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CHAPTER ONE
TODAYWASTHEDAY.
Amelia Seymore peered through the window at the dark grey clouds on the horizon, while early morning joggers and cyclists risked life and limb in the narrow juncture between the bus and the pavement. The start, stop of the number 176 as it crawled north across the bridge was making her nauseous, but it was the smell of damp wool and deodorant that forced her from the bus a stop early, gasping for fresh air. Or at least as fresh as you got in Central London during peak commuter hours. Amelia shook her head trying to regain the focus and sense of stability she had a reputation for. Maybe she was coming down with something.
Get yourself together, she ordered herself firmly. Nothing could distract her or knock her off course. Today had been ten years in the making, but it wasn’t the long hours, sleepless nights or the punishingly hard work that steeled her. It was the memory of her father’s face the last time they had spoken. The look in his eyes as he had turned away from her, his shaking hand reaching for the bottle of whisky on his desk.Thatwas the reason she and her sister, Issy, were doing this. That was why shehadto succeed today.
Scanning the four-lane road, and too impatient to wait at the lights, Amelia skipped behind a cyclist and in front of a police car. Waving an awkward ‘oops’ at the cops, she arrived in front of a building considered to be the brightest addition to the crown jewels of the London skyline. While the Shard glittered like a diamond and the Gherkin shone emerald green, the imposing rose-hued building that housed Rossi Industries had been affectionately nicknamed The Ruby and was considered the perfect edifice for the two devastatingly handsome property tycoons who owned it.
Amelia craned her neck to look up at the impressive head office of the international conglomerate that inspired both awe and anger in her. Every single day for the last two years she had made this same walk, knowing that she was entering the lair of the two men that had destroyed her family. And every single day she had promised herself and her sister that they would have their revenge.
Vengeance hadn’t come naturally to Amelia. And it certainly hadn’t been immediate. She and her sister had been fifteen and thirteen, respectively, when they had first seen Alessandro and Gianni Rossi. Not that they’d known who they were back then. No, they had simply been two young men who had interrupted a Sunday roast to speak with their father. And in one conversation, the Rossi cousins had stolen their father’s company out from under him and decimated everything that she and her sister had ever known.
Cold fury tripped down her spine as she retrieved the ID swipe card that proclaimed her Project Manager for Rossi Industries and entered the building. Amelia smiled at the security guard in spite of the memories that held her stomach in a vice, passing through the barriers to the bank of lifts that would take her to the sixty-fourth floor.
As she waited in the deserted lobby for the lift to arrive, she counted down the floors as if it were a ticking bomb the Rossis had no idea of and sherelishedthat today would be the day their world shattered, just as hers and Issy’s had. And then it wouldn’t matter if she had nearly thrown it all away in one night, just over a month ago...
We shouldn’t be doing this.
Amelia clenched her teeth, trying to ignore the way the rough, gravelly voice rubbed against her skin even now and once again desire wrapped around a part of her she’d never known she had. A desire that hit her like a tsunami, drawing her beneath the surface and snaring her in the undertow.
I... I want to.
With those three words she had betrayed her family, her sister,herself.
No!
She wouldn’t let that one night, that onemistake, ruin everything she and Issy had worked so hard for. Yes, she had spent one illicit night with her boss—her enemy—Alessandro Rossi. But it didn’t change anything. She just had to ignore the cascade of erotic memories that haunted her. Because no matter what had happened six weeks ago in Hong Kong, it in no way justified or excused what Alessandro and Gianni had done ten years ago to her family. And because of that, today was the day that the Rossi cousins would fall.
Alessandro looked out of the floor-to-ceiling window of his penthouse office to see London stretched out below him like a supplicant. Power. It ran through his veins, not just because of his immeasurable wealth, or the considerable achievements he and his cousin had accomplished in the years since they claimed control of their first business. It might have once belonged to another, but it had flourished into an empire under the Rossi name. No, the power came from the knowledge that the first meeting of his very busy day would green light a deal that promised to send shock waves through the business world.
The Rossi name was already renowned, but this deal would see it written in the history books. In years to come, there might even be two young upstarts who would read of the Rossi name and success and think—that’s what I want to be.
Alessandro caught the grim smile on the face of his reflection and nodded. How would his father feel when he saw it? When he heard that Alessandro and Gianni had achieved success beyond his wildest dreams...but not under the name of the men who had fathered them.No.The first chance he and Gianni got, they legally changed their names, desperate to erase the stain of their fathers in a way that they would feel to the core of their blackened souls. They had chosen Rossi to honour theirnonna—the only member of their family who had truly shown them kindness.
My blood runs in your veins, boy. And it will run in your children’s and your children’s children’s.
But his father’s warning was irrelevant. The blood line would end with him. He would make sure of it.
Not that Alessandro indulged in self-sabotage. Rossi Industries was his life, consuming all his time and energy. Where his father sought to destroy and strangle the last breath from the vineyards he overworked, or the wife he had constantly abused, Alessandro was determined to leave the world better than it had been;thatwas his legacy.
His watch beeped with a fifteen-minute alert for the morning’s meeting. It really was bad timing that it coincided with Gianni’s one and utterly immoveable holiday of the year. But, he reminded himself, the Aurora deal had been vetted by his cousin, everyone on the board, by his most trusted advisors, and the project manager he trusted far more quickly than was deserved after just two years of service.
Amelia Seymore.
Alessandro straightened the knot in his tie, checking the button behind it, but in his mind he was undoing the button and yanking the tie from his neck as he watched that same woman looking at him, breathless want filling her words.
I... I want you.
Are you sure, Amelia? Because—
Just tonight. Just now. But we will never speak of it. Ever.
He’d been so desperate for another taste of her lips he’d have agreed to anything.Cristo, if she’d known how much power she’d wielded in that moment, she could have had him on his knees begging to give her everything he owned. Embarrassment crept up his neck in angry red patches.
He flexed his hand, the memory of her naked thigh beneath his palm taunting him, leading him deeper into the one night—theonlynight—he’d crossed a line both professionally and personally. A line that was as much a taboo as it was utterly wrong. Shame, thick, heavy and ugly, crawled across his skin. He wasn’tthat man—he didn’t sleep with his staff. Only apparently he was.
We will never speak of it.
