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Italy. They were in Italy.
And even though they had left London comparatively early, the travel and time difference meant that it was now midday and Amelia was hot. Everything felt a little damp and stifling. The air between them was thick and heavy, and she had to work hard to calm her breathing.
She had never got over the way that the Rossis travelled continents as if by the click of their fingers. When she’d interviewed for her position, Amelia had known international travel would be expected, which was why she’d not been able to lie about her name. A copy of her passport was held on file by Rossi Industries and she was expected to carry proof of identification with her at all times.
But as she gazed out of the window, trying to ease the roil in her stomach, the sight of cypress trees in the distance struck her with such a wave of familiarity. The sound of little girls laughing and the scent of sunscreen rose up around her. A warm dry heat hit her skin, turning it rosy in her mind, and the taste of lemon sorbet made her mouth water.
Amelia hadn’t been back to Italy since her and Issy’s lives had changed for ever. But for just a moment, Amelia wanted to bask in her memories. Her parents enjoying a lazy afternoon beside an azure blue pool in a sprawling villa on the far edges of Capri. Her father’s cream linen shorts and brown sandals displaying pale English skin and the mosquito bites their mother used to tease him about. Jane Seymore’s smile when she looked at her husband as they had lunch looking out across a stunning sea punctuated by jagged rocky outcrops. Issy’s terrible aim as she threw beach balls at her while she was trying—and failing—to get a tan.
She had forgotten it. The last family holiday they’d had before the Rossis had ripped apart everything they’d known, and her heart filled with an old ache she hadn’t allowed herself to feel since she and Issy had chosen vengeance.
She felt, rather than saw, Alessandro’s attention fix on her. The touch of it so different from the heatedyearningfrom the past few weeks that it brought her out of her memories. Now it felt cool and tasted like anger and Amelia began to fear that just maybe hehaddiscovered who she was.
Italy, Lexicon, the deal. It could almost have been purpose built for her. She spoke fluent Italian—one of the three languages she had studied in order to embellish her résumé for Rossi Industries. The land—it was similar to a deal RI had rejected about two months before she’d interviewed for her position—a deal Issy had researched to help Amelia with her interview. The sudden change in Alessandro’s temperament—she’d seen him under huge amounts of pressure before, right down to the last beats on several billion-dollar deals, and he’d never beencold. Clipped, harsh, demanding and exacting to the point of brutal? Absolutely. But there was a heat, drive, a momentum that swept you up and made you want to meet those standards, made you want to be with him in that success. It was...attractive,alluring.
Stop!
There was no way that Alessandro could have discovered anything wrong with the deal and she had covered her tracks too well in the company to have been identified as Thomas’s daughter. But, oh, God, what if something had happened to Issy? What if Gianni had—?
Her swift gasp of shock drew not just Alessandro’s focus, but his gaze.
‘Ms Seymore, is something wrong?’
His words, full of grit and gravel, shifted her pulse into a higher gear.
‘No, Mr Rossi,’ she replied through bloodless lips. She had to know. Picking up the file beside her, she scanned the documents and looked at the memo date from Lexicon to Rossi Industries. Second of June. She managed to stop her hands fisting before the crumpled paper could betray her discovery. It would be highly unlikely to near inconceivable for anyone in Italy to have sent a work memo onFesta Della Republica. Italy’s Republic Day was a fiercely celebrated bank holiday on whichno one—bar first responders—worked.
‘You put the documents together yourself?’
He nodded, his gaze inscrutable.
Oh, God.He knew who she was.
Amelia Seymore was in serious trouble. And if she was, so was her sister.
Alessandro knew there was a risk that something in the documents could tip Amelia off, but with such little time he’d had no choice. And now, as the limousine made the last twists and turns towards the only place in the world he could have brought her, did it really matter if she knew that she had been found out? Because that had been the only conclusion to draw from the shocked gasp she’d tried to hide.
And in interesting contrast to that momentary betrayal of emotions, the woman beside him seemed unduly calm. He could almost be impressed by her.Almost.He looked out of the window before he did something stupid like look at her again.
The opening move of the game had been made. He had brought her into his domain and if she hadn’t already, then soon she would realise the reality of her situation. That she was completely and utterly at his mercy.
The thought detonated such a riot of emotions, it infuriated him that Amelia Seymore could be so...calm.
The electronic gates at Villa Vittoria parted smoothly and the driver took the fork in the road that would lead to Alessandro’s half of the dramatic oval-shaped compound. The other would have taken them to Gianni’s half of the unique estate. With near enough two hundred and fifty acres across the entire property the estate was worth more than ten million euros. But it was what lay at the heart of the compound that made it priceless to Alessandro and Gianni.
As the car took the road that swept alongside a large area of land that looked to the world like a pretty wildflower meadow, it was so much more to Alessandro. To him and Gianni, it was what could have utterly broken them, but instead it had become the thing that defined them.
Poppies, cornflowers, daisies and violets covered the stretch of land that Alessandro and Gianni had bought after years of secretly saving every single penny they could. Scrimping and sacrifice had garnered enough money to make the initial purchase, and a savage loan with near-insurmountable interest rates from a highly unscrupulous money lender was to cover the build that would have been their first property.
Would have. Had it not been for Thomas Seymore.
Thomas Seymore had seen Alessandro and Gianni, two eighteen-year-olds with hope in their eyes and barely enough money in their pockets, and considered them easy targets for his villainy. He had been wrong to underestimate them. And he had paid the price.
And now, it seemed, he had to teach the daughter exactly the same lesson.
So be it.
The car pulled up alongside his half of the estate that bracketed one side of the land that had been sold to them illegally. Oh, they could have tried to sell it on, offloading it onto another poor unsuspecting bastard, perhaps even pay off a surveyor as Seymore had, to ensure that the buyer didn’t discover until it was too late that the land was unfit for development. But instead, they’d kept it. As a reminder, not to ever forget the sting of that betrayal, a reminder of just how far they had come. Slowly, but surely, they had bought the land surrounding the little parcel Seymore had sold them and they had eventually turned it into Villa Vittoria, their home and their refuge.
