VINCENZO STARED UP at the villa on the shores of Lake Como. The villa that had been the seat of the Brunettis’ power for nearly two centuries.
He walked up the very marble steps where his mother had stood and begged Greta Brunetti to believe that her son, Vincenzo, was the old woman’s grandson, sired by Silvio Brunetti.
Greta’s own flesh and blood.
But two decades later, as he walked up the same steps again, there was no fear or doubt in him. Soon this would all be his. Power and confidence surged through him as he walked in through the huge archway into the lounge.
Of course, his sweet wife, Alessandra, had hastened his arrival by running away and hiding here. He didn’t quite mind the acceleration in his plans though.
He enjoyed walking into the lounge to see them all assembled there—the matriarch, Greta Brunetti; her grandsons, Leonardo and Massimo Brunetti; their wives, Neha and Natalie, and, amidst them, sitting on the chaise longue, was Alessandra.
She looked up as he entered. And he found his pulse started racing, like a schoolboy’s. Instead of the anger he had nurtured from the moment he’d returned to find her gone, he felt a pang of concern.
Her eyes were puffy and red rimmed. Light brown hair pulled into a messy bun that highlighted the sharp cut of her cheekbones. A loose sleeveless T-shirt and denim shorts with pink flip-flops completed her ensemble.
No makeup touched the flawlessly boned face, no designer clothes showcased her stunning beauty, and yet she looked like a million dollars.
Hurt shimmered in those eyes as she held his gaze without blinking. As if she meant to look straight into his heart. As if she was trying to search for a speck of honor within him.
But she would fail. There was no honor in him. None at all.
He swept his gaze over her entire length and found a little satisfaction in spotting the diamond still shimmering brilliantly on her left hand.
Mine, she’s mine, he wanted to growl like a savage beast.
“Running away without a word, Princess? This marriage thing is new to both of us, si, but we clearly need some ground rules,” he mocked, refusing to acknowledge the two men standing there like sentinels, guarding her.
Leonardo Brunetti, CEO of Brunetti Finances Inc. A financial conglomerate that was synonymous with prestige in the rarified circles of Milan, the man he intended to replace. And Massimo Brunetti, the brilliant, technical mind behind the highly successful cyber arm of BFI—Brunetti Cyber Services—and the man that had captured his past associate Natalie’s heart.
Men who had everything that should have also been his.
Men he intended to take everything from.
“You think there’s any ground to stand on after what you’ve done, V?”
If she’d yelled it at him, he would’ve felt much more in control of the situation. But the shaken whisper... He didn’t quite know to handle it, to stop it from disarming him. “Come, cara. Whatever questions you have, I’ll answer them in privacy.”
“You had numerous chances to do it in privacy. To explain what the hell you’ve been doing to my family. To at least...hint to me that you’ve been turning their lives upside down. You lost all those chances. You lost...” She bit her lip, her chest rising and falling. A wet sheen coating her eyes. “Just tell us...why.”
“Why what?” he said through gritted teeth. Maledizione, he shouldn’t have waited to explain it all to her when he so badly needed her to understand his point of view.
“Why’ve you been targeting them?” Frustration raised her voice. “Why did you arrange for Natalie to take down BCS before she fell in love with Massimo? Why did you use Neha’s bullying stepfather to spy for you? Why did you buy up BFI stock until you could square off against Leo for the position of CEO?”
“I thought all those actions were quite self-explanatory,” he said smoothly.
Alessandra stood up and took a step forward, breaking away from the group. The subtle scent of her hit him, bringing with it such vivid sensations of entwined damp limbs and sinful pleasure. Of long, warm nights and warmer sheets and soft gasps. Of intoxicating smiles that chased away the web of loneliness he hadn’t even realized he’d woven around himself.
He saw the pulse at her neck flutter rapidly but when he raised his gaze to hers, the sheer depth of dismay in her eyes was a stinging slap to his senses. The same eyes that had looked at him with such affection and desire...
“You think this is all a joke?”
He tucked his hands in his pockets to stop himself from reaching for her. “It is not a joke, Alessandra, least of all to me. If it’s still not clear, then let me make it so.
“I have spent most of my life working toward this moment. Moving people and contracts and money like chess pieces just to arrive at this point.
“I intend to take over as the CEO of BFI. I intend to own the company outright. I intend to drive every Brunetti from the company until it’s all mine. Only mine.”
