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A week? Just how long did he plan on keeping her here?
‘Oh, I get a meal before you start the interrogation, then?’ she threw at him.
‘If you like,’ he said with a shrug as if he cared little if she ate or starved to death.
She picked at her thumbnail, struggling to play it cool while her mind conjured all manner of scenarios Issy might be going through. She couldn’t take it any more. Concern for Issy eclipsed everything.
‘I’ll not say another word until I know if my sister is okay.’
Alessandro bit back a curse. She was a traitor. A spy. She had done who knew what damage to his company and yet still every single inch of her shone with defiance, the burning heat in her eyes curling around him like a flame. Taunting him. Daring him.
And for the first time in his life, he was at risk of losing his legendary cool. He’d kept himself in check ever since his father had first used his fists on him, determined never ever to become anything like the monster who had provided half of his DNA.
He turned away from her before he did something he’d regret—something that had none of the violence of his father and all of the passion of a lust-filled youth. What kind of spell had she cast upon him? He placed the plates his staff had put together on the table and retrieved a bottle of wine from the fridge. At her raised eyebrow, he simply stared at her.
‘I’m less concerned about your sister, and more worried about what she is doing to my cousin.’
Amelia opened her mouth as if to say something but snapped it shut. She was apparently planning to stick to her word not to say anything until she heard from her sister.
Amelia and Isabelle—sisters and daughters of Thomas Seymore. He searched Amelia’s face for signs of the tall, thin British man who had sold them a worthless plot of land all those years ago. He couldn’t quite see it. Where her father had been lean and long, his features sharp and harsh, Amelia was petite, softer,sweeter. Looks that were clearly deceiving.
He frowned. Perhaps he should have kept an eye on the Seymore family. But he’d thought the business done with the moment he and Gianni visited the old man to let him know that his company was not his own any more. After that, Alessandro had cared only about the harsh lesson they’d learned at the hands of a selfish, corrupt, rich Englishman.
He took out his phone and pressed the button to lift the signal blocker. The technology had been installed as part of the electronic security system designed by Thiakos Securities, one of the best in the business.
‘Call her,’ he said, with a careless shrug.
Before he’d finished speaking Amelia had her phone pressed to her ear.
Alessandro poured himself a glass of wine as she turned her back on him.
It was no great loss to let her speak to her sister—if anything it would hopefully loosen her tongue enough to talk.Thenhe would uncover just what it was she had sabotaged. Of course, the most logical target would have been the Aurora project. But it could have been anything she’d worked on in the last two years. And that was a lot of projects. Because she’d been sogoodat her job.
He watched a drip of condensation glide from the lip of the water jug and down over the shoulder and remembered chasing a bead of her sweat with his tongue, her cries in his ears and her skin hot and flushed beneath him. It had fallen into the wide valley between her breasts but he’d became distracted by a taut rosy nipple. He’d palmed both breasts as he thrust deeper into her, licking up the salt from her skin and—
The slam of her phone against the table yanked his attention back to the present, his gaze clashing with her mute anger. He pulled at the collar of his shirt and rolled his shoulders.
‘No answer?’
She simply glared at him and, for the first time since Gianni had called him the night before, he almost laughed. Here they were, dealing with the highest stakes possible, and she was playing a child’s game of silence.
Sighing in frustration, he dialled Gianni’s number and listened as a recorded message informed him that the number he was trying to reach was unavailable. Irritation mixed with a touch of concern, he called again even knowing it wouldn’t produce a different outcome. Frowning, he tried to reach the captain of Gianni’s yacht.
A brief conversation revealed that Gianni and Amelia’s sister had just been let off the ship.
‘Satisfied?’ he asked, hanging up the phone, knowing Amelia had followed the conversation in Italian.
The swift, single shake of her head was expected. If he were in her shoes, he doubted he would have been either. He brought up the search engine on his mobile and searched for #TheHotRossi. The hashtag the press had given Gianni usually made him smile, but not today.
Choosing the images tab, he scrolled through pictures of his sharp-cheekboned, chiselled-jawed cousin and found what he was looking for. A model with her thumbs hooked—supposedly seductively—in the waistband of her bikini had failed to realise that the photographer’s gaze had shifted over her shoulder to the couple at the end of a jetty. Gianni’s yacht was backing away from St Lovells, the small Caribbean private island owned by Alessandro’s cousin, but it was the couple that drew the eye. Long blonde hair had been caught by the wind, a face similar to Amelia’s, but different too, staring up at Gianni with so much intensity the photograph felt intrusive.
Unsure what to make of it, he nevertheless slid the phone back across the table to Amelia.
‘It was time-stamped less than an hour ago.’
Amelia scrutinised the picture. ‘I want to talk to her.’
‘I’m sure you do. I’ve a few things I’d like to say to her myself.’
