He’d gone to a lot of trouble to set up tonight’s meeting. She would be a fool to bait him to see if he would carry out his threat.
Her heart hammered as she undressed and stepped beneath the shower. Slowly soaping her body, she found her mind drifting back to their kiss. The incandescent delirium of it was unlike anything she’d felt before.
Her fingers touched her lips, and they tingled in remembrance.
Tomorrow she was inviting herself into the lion’s den to be devoured whole for the sake of her family.
A hysterical laugh became lost in the sound of the running water.
Pietro was finally showing signs of being the brother she remembered before their mother died. Shame that she’d had to sacrifice herself on the altar of their family’s prosperity before he’d come round. As for her father…sadness engulfed her at the thought that even if he knew of her sacrifice, he probably wouldn’t lift a finger to shield her from it.
* * *
Theo’s gaze strayed to his phone for the umpteenth time in under twenty minutes and he cursed under his breath.
He’d called Inez this morning and they’d agreed a time of eleven o’clock, two hours before he was due to sign the documents at her father’s office.
It was now eleven twenty-five and there was no sign of her. No big deal. She was probably stuck in traffic. Or she hadn’t left her home on time, especially if she was packing for a three-month stay.
Besides, women are always late.
Even as a child he’d known this. His mother had never been on time for a single event in her life.
His mother…
Memory rained down vicious blows that had him catching his breath. His mother, the woman who’d been nowhere in sight, either before or after he was kidnapped and held for ransom by Benedicto da Costa’s vicious thugs.
For weeks after he’d been rescued and returned home, broken and devastated by his ordeal, he’d asked for his mother. Ari had made several excuses for her absence. But Theo had been unable to reconcile the fact that the mother who’d once treated him as if he’d been the centre of her world suddenly couldn’t even be bothered to pick up the phone and enquire about her mentally and physically traumatised child.
No. She’d been too preoccupied with wallowing in her misery following her husband’s betrayal to bother with her own children.
Ari had been the one to hold them together after their family was shattered by the press uncovering their father’s many shady dealings and philandering ways.
For a very long time he’d laboured under the misconception that out of the three brothers he was the most special in their father’s eyes. That just because he was the miracle baby his parents had never thought they’d have, he was their favourite. His kidnapping and what he’d uncovered since had mercilessly ripped that indulgent blindfold away.
Finding out that his father had known about Benedicto da Costa’s escalating threats and that he’d done nothing to warn or protect him had forced the cruellest reality on him.
And his mother’s response to all that had been to abandon him, together with her other two children, and go into hiding.
Hearing of his father’s eventual death had made him even angrier at being robbed of the chance to look his father in the eye and see the monster for himself.
Because, even now, a pathetic part of him clung to the hope that maybe his father hadn’t known the full extent of the kidnapping threat; hadn’t known that Benedicto da Costa’s reaction to being thwarted out of a business deal would be to kidnap a seventeen-year-old boy, and have his torture photographed and sent to his family to pressure them into finding the millions of dollars owed to him.
His phone rang, wrenching him out of the bitter recollections. Glancing down at the number, a bolt of white-hot anger lanced through him. He forced himself to wait for a couple more rings before he answered it. ‘Pantelides.’
‘Bom dia. I’ve just had a very interesting conversation with my daughter.’ Theo detected the throb of anger in Benedicto da Costa’s voice and a grim smile curved his own lips. ‘She seems determined to pursue this rather sudden course of action where you’re concerned.’
‘Your daughter strikes me as a very determined woman who knows exactly what she wants,’ he replied smoothly.