One lone tear drew a path over a sharply defined cheekbone. “Why?”
“I believe in taking what’s mine. Especially when it’s been denied me for so long. Especially...” He lost the fight against himself and reached out to catch the tear with his finger. Skin like silk beckoned a deeper touch, and he gave in to that too. Damn it, he’d never intended to hurt her.
He rubbed the line of her jaw with the pad of his thumb, marveling again at how much he wanted her to lean into his touch, how much he wanted her to take that last step and mold her glorious body against his. How much he wanted her to look at him as if he were her hero.
But he’d never aspired to be a hero in his life.
In fact, he was the furthest thing from being a hero. He didn’t believe in self-sacrifice or putting someone else before him or in the happiness of others enriching his own.
No, he believed in taking, possessing, having. And keeping hold of what was his.
“Especially...when I’ve made a commitment to having it in my life in the first place,” he finished slowly, his voice gone all deep and rumbly.
A quick intake of breath. A parting of those luscious lips. A quick rush of color into her cheeks. She swallowed and looked up. And for an infinitesimal moment, he knew she was as lost in him as he was in her. In the magic they created together. In the indescribable, illogical thing between them that had made him take such a big step.
That made him stand here explaining himself to her even after she’d run away from him without a word.
“Alessandra?” Greta broke in, puncturing the magic.
Alessandra laid those doe eyes on him. “You think BFI should be yours?”
“Si. Since it was Silvio Brunetti that seduced my mother with a hundred lies, got her pregnant and then discarded her like yesterday’s trash.
“Since my mother was called a whore, and she and I were accused of being beggars and liars and kicked out into the street by the woman you consider a stepmother. Since I was denied all of this privilege growing up, I decided that I wouldn’t be satisfied with just a small part of it now.
“I want to see every last Brunetti walk out of this house, their heads hanging in shame.
“I am going to take it all.”
“That’s...” Her eyes wide in her face, Alessandra looked like he had sucker punched her. Her tall body swayed where she stood. When he took a swift step toward her, she jerked away, her beautiful face contorted in shock. “Greta would never do something like that. She welcomed me with open arms when I came here to live with my father, her second husband. She’s more than a stepmother to me. She loved me even more than...”
Whatever defense Alessandra wanted to offer on behalf of Greta died on her lips as she turned to face the older woman. A soft gasp escaped her mouth, her body bowing as if against a sudden, forceful gale.
Truth shone in the older woman’s eyes, the only remainder of an encounter she’d probably never given another thought to. Whereas it had become the foundation of his life.
The dirty accusations. The supposed higher ground of privilege. The utter lack of sympathy.
The entire room filled with a vibrating sense of shock, all heads turning toward Greta with various degrees of accusation. Except Alessandra. Even in the face of the older woman’s guilt plainly written on her face, Alessandra still looked disbelieving. She looked as if she were the one dealt the hardest blow. Something he hadn’t accounted for and should have.
Even the legendary Brunetti brothers looked horrified, their gazes alternating between their grandmother and Vincenzo in a parody that he would’ve laughed at any other time. A string of colorful curses spewed from Massimo’s mouth while Leo stared in numbed silence.
“We could do a DNA test, if you want to lend legitimacy to my taking over what should be mine,” Vincenzo added dismissively. “I’d quite like to keep my mother’s name though. There’s a certain poetic justice in heading the prestigious BFI with her name, si?”
“We will take your word for it, Cavalli, though you’re quite the spiteful bastard,” Massimo said evenly.
“That’s mighty grand of you since your father and grandmother denied my mother even that small decency,” he couldn’t help adding, the very thought of the blankness in his mother’s eyes filling his throat with a corrosive taste he’d lived with for far too long.
“And me, V?” Alessandra said in a soft entreaty. “Where do I fit into this sordid tale?” For all it was asked in a tremulous voice, it reverberated around him as if it had been fired out of a gun.
His gut tightened, a cold, clammy feeling drenched his skin. A feeling he tried to battle and dominate into submission. He found he had no answer to give her right then.
At least, not one that wouldn’t shatter the painful hope glimmering in her eyes.
Not one that he could articulate in so many words.
Not in front of all of them.
She nodded as if he’d given her a clear-cut answer. As if his silence didn’t end up damning him after all. And then she fled.
