She looked at the two bodyguards by the door, who’d already put their hands on their holsters.
“Please, don’t hurt him,” she pleaded. “I told you. I’ll go out and talk to him.”
The older bodyguard stared at her, then glanced at his boss. She saw Nico Ferraro give him a tiny nod, and she hated him for that. How awful to have to ask him for favors!
“Keep him outside,” the head bodyguard said. “If he doesn’t shoot at us, we won’t shoot back.”
“Thank you,” Honora said, but fear caught at her throat. How could she guarantee Patrick wouldn’t start taking potshots at the house in his current emotional state? Trembling, she hurried to the front door.
Then she suddenly stopped, whirling back to face Nico.
“I’m doing this to protect Granddad, not you,” she said. “Personally, I think I’d be happy to see you shot.”
And opening the door, she ran out into the dark summer storm, beneath the torrent of rain and howling wind on the wild Atlantic shore.
CHAPTER TWO
PERSONALLY, I THINK I’d be happy to see you shot.
As Honora disappeared out the beach house’s front door into the storm, Nico stared after her in shock. Standing in the foyer, he felt his men’s gaze on him, before they discreetly turned away. He felt a twist in his solar plexus.
So you don’t remember my name and you don’t remember our night. How can you be so heartless and cold?
Her scornful words made him feel hollow inside, reminding him of similar words from Lana when he’d called her film set in Paris on Christmas Eve to end their engagement.
You heartless bastard. You never loved me at all, did you? Lana had yelled into the phone.
No, he’d replied shortly. Sorry.
Being woken earlier that morning with news of his estranged father’s death had felt like being submerged in ice water. Prince Arnaldo Caracciola had dropped dead of a heart attack in Rome, right before he would have been forced to fly to the Hamptons to beg for Nico’s mercy.
What point was there in being engaged to a movie star if he couldn’t rub the old man’s face in it?
After hanging up with Lana, Nico had tried to go to work as if nothing had happened, but he’d found himself shouting at, even firing, several of his most valued employees. “It’s Christmas Eve. Go home before you ruin us,” his vice president of operations had said quietly, then handed him two sleeping pills. “Get some rest. You look like you haven’t slept in days.”
It was true; he’d barely slept all week in anticipation of his father’s visit. But Nico didn’t need sleep. He was fine. Never better. To prove it, he’d gone to his gritty downtown gym and sparred against a former heavyweight boxing champion. Nico had pushed himself in the ring, insulting his bigger, better-skilled opponent, until he’d gotten himself knocked out twice. The second time, when he sat up, he hadn’t been able to see anything for nearly three minutes. But as soon as his sight returned, he’d started to get back in the ring.
The owner of the gym would not allow it. “You want to destroy your brain, Mr. Ferraro, go do it somewhere else. I’m not running a morgue. And get a doctor to look at that concussion!”
Doctor. Nico had sneered at the idea, but his head had ached as he walked back the long city blocks to his midtown penthouse.
Late afternoon on Christmas Eve, his home had been deserted, all the employees gone home to spend the holiday with their families. The dark, empty rooms had echoed inside him. He’d reached for a bottle of Scotch, sent to him by a rival congratulating him on his recent acquisition of beachfront land in Rio, which would soon be developed into a world-class hotel. He’d paced all Christmas Eve night, looking out at the city lights, his soul howling with fury.
He didn’t remember much after that. He’d started to hallucinate and imagine things. At some point, he must have taken the two sleeping pills and washed them down with Scotch, because when his housekeeper arrived early the day after Christmas, she’d found him collapsed in the hallway with a smashed bottle of Scotch on the floor. Alarmed, she’d called an ambulance.
Nico had woken up in the hospital to see his doctor standing over him with worried eyes. “You need to take better care of yourself, Mr. Ferraro. You’ve had a severe concussion, which was not helped by alcohol and sleeping pills.” He’d paused delicately. “Perhaps
you’d find it beneficial to talk to someone. Or I could recommend a residential facility that would help you rest and work through whatever you’re—”
“I’m fine,” Nico had said, detaching himself from the monitors. Against medical advice, he’d checked himself out of the hospital and rolled onto his private jet, just in time to make it to the old man’s funeral in Rome.
His father, who’d denied him everything all his life, couldn’t stop him from doing it, now he was dead. Nico had had the last word. But as his evil stepmother glared at him with tearful, accusatory eyes over the grave, Nico had felt otherwise. He’d felt heartsick that wintry day in Rome, as if his father had won, contriving to die of a heart attack just when Nico finally had him by the throat.
Now, Arnaldo would never be forced to admit that his abandoned son had surpassed him, or to say that he was desperately sorry for seducing his maid, Nico’s mother, then tossing her out like trash. The married prince had known Maria Ferraro was pregnant, but he’d still refused to take responsibility. He’d left her and Nico to starve. The man deserved to be punished for—
Personally, I think I’d be happy to see you shot.
Nico sucked in his breath. Was it possible that he was doing the same thing as the man he’d despised?