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The silence lasted for several heartbeats, as did the unblinking regard of those ice-chip-blue eyes. Anna wanted to look away but couldn’t have if her life had depended on it; the mesmerising stare had grabbed her in a vicelike grip.
‘Iceland is small, population wise, everyone knows one another and for some time your grandfather was almost like one of the family.’
They had invited the enemy into their home. There had been warm cosy family dinners. Tor had been sympathetic to Soren’s teenage problems, listening when he moaned about his parents. He had always seemed interested and genuine, Soren remembered, making unfavourable comparisons with his own father.
It turned out that Tor’s only interest had been in emptying his father’s company’s pension fund.
‘It’s all gone, Soren, there’s nothing left.’
His father’s words, the sound of utter bleakness, had stayed with him. They would never leave him; they were branded into his memory along with the images.
His mesmeric blue stare had moved away and she felt her shoulders sag, could breathe again. ‘Vitale? I don’t actually recall...’
‘Not Vitale... Steinsson.’ The ice-flecked blue eyes were back on full soul-stripping beam as they landed on her face. ‘When I moved to Sicily after my father’s death, I added my mother’s family name.’ Not out of choice—it was part of the deal that made his mother’s future safe.
Biagio Vitale did not give anything for nothing, and Soren had not been in a strong negotiating position.
Feeling like a bug under a microscope, Anna shook her head. ‘Sorry, he might have...’ Her brow wrinkled. ‘Vitale sounds a little familiar,’ she conceded.
Probably because she had to have at least one gleaming luxury kitchen appliance that carried the logo. Most people did. Though of course the arms of the Vitale empire were not all so visible to the general public, except in their individual fields. The engineering arm, the financial services, both had a global reputation, but the jewel in the multibillion-pound crown was claimed by the green initiatives that had been Soren’s first act as CEO. His diversion of funds from oil and gas exploration was no longer considered an insane gamble.
‘It was a long time ago.’
To the rest of the world it was old news. Not for Soren. He had lived the story: the disgraced businessman took his own life after he was caught stealing the pension fund of his employees.
Except he hadn’t, his only crime had been trusting his friend and partner, Tor Rasmusson, who had vanished along with the money leaving a trail of financial breadcrumbs that led to Stein Steinsson.
The loss of her husband and the scandal had been too much for his mother, Hanna, who had spiralled into a deep depression then total breakdown.
Seventeen, angry and helpless, Soren had stopped being the straight-A student overnight. He’d got into fights defending his father even though he had been angry as hell with him for leaving them. He had made a point of mixing with the wrong crowd.
Maybe he would have fulfilled the many predictions that he would go off the rails and end up in jail as popular opinion said his father should have, if he hadn’t found the stash of tablets his mother was hoarding and the letter she had written ready for the day she would use them.
It had been his wake-up call. He knew then that he needed help, not the sort of help being offered. He didn’t need a counsellor, or therapist; he needed a safe place for his mother.
His options were limited.
There was no one, just him, so he swallowed his pride and approached his Sicilian grandfather, the man who had cast off his only daughter when she had ignored the dynastic merger of an arranged marriage and run away with her long-haired Icelandic lover, her Viking, who at the time had been hitchhiking around Europe.
Biagio Vitale was not about to be swayed by a sob story—he did not do sentiment, he did business—and he agreed to offer his daughter a sanctuary and the best professional help money could buy, but in return he wanted Soren body and soul.
He had no heir, and if after eight years Soren had proved himself he would have the option of running the Vitale conglomerate, but in those eight years he would go where Biagio sent him and do as he was told—learn from the bottom up and expect no favours for who he was.
There were no favours but there was a lot of hostility for the rich boy who wanted to be their boss from the hard men who made their living working in hot, sweaty and often dangerous conditions in the oil rigs and steel mills, and from managers who had worked hard to get to the middle, testing the hell out of this kid who had a free ride to the top. Except it wasn’t a free ride. In the end he won respect and even made some unlikely friends.
At the end of eight years Soren was in a position to set his own conditions and he never forgot the reason he was where he was.
He knew the truth and one day so would the world. He would clear his father’s name.
CHAPTER TWO
‘WELL,ITWASvery thoughtful of you to come. I just wish that Grandpa Henry—’
Soren watched as her sad, shadowed green eyes slid to her grandfather’s face. Whatever the truth, her emotion seemed genuine.
‘I know he would have appreciated it,’ she said, struggling to feel any personal gratitude for his effort.
There was justsomethingabout this man...aside from the very obvious that made Annauneasy,beyond the discovery that she had a weakness for a pretty face, or in his casebeautiful.She made the private concession with reluctance mingled with exasperation as her gaze was drawn back to his mouth, a mouth that invited fantasies.