Alex suppressed the tears that threatened with a deep breath and a big gulp of water. God, she’d cried enough over him in the last week.
She looked out of the French doors at the neatly maintained acreage around the villa. The greenhouse that Leo had had restored on the grounds. The ancient wine cellar that had been restructured and repurposed to serve as brilliant Massimo’s state-of-the-art computer lab.
The pride and sense of history of this place was in their blood. It was their legacy. Their place in the world.
A place, and a sense of belonging, that Vincenzo had been cruelly denied. Along with his share of the legacy. She’d never forgotten the utter sense of inadequacy, the powerlessness when she’d discovered as a teenager that her mother’s husband, Steve, the man she’d always thought was her father, actually wasn’t—remembered the desperate need to belong somewhere, anywhere, completely.
She could imagine the pain and loss a little boy might feel being rejected by his family, the scars that would carry over to the man. But to destroy Leonardo and Massimo after all these years... She couldn’t abide that. She couldn’t.
“You have to stop running away from me, cara mia.”
The deep, bass voice carried over to her on the soft breeze from the open doors, playing over her spine as if she were a set of piano keys and he the maestro.
She stayed with her face averted from him. Like a coward. No, a woman who knew her own weakness and was assembling her armor. But it was time to decide.
To look into the eyes of the man who’d seduced her so thoroughly that she’d lost all her hard-earned common sense and rushed straight to the altar with him.
“You left me no choice,” she said. Even after she’d learned the truth, even on the long flight from Bali, even the past couple of days until Vincenzo caught up with her, there had been a small part of her that hoped that they’d all gotten it wrong. That the man she’d fallen for and married in secret wasn’t the same man ruining the very people she loved.
“If I’d stayed in Bali, you’d have gotten the boxing match you’ve been asking for and I’d have beaten you to a pulp the way my mind’s working right now.”
His laughter enveloped her. Her spine stiffened, but she was no match for the frissons that husky sound created in her. Or the scent of him that twisted like a screw in her lower belly. Or the memory of the warmth of that tight body covering her like a favorite blanket.
The explosive chemistry between them had been instantaneous, all-consuming, mutual. And apparently, had no intention of abating even when her heart felt bruised inside her chest and her brain rebelled.
“Then maybe I’d have deserved it.”
“You think it’s that simple?” she said, turning around, frustration driving the words out of her. “That I yell at you, or scream at you, or pound that gorgeous face into mush and then we’re even?”
Their eyes met across the room and held. That stillness she found fascinating about him descended again. He reminded her of a jungle cat—all restless energy and contained violence, preparing every single move for an attack.
A white shirt unbuttoned showed off the tanned V of his throat, with an enticing glimpse of curls at the bottom. Dark smudges under his eyes told their own tale—he was as much of a workaholic as her.
He looked a little rumpled after the long flight chasing her, coming after the fact that he’d been working straight for thirty-six hours when she’d left him. The gray of his eyes deepened—the only signal in all his stillness that betrayed him. That told her he’d been just as consumed by what was between them as she had.
Even now as she looked at him, there was no doubt what her foolish heart and her greedy body wanted.
More of what he’d made her feel. More of those warm, lazy nights. More of the man who’d promised her she’d never be alone again.
More of him.
She cleared her throat, ashamed of how little control she had around him. “Natalie spent a lot of hours—at the risk of increasing wrath from Greta and Leo and even Massimo—trying to convince me that you’re not the utter monster your actions prove. That long ago, you were the only protector she’d known against a cruel world. That she owes you a lot. At a time when there was nothing she could do for you in return.”
His gaze became opaque, but Alex noted the stiffness of his shoulders. “Didn’t she tell you that I did demand a price for all that I’ve done for her, in the end?”
“You’re surprised she stuck up for you. Are you that much of a villain then?”
“I don’t know if I’m a villain, Princess. But I’m definitely not a hero,” he said, walking into the expansive room and completely owning it in a matter of seconds.
Greta had gone to great pains when Alessandra had moved in to create a welcoming space for a lost teen. Every inch of this room had been a haven to a girl whose own mother had broken her heart repeatedly.
“I thought Massimo had all the rights to Natalie’s loyalty,” he said so softly that she could barely make out the words.
“I’m sure they wish it was that simple, that one emotion for one person could trump or cancel out the emotion you feel for another. But it doesn’t work like that, does it?”
