet eyes.
He had Victor de Riero’s daughter in his grasp.
Tension gathered inside him and a vicious anticipation twisted through it, the rage he’d never been able to conquer entirely burning in his heart. Whether it was fate that had brought her to his door, or merely simple chance, it didn’t matter.
