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Designed by Rob Weller, the Rossis’ preferred architect, the atrium that extended through the entire building was a marvel. Built five years ago, Rossi Industries rented out the lower floors to various businesses, a newspaper and a TV studio. But the upper levels were used solely by RI and had been created with meticulous eye for detail and consideration for the needs and well-being of his staff.
The dynamic open-plan design made the most of the natural light brought into the building through lightly tinted windows. Rose on the outside but not on the inside, the light worked with the white accents to create a bright, easy space in which to be. Social spaces were balanced with work areas, with healthcare facilities, staff restaurant, a gym, and a landscaped terrace and café on the wraparound balcony. The roof garden was accessible by only his and Gianni’s offices on the penthouse floor, but was often used as a space for company events.
Alessandro was proud of what they had achieved. Pleased to know that Rossi Industries was a company that looked after its staff, never wanting them to push themselves to the brink, always knowing that the health of his staff was first and foremost to him.
I don’t care how tired you are. There is more work to be done.
Refusing to shy away from the vicious childhood memory of his father’s demands, Alessandro embraced it. Happy to know that he had walked away from his childhood refusing to be cowed by the mean-spirited, violent man. Everything he’d done was to ensure that he was nothing like Saverio Vizzini.
When the lift arrived, he faced the ‘back’, which displayed all the floors and staff areas of Rossi Industries. With the evening pouring into the building, the few lights bouncing off glass meeting rooms and breakout areas sparkled like stars in the night sky. Housekeeping staff would turn off any forgotten lights but one in particular caught his eye, and he’d pressed the corresponding floor’s button before he knew it.
For one brief moment he wavered. Told himself not to get out of the lift. To continue on to the parking level and leave. He wondered, later, what might have happened if he had. Whether things would have been different and whether he’d have wanted them to be. In the end it didn’t much matter. Things had been set in motion long before that day, and Alessandro doubted that he’d have managed to escape them.
They’d done it. Amelia had sent Issy a message to let her know that Rossi Industries had taken the bait, that Alessandro’s and Gianni’s destruction was all but assured. Not that the end of Alessandro and Gianni would be immediate. No, her plan of vengeance hadn’t been as simple as a swift, painless death.
Just like what had happened to her father, to her mother and the lives she and her sister had known, the destruction of Rossi Industries would take months, perhaps even as long as a year if Firstview managed to hide their ineptitude better than she thought they might. But Amelia would be long gone by then. She would be offered ‘a job that she couldn’t refuse’ and she would leave, without even seeing out her notice. There was, of course, no dream job. Amelia Seymore would simply disappear into thin air.
All she needed to do now was wait out the next few days while the contracts with Firstview Ltd were signed, then Issy could leave Gianni in the Caribbean and return to the UK and the sisters could celebrate.
But Amelia didn’t feel like celebrating. Instead she was effectively emptying her desk. Not so that anyone would notice, because she’d need to continue to work here for the next few days, she rationalised. But when the time came, it would probably be best if she was able to make a quick exit. Averyquick exit.
He would be so angry.
It didn’t matter, she told herself firmly, resenting the way that even a small part of her worried about Alessandro. Guilt throbbed in her heart, knowing that her immediate concern should be her sister, not a man who had caused such irreparable damage to her family.
She had just switched her computer off when the hairs on the back of her neck lifted and her heart beat a little too late and a little too hard.Hewas there. She didn’t have to turn around to look. Sheknewit. Unbidden, his words from that night ran through her mind like raindrops.
If this is only for one night, then I would give you everything you could ever want for. You only need to ask. So ask me,cara. Ask, and I will make it so.
She’d asked for things she’d never even dreamed of in a moment of unbridled desperate desire and he’d done them and more.
‘Amelia?’
She couldn’t face him, not yet. Not when she had to bite her lip to stop herself from crying out in need, in want. Instead, she did the only thing she was capable of and nodded. Inexplicably, her eyes felt damp.
Was she crying? Forhimor for herself?
Enough!
She pasted a bright smile on her face and turned to meet him.
‘Mr Rossi. What can I do for you?’
Something flashed in his eyes, hot, angry even, but it was gone in less than one of her frantic heartbeats. She thought she saw him look to her neck—where he had pressed open-mouthed kisses before drowning her in a pleasure she never knew existed, before he had taken possession of her body and—
‘What are you still doing here?’ Alessandro asked.
‘Just finishing a few things. I was just...leaving,’ she said, realising that he was too. Now she was going to be stuck in a lift with him for the entire journey down to the ground floor. ‘You?’ she asked, inanely because...well. What really was there to say to a man she had slept with and was on the brink of completely and utterly destroying?
‘On my way out,’ he replied, his features almost too guarded, as if he knew exactly how silly this conversation was.
Neither of them moved. Instead, the silence spun a cocoon around them, the air thickened by heated looks and unsteady breaths. Her desire pawed at her when she noticed his hand flex by his thigh. A hand that had caressed her skin, had delved between her legs, had pulled her harder and deeper against his open mouth.
Could he hear the thud of her heart? The way that her breath caught in her throat? His gaze flickered between her lips and her eyes before he turned away, her heart aching and angry and wanting and she didn’t know any more. If only he weren’t sohandsome.
His body was angled proprietorially towards her and she felt crowded even though there were nearly two feet between them. The powerful cords of his neck stood out as he reached up to fuss with his tie knot, the deep tan of his skin rich and evocative next to the starched white origami-like fold of his collar. A stubble Amelia was half convinced that he hated was already visible across his jawline and neck, and she was haunted by the memory of how it had felt beneath her fingertips, how it had sounded as she’d explored every single inch of him that night.
The broad shoulders she’d gripped, the lush thick raven-dark hair she’d fisted in her hands as he’d thrust into her. Amelia hated to think that she had been brought so low by good looks, but what else could it have been? The man had utterly destroyed her family and she had all but begged him to ruin her too as she had gripped the edge of the table in his hotel suite. She’d spread her legs wider, to make room for him between them, her body welcoming the hard angles of his hips. The brush of his arousal at her core had sent a gasp through her body...