His head jerked. She’d chinked that armor, she was sure.
But when he spoke, his voice was as cool as ever. “I will admit I do not have much experience with emotions and family and all the complex, twisted drama that comes with it, si? So, no, I’ve no idea how it works.
“But if Natalie’s misguided loyalty toward me—she was a fierce little thing even as a teen—paints me in a different light in your eyes, then I will thank her for it.
“Don’t look for redeeming qualities in me that don’t exist, cara. Don’t forget either that I’m the same man you married recently.”
The sheer arrogance of his statement swept through Alex like a wave threatening to drag her under. “You expect me to just shove everything you’ve done to them under the rug and carry on with you as though nothing has happened?”
“What if you learned that I had done all this—” his arms swept out to encompass the villa “—to them, for no other reason than that I was a cutthroat businessman who wanted to rule the finance center of Milan and BFI is automatically the first target?”
Afternoon sunlight gilded his face, caressing it with loving hands.
Her breath hitched in her lungs as she suddenly saw the resemblances she’d never seen before. The set of his eyes—so much like Massimo’s, especially when he was smiling. The curling disdain Vincenzo’s mouth so artfully expressed—exactly like Leo’s when he was displeased.
So many small things hit her, causing her heart to stutter. Ramming her conscience again and again with the fact that he belonged here, in this place she’d called home. Weakening her anger. Confusing her hurt with too many emotions he far too easily evoked.
“That you can even think it could ever be that simple...shows how completely differently we’re wired.”
“Fine. How about we forget the whole cursed lot of them for a few minutes?” A little frustration slipped into his voice.
“You’re the one who entangled me in this.”
“Our marriage can stand outside of all this Brunetti drama, Alessandra.”
“That’s where you lose me, V. Maybe that’s what comes of playing with people’s lives like you’re conducting a chess game. Maybe you’re incapable of seeing that to demand my loyalty while at the same time you’re destroying them...is impossible. I can’t see how we can possibly go forward from here... Because you lied to me.”
“Not a single time did I lie.”
“Fine. If you want to split hairs, then you hid a great big truth from me.
“I’m trying to understand what you might have felt as that little boy, why you chose this path of revenge years ago. How much Greta’s momentary thoughtlessness might have hurt—”
“I wouldn’t refer to calling my mother a whore and a gold digger as a momentary thoughtlessness,” he said, baring his teeth in a growl. “I grew up destitute, thanks to her. My mother had a mental breakdown she never recovered from. She lost her livelihood, and we were turned out onto the streets. It turned into early onset dementia.”
Her heart thumped in her chest, the anguish in his eyes dissolving her righteous fury. Still, she had to try. “That is not Greta’s fault.”
“No? That my mother went untreated for so long, that she had a mental breakdown and that she didn’t even have access to the minimum level of medical care is their fault. That she now lives needing round-the-clock nursing care is their fault.” He reminded her of a wild animal, hurt and pouncing to attack. “That her disease spread so far and so fast that she doesn’t even recognize me is totally their fault.”
“She doesn’t recognize you?” Alex whispered, her heart breaking for him. For herself too.
Because how was she to cross this divide caused by him holding on to his pain and fury for so long? How could she hope to turn him from this path of destruction when he was utterly determined to see Leo and Massimo as enemies, when his hatred had such strong foundations in his terrible childhood.
And if she stayed with him, knowing his plans for people she loved so deeply, what did that make her?
He shook his head, his jaw tight. “She thinks I’m still a ten-year-old boy. She’s...frozen in that year.”
“Why didn’t you tell me any of this?”
“Because I don’t want the pity I see in your eyes.”
“Then what do you want from me?”
As she watched, half fascinated, half furious, he reined all that emotion back in. As easily as if he’d packed it away and locked it up. No, instead he channeled all that pain into hatred, into fury, into revenge. “The vows you made to me. The future we promised each other. That’s what I want.”
“I still can’t believe Greta could’ve done something so—”
“Because you’re buried under the weight of your obligations to them. You don’t know their true colors—you’re not tainted by the privilege and power that resides in their blood.”
“And you think that means I can’t love them just as much? When I found out Carlos was my biological father and came to live with him, Greta was already married to him and didn’t even know I existed. But she welcomed me with open arms, she made a home for me here, she was the rock in my life when he died. Leo and Massimo, they accepted me and treated me like a real member of their family. You can’t imagine what they mean to me, Vincenzo.”
