The Commanding Italian's Challenge

‘Tell me, Maceo. Please,’ she pleaded softly.

A faint shudder shook through him and his face softened momentarily before hardening again. ‘It is exactly how I have said. You may believe your circumstances to be different, but the Luigi I knew was a fair man, a man of integrity and honour. Whereas Pietro was...not. He was irresponsible and callous and unkind. He drank too much, drove too fast. He did everything to excess.’

‘Those are unpalatable characteristics, sure... But that’s not why you’re reluctant to discuss him. There’s more, isn’t there?’

He uttered a potent expletive in Italian, his fingers stabbing into his hair. ‘I would prefer it if you would leave it, Faye.’

She shook her head. ‘We’ve been dancing around this subject for weeks, Maceo. You give me just what you think is enough to keep me quiet. But it’s not enough. It hasn’t been from the start. But that’s on me. I realise now that I wasn’t ready to hear everything. I’m ready now—for better or worse. Please.’

‘I’m not unsympathetic. But must we do this tonight?’ he pressed, a peculiar note in his voice as his hand drifted to his breast pocket.

About to respond, Faye frowned and looked around. She’d been too nervous earlier, or perhaps too cowardly, to admit it to herself. Now she did. Everything—from the lighting to the dinner setting, the sheer magnificence of the scenery to the soft music piping through invisible speakers—pointed to one thing...

Seduction.

Her eyes darted back to him, to the fire in his eyes. ‘Maceo...’

Bleakness tightened his face. With a heavy, resolute sigh, his hand dropped. ‘Perhaps you are right,’ he announced grimly. ‘Let’s stop dancing around this. You want it all, cara? Well, have the whole sordid feast. Then I will be free of this.’

Was that how he saw her? As an obligation to be dispensed with?

Something moved through her. Profound and seismic. Alerting her that something fundamental was about to change. Perhaps in what he was about to tell her. Perhaps in other ways she was too scared to contemplate.

Faye’s fingers twisted in her lap as he prowled forward in that far too masculine and animalistic way to reclaim his seat next to her. He started to reach for her hand. At the last moment he froze, his face tightening as he reversed the action.

Faye’s heart sank, her insides hollowing with unnerving alarm. Words of protest rose to her lips, but his next words saved her from disgracing herself.

‘Pietro was the snake in what should’ve been a peaceful paradise. He was the reason I was at odds with my parents in the year before they died.’

The dark pain in his voice was palpable.

‘What happened?’ she asked.

‘For years they knew he was up to no good. But, irrationally, they believed he was redeemable simply because he was Luigi’s blood. They gave him chance after chance, including a position at the company—which he shamelessly abused by misappropriating funds until the board voted him off. By the time I was a teenager they’d decided the best way to deal with him was to set him up with a monthly allowance and mitigate whatever damage he caused by paying off the paparazzi and bribing whoever needed quieting to protect the family from disgrace.’

Faye swallowed down her distaste. ‘Did that work?’

Bitterness twisted his lips. ‘Of course not,’ he rasped. ‘They’d simply handed him another tool to torment them with. And he exploited it. The drug-taking and drinking worsened. He gambled away a fortune using the Fiorenti name. At one point it seemed all my father and Luigi were doing was retaining lawyers to stop the negative publicity Pietro was landing them with.’

His jaw clenched tight.

‘Two months before they died I heard them discussing how to tackle the latest problem. He’d been drinking in a bar in Buenos Aires and got involved in a brawl. One of the brawlers was later the victim of a

hit and run.’

Ice slithered down her spine. ‘Was it Pietro?’

‘He was suspected of it, but there was no concrete proof. The biggest deal Casa di Fiorenti had ever landed was on the brink of being sealed. They couldn’t afford even the smallest hint of scandal.’

Faye could guess where the tale was heading. ‘So they made it go away?’

‘The victim survived and they talked themselves into taking no action because there was no proof, instead of making Pietro face his deplorable ways. Again. He got off free of blame because he was famiglia.’ Maceo all but snarled the word. ‘Right before my eyes, I was seeing him turn the two men I looked up to into the kind of men who would pay victims of a crime to stay quiet so an irresponsible idiota could continue wreaking havoc.’

Clarity brought a sympathetic ache to her heart for what Maceo had suffered, and regret for reopening old wounds. But she hoped that reliving events he’d probably never discussed before might help him overcome them, maybe even heal in a way she’d never been able to.

‘They were your heroes and they let you down. But you’re not the sort of man who would just let it go. What did you do?’

‘I spent months rowing with my parents over it. The event that night they died wasn’t just to celebrate landing the deal. It was also meant to clear the air between us. At least, that’s what my mother hoped.’