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But here she was, and she couldn’t have come at a worse time, because his inbox was overburdened with things waiting to be addressed. Several meetings were banked up, and he had an overseas conference call in under an hour with three CEOs in three different time zones.
Whatever she had come to say, she would have to say it quickly, succinctly, and without any embellishments.
Time, after all, was money.
In truth, he couldn’t begin to think what might require a visit from the woman, and he buzzed her up and settled back in his chair, fully prepared to dispatch her if she didn’t cut to the chase in time for him to complete what remained of his already long day on schedule.
She wasn’t kept waiting. For that, Sophie was relieved. Because the less time she had to think about what she had to say, the less leeway it gave her nerves to spiral away in the wrong direction.
The truth was that she could handle pretty much whatever life chose to throw at her. She was twenty-nine years old now, and from the age of fifteen, when her father had died, she had been the one to pick up the pieces, in charge of the household, with all her youthful dreams snatched away by grim, unforgiving reality.
A kid sister, five years younger, to be protected... A mother who had retreated into her own depressed world, barely able to function and certainly not able to keep things together, to be supported... And a scattering of relatives who had clucked with sympathy whilst shutting all their doors when it came to actually helping out on any kind of practical level.
Money had been scarce, and she’d had to learn fast how to run a household efficiently, with minimum resources, and how to claim what benefits could be claimed just so that they could all survive.
She had studied hard, made sure Addy kept her head down, and nursed her mother through months and years of bewildered misery. If lessons had been learnt the biggest, for Sophie, had been to avoid the recklessness of becoming so dependent on one person that your world fell apart when that person was removed from it.
Her mother had loved too much. That would never be Sophie’s downfall.
Her years at school had been a grinding mix of studying hard and working at whatever after-school jobs she could pick up so that there was a little extra cash coming in. There had been a mortgage to maintain, bills to be paid, and the juggling act involved to keep all the balls in the air had made her grow up at the speed of light. There had been no time to enjoy her adolescence. Too much had been going on.
Her dream of becoming a doctor had bitten the dust but, that said, she had found joy in the nursing career she had fallen back on, and even more in working for Leonard. Because hers was far more than a simple nursing job, and it paid so well that for the first time in her life she was able to save a bit, whilst helping out her mother and her sister.
Life had been tough, but she had handled it.
Alessio Rossi-White, though...
No, he was an entity she couldn’t handle. He did something to her—made the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end and sent her nervous system into disturbing freefall. She had met him only a handful of times since she had started working for his father two years ago, and she had known instantly that she would always make sure that her days off coincided with his visits.
He was cold, arrogant and dismissive. He came for the barest minimum of time and always,alwaysmanaged to give the impression that he had better things to do. On every level, he was the most objectionable man she had ever met in her life. She didn’t think he had addressed her directly once, on any of the occasions when they had met, and with his father he was cool, guarded, and so chillingly formal that he made her shiver. From opposite ends of the table they would sit and exchange information with such a lack of warmth that it was little wonder his father had absolutely prohibited her from telling his son about his ongoing problems.
She had taken matters into her own hands because she had seen no choice, but even so, she still wondered whether she was doing the right thing.
Standing outside the pristine Georgian town house had been sufficiently daunting, but inside it was even more so. Pale marble and burnished wood were complemented by a discreet scattering of exotic plants in strategic places. The desk behind which sat the woman whose mission had been to get rid of her was a masterpiece of dull chrome and highly glossed very smooth wood, and the paintings on the walls were all abstracts which looked as expensive as everything else.
There were no raised voices from above...no sounds of ringing phones and no clattering of urgent footsteps. If vast wealth could have a sound, then this soft hush was it.
Sophie was tempted to turn tail and flee, but instead she smiled politely at the immaculately groomed thirty-something blonde before briefly taking a seat by the window.
So this was what money looked like, she thought. His Leonard’s estate was huge and sprawling and grand, but inside it had remained unchanged over the years, with dated furnishings and an air of fast-fading elegance. It was a once-grand house quietly collecting dust from the lack of money being spent on it. This space, though...
She knew that it was just one of Alessio’s offices and the smallest, specifically used by his massively profitable elitist hedge fund team. His other huge offices were in Rome, Lisbon and Zurich, and from there the many tentacles of all his other concerns were managed.
She was channelled into a glass elevator which whizzed her up three floors to the top and disgorged her into an area that looked more like an office, insofar as there were desks separated by wood and glass partitions, and people sitting behind those desks surrounded by screens and working with the sort of quiet, frowning concentration that seemed to indicate huge sums of money being handled.
They barely glanced at her as she walked past them.
At the very end of the open-plan space were a handful of private offices, and Alessio’s was right at the end. Only when she was standing outside, hand poised to knock on the streamlined highly polished walnut door which was slightly ajar, did she feel that flutter of butterflies in her tummy once again, and this time it had nothing to do with the conversation waiting to be had. This time it had to do with the fact ofseeinghim.
It had been a while. She revived all the reasons why she disliked the man, but her stomach clenched as she was called in to an outer office by his PA, who was expecting her. She was relieved of her coat and scarf and woolly hat, and was aware of murmured pleasantries, but all she could focus on was the solid door dividing this outer office from Alessio’s inner sanctum.
Did the smartly dressed PA even know who she was? Her manner was crisp, but uber polite, and Sophie assumed that, given the reach of Alessio’s power, if he’d allowed her entry within his hallowed walls, then that was sufficient to ensure all due respect from every single one of his employees, whether they knew who she was or not.
He owned them all, didn’t he? From what Sophie had glimpsed of the man in the past, his attitude was that of someone who owned everyone around him and really didn’t mind them knowing.
She breathed in deeply, waiting for the imposing door in front of which she was standing to be opened, her heart beating in her chest like a sledgehammer as her head was suddenly filled with visions of the man she was about to confront.
Tall...olive-skinned...with raven-dark hair and even darker eyes. He was the embodiment of physical perfection, as beautiful and as cold as any marble statue ever sculpted. Every line of his half-Italian ancestry was imprinted in the aggressive, sinful perfection of his features.