“And yet you presume to understand my animosity toward them?”
The leap of anger in his eyes—so unusual, especially directed at her—gave Alex pause. She wanted to try and see this from his point of view, but he’d put her smack-dab in the middle of it.
She took a deep breath and chose her words carefully. “You’re right. It’s nothing but lip service of me to say that I...understand what you went through. But you...you don’t know what life was like for Leo and Massimo with your father, Silvio. They’re innocent of any wrongdoing. They don’t deserve to have their lives ripped apart like this.
“Your true culprit is Silvio Brunetti. Not them. But he’s dead now.”
He shrugged and the casual cruelty with which he did it with no pause to even consider her entreaty felt like a slap. “They bear the name I’ve hated all my life. Anyway, there are always casualties in war, cara. It’s unavoidable.”
Her heart sank. “Is that what this is, V? War?”
“Si. One I have waged for a long time. One I’ve invested everything into. I looked for weaknesses, sore spots, for years. I hit them with everything I had. And I don’t intend—”
“Wait...” interrupted Alex, a cold finger raking its way down her spine. Pieces falling into place emerging in a picture that made her want to run away again.
Alessandra Giovanni: Supermodel. Style Icon. Businesswoman. Philanthropist. Adopted Daughter of the Powerful Brunettis of Milan.
She remembered the headline now.
That feature had been released in a magazine no more than a few days before she’d flown to Bali for yet another photoshoot.
Where the mysterious, gorgeous, gray-eyed Italian businessman had showed up.
Their accidental meeting when she’d visited the ruins of an old temple...
Their shared love of ancient architecture...
The three hours he’d waited the next day while she finished her shoot, as if there was no other place on earth he’d rather be, those gorgeous eyes eating her alive.
The promise to show her sights she’d never see on a formal touristy visit...
Their first kiss under the most magnificent waterfall...
The questions about her charity, about the business she planned to launch, about all the things near and dear to her... The way he’d left her wanting more after that first night of intimacy on the balcony of her villa... The fairy-tale proposal and the marriage vows he’d recited in that deep voice...
Had any of it been real?
Nausea threatened to flood her mouth. “Did you come to Bali specifically looking for me? To see if you could use me in this war of yours?”
He didn’t precisely flinch but she knew him. Knew every small shift and jerk of his beautiful face.
“Answer me, Vincenzo,” she screamed, the question bursting out of her on a wave of fury and unspeakable hurt.
“Si. I did come looking for you. Alessandra—”
“Because that article quoted Greta as saying, ‘Alessandra is the one I love the most in the world,’ right?”
Again that dreadful, soul-crushing silence.
Despite her best efforts, tears broke out onto her cheeks, making her vision fuzzy. Distorting those clear-cut features. Twisting that sensuous mouth.
“I looked for weaknesses, sore spots. I hit them with everything I had.”
It hadn’t been enough that he’d come after BFI and BCS. Or that he’d somehow achieved ownership of Silvio Brunetti’s shares in BFI. He’d had to hit them where it would hurt them personally too, hadn’t he, especially Greta?
Everything had been premeditated. Planned. Perfectly executed.
And she’d fallen for him like a ton of bricks.
She turned and faced him, wiping her cheeks roughly. Hurt gave way to anger, to a fury unlike any she’d ever known. “So how do you see this whole thing playing out exactly? What is it that you expect of me while you wreak havoc through these people’s lives? People I love, let me clarify.”
“I expect you to do what you’d have done if you hadn’t found out. To give our marriage a real chance. To spend the rest of your life with me. To keep the vows you made to me.”
“Our marriage is nothing but a...farce.”
“No! I married you, Alessandra. I promised to spend the rest of my life with you. It is not something I undertook lightly.”
Alex searched his face, hoping to see a flicker of something that she could hang on to. That implacable gaze didn’t soften. Slowly, his words sank in, bringing yet more questions.
“Why? Why did you marry me? Why not just seduce me and walk away? I made it so easy for you anyway. I begged you to take me to bed. I chased you for the entire week after you showed up in Bali. I...you could have just walked away after we slept together. You could have dumped me—told me I had been nothing but a toy to play with.”
“I do not treat women like toys. That’s a Brunetti specialty.”
“Then why?”
“You’re beautiful, you’re smart, you’re a treasure any man would love to possess. For a man who grew up with nothing, who would always remain a bastard, who built his empire by trampling all the people in his way, you’re the real prize, Alessandra.
“I married you because for the first time in my life, I saw something I wanted outside of revenge and everything it stood for. Outside of a campaign that has consumed me for the last twenty-odd years.
“I married you because taking you for myself was the final icing on the cake. Because taking you from that old woman makes it all complete.”
Alessandra nodded, her stomach falling. “I don’t know what to say to a man who thinks he can take me from the woman who gave me a home, who thinks I’ll support the total destruction of my family. Who thinks possessing me somehow...improves his standing in the world. I will not...”
God, she wasn’t going to be used again in a battle between people she cared for.
She’d done that and had the scars to show for it.
She wasn’t going to be anyone’s weakness. Or anyone’s weapon. “I’m not a prize. To be won. To be possessed. To be snatched from someone’s hands. To be used as a weapon against someone else.” Alex forced herself to meet his gaze. “I want you to leave. Leave this house. I can’t deal with this now... Please, leave, V.”
He stood there, unmoving, unaffected, like a bloody big boulder that not even a gale of wind could budge.
After what felt like an eternity, he nodded. And left.
Alex stood there at the window, her throat dry. Her chest empty.
Of course, he hadn’t married her for herself.
She wasn’t a princess and this wasn’t a fairy tale where she could magically wave a wand or press a kiss to Vincenzo’s mouth and her frog would transform into a prince.
“She’s gone.”
“What the hell does that mean?” Vincenzo barked the question at the carelessly lounging figure of Massimo Brunetti.
He tucked his hands into his pockets and stared down at the two men relaxing in their chairs on the balcony on this unseasonably cold early June afternoon.
The drive up to the villa had been just as spectacular as it had been the first time around. He looked at it with the objective eye of a man who meant to cut it all up to pieces and scatter it into the wind.
But as much as he relished the idea of destroying the very symbol and stronghold of the Brunettis’ centuries-long power and privilege, other concerns rode him harder right then.
Alessandra hadn’t returned his calls in five days, forcing him to visit the ancestral home again.
His patience, always on thin ice these days, was spiraling into a monster of a temper after this latest stunt from his sweet wife.
Cristo, it had been the worst week of his professional and personal life.
Beginning with a huge crisis in the finance department of his company, followed by Alessandra jumping on a flight out of Bali to Milan without informing him. Then his own long flight to catch up to her, their ill-timed confrontation that had quickly spiraled out of control thanks to the Brunettis bringing her up-to-date with all his supposedly Machiavellian motivations, followed by an urgent call from the twenty-four nurses that looked after his mother demanding his immediate presence at his estate in Tuscany.
Which meant he’d been forced to leave Alessandra alone for too long, letting the doubts he’d seen in her eyes fester and harden. He had loathed giving her that time apart from him, especially when it was spent around the Brunettis, who were more than happy to fill her ears with poison against him.
But he’d had no choice but to go to his mother. Usually, he didn’t mind dropping everything in his empire to look after her.
“You shouldn’t have left her like that...” Leonardo offered in an almost polite voice, his expression thoughtful. “Not so soon after she found out your true colors. The least you could have done was let her rage at you, maybe even let her throw one of her powerful punches at you. Anything would have been better than to leave her alone to stew in your betrayal.”
“I didn’t betray her—” Vincenzo bit out and then calmed himself with a discipline that was hanging by its last thread.
He had not betrayed Alessandra. He had simply left out a chunk of truth that he’d hoped to explain in full later on. He’d hoped to appeal to her strong sense of justice and fair play. He’d totally miscalculated the depth of her attachment to this group of privileged, spoiled Brunettis. “I had obligations I had to meet. Now, how about you tell me where the hell she is?”
“We don’t know where Alex is,” Massimo said. “After you left, she locked herself in her room, and when Natalie went to check on her the next morning, she was gone.”
“You expect me to believe Alessandra didn’t ask you for help to hide from me? That you didn’t happily join in this childish game to thwart me?”
“You’re right,” Leo added. Still no rancor in his voice. Only a mild curiosity. “We’d have happily joined in. You went after the one person who had nothing to do with all this. But you’re forgetting that Alex has connections in high places, all over the world.
“There’s no shortage of people that will happily help her out, to save her from an untenable situation.
“She’s the most loyal person I know, even if the person getting it is questionable.
“Knowing how much you despise even our name, she’ll twist herself around to not give you any more ammunition against us. She knew you’d demand to know where she is. Keeping it a secret is her way of protecting us.”
“She fought with me like a lioness because she thinks she needs to protect you from me. And you didn’t come to her aid?”
“You’re not listening, Cavalli. Alex’s long gone. No one here knows when she’ll return or even if she will.”
For the first time in a week, Vincenzo felt the sure ground under his feet shift. There was no gratification in Massimo’s voice or Leonardo’s gaze crowing over the fact that Alex had trumped him. Only worry for her. “She can’t escape from her life. She has obligations, a global career,” he protested.
“A career she’s been slowly decoupling herself from. If you knew her at all, you’d have known she’s been finishing up all her contracted work and not signing up to anything new,” Massimo said. “Cristo, you really did a number on her at an already rough time, when she’s been questioning everything about herself, her career, her life.”
“What are you talking about?” Leo asked his brother the question that Vincenzo wanted to.
“She broke it off with that photographer boyfriend of hers—Javier Diaz—a few months ago. She plans to quit modeling altogether. I’ve been wondering why she’d marry a practical stranger after—”
“Alessandra and I have known each other for a few weeks,” Vincenzo put in. But he was slowly losing ground. Losing his belief in her.
Had her vows to him meant nothing at all? Damn it, why hadn’t she fought with him? Demanded an explanation? Given him the chance to convince her his motives were sound?
“It still makes you a stranger. But now I think I see it.” Massimo’s gaze bored into him. “You were a rebound from Javier. An escape. A temporary madness.”
Vincenzo was more than tempted to knock the smirk off the tech genius’s face but it went against everything he believed in. “Watch your words, Massimo.”
“Walk away, Cavalli.” The younger man stood up. “It hasn’t dawned on you yet, has it? Alex has gone. It’s what she does when the pain gets too much for her.”
Vincenzo had no retort. No words, even.
This wasn’t the Alessandra he knew. The sophisticated and yet vulnerable minx that had demolished his self-control with one genuine smile. This was not the woman who’d seduced him by giving away pieces of herself. The woman that had distracted him from twenty years’ worth of strategizing in a mere few weeks.
But then how much did he truly know Alessandra beyond the report a PI had provided him with, beyond the picture the media painted of her?
“I’m supposed to believe that this complicated woman...is the woman I married?”
“It doesn’t matter whether you believe us or not. We’ve known Alex for a long time,” Massimo pointed out, satisfaction pouring out of every word. “You betrayed her trust. Learning about how Greta treated you was a double betrayal for her to have to deal with. And if I know your convoluted, labyrinthine mind—and I’m beginning to—you had every intention of using her against us,” he said with a shrewd gleam in his eyes that for Vincenzo was far too much like looking in the mirror. “And I’m guessing she knew that. But then Alessandra has always known her own weaknesses,” he finished cryptically.
Vincenzo had had enough. “If this is her way of telling me to pick between her and my original intentions, then she—”
“If she’d thought she could convince you to abandon this crazy revenge you’re bent upon—” Leonardo’s dark gaze held the first stirrings of anger in it “—she wouldn’t have left her own home in the middle of the night without telling even us, would she? Which means you did nothing to reassure her. Nothing to prove to her that she wasn’t just another pawn in your game.”
“My plans for the Brunettis have nothing to do with her.”
“Then you truly do not understand what family means to Alex. What family means at all.” Vincenzo looked away, despising even the hint of sympathy in Leo Brunetti’s eyes. “Accept she’s gone, Cavalli. And that she’s not returning anytime soon.”
Vincenzo tensed, reeling under the other man’s words, fury and frustration building inside him. A future he hadn’t wanted but had gotten used to looking forward to for the last few weeks was slipping through his fingers.
Was this the depth of Alessandra’s commitment? To run away at the first sign of difficulty? To abandon their marriage because things had got tougher than she’d like?
Massimo gave him a pitying look. “I bet you anything she’s gone running back into Javier’s arms. Can’t really blame her, can we, when her prince actually turned out to be a frog. And for all your scheming steel trap of a mind, I bet she won’t be found until she wants to be.”