Everything she looked at fell into the category of privileged information either in relation to Linwoods or to Salut, and naturally Luciano had kept the file locked in his safe away from prying eyes. His wife’s prying eyes? For, unless she was very much mistaken, Luciano da Valenza, her husband, was behind the successful Salut wine stores currently engaged in hammering her father’s retail operation into the ground. Gooseflesh prickled at the nape of her neck.
Surely Luciano could not own Salut? Wasn’t it possible that, having noted the chain’s rapid rise to prominence, he was perhaps considering investing in it? With hands that were damp and showing a distinct tendency to tremble, Kerry flicked back through the file. There was no room for doubt: Luciano owned Salut. He had financed the launch of the chain long before he got out of prison. For months, Salut had run at a staggering loss while it was stealing Linwoods’ customers.
Kerry tottered upright on wobbly legs. Clutching the file beneath her arm, she called a taxi to take her over to da Valenza Technology. No way could she wait until Luciano came home that evening to confront him. Maybe he would have some explanation, maybe she was leaping to entirely the wrong conclusion, she told herself bracingly. She was married to Luciano. She adored him. He was a wonderful man. It was not the best time for her to recall Ione having said, ‘It’s a big mistake to think a guy’s perfect…occasionally you meet one who would make King Herod look kind!’
CHAPTER TEN
‘YOU’RE not allowed to take Luciano home for lunch…he’s needed here,’ Costanza teased when she came out of one of the offices and saw Kerry approaching Luciano’s door.
‘I’ll be sure to keep that in mind.’ Kerry evaded the brunette’s keen gaze.
When Kerry entered Luciano’s office unannounced, he was on the phone. Brilliant golden eyes zeroed in on her and lingered to admire the flattering fit of the stretchy green safari dress that made the most of her light tan and slender, shapely curves. Obviously, Luciano thought with satisfaction and without surprise, his wife had missed him. Four hours without a glimpse of him had been more than she could stick. A smouldering smile of welcome slashed his lean, darkly handsome features. Lounging back in his chair, he scrawled three words on his desk notepad and turned it round for her to see while he continued his call.
‘Lock the door.’
A burning blush heated Kerry’s drawn face. Most decidedly, it was the wrong moment for her to remember that Luciano had suggested that she come into his office some day so that he could live out another fantasy by having her across his desk…or up against the wall…or the door. With a complete lack of shame, he had admitted that he didn’t care where, he just wanted the forbidden thrill of doing it.
His smile only gaining in brilliance, for when Luciano’s mind focused on sex it could not be said to heighten his ESP, he printed something else on the pad and exhibited it to her.
‘This office is sound-proofed.’
At that mortifying reference to a most personal matter, Kerry got so hot she was convinced she had to resemble a beetroot and she was incensed with her own inability to immediately slap him down and freeze him out. Wasn’t she angry enough with him? In truth, she acknowledged dimly, she was still too deep in shock to know quite what she was feeling. But raging, rampant disbelief and horror at the deception he had practised on her were assailing her in stormy waves. Yet more than anything else she was still praying that her worst suspicions would somehow be proven to be wrong. In fact never in her life had she been more eager or more hopeful of being shot down in flames.
Crossing the room, she lifted Luciano’s gold pen, flipped over a fresh page on the pad and printed one word on it. But she printed that single word with such force that she ripped a tiny hole in the paper.
While Luciano would have been happy to credit that Kerry was getting into the passionate spirit of the occasion, he was not that naive. Quirking a winged black brow and wondering if it was possible that she could be in a bad mood with him when she had gone to so much trouble to look sexy for his benefit, he endeavoured to read the page on the pad
upside-down. At that point, he froze.
‘Salut.’
At speed, Luciano concluded his phone call. Kerry slapped a file which he had last seen in the townhouse safe down on his desk. Now noting the feverish strain marking her blue eyes, he suppressed a groan. He reckoned that his chances of fulfilling the office fantasy currently stood at the slim-to-non-existent rating. He just hoped she was not about to throw a three-act tragedy about the Salut affair, for if she did he knew he was liable to lose his temper. She was his wife and there were many areas of his life that she might reasonably comment on. However, the field of business was on the forbidden list.
‘Do you own Salut?’
‘I do.’ Determined to make his attitude clear from the outset, Luciano rose to his full, commanding height. ‘Where did you get that file?’
‘Costanza was in your safe and it fell out and I think she forgot to lock it up again…don’t you dare blame her for being careless! I’m sure it’s quite understandable if she assumed that a normal husband would have no secrets from his wife!’
‘Obviously I’m not normal,’ Luciano dared. ‘But then I’m not applying for sainthood and the decisions I make in a business capacity have nothing to do with you.’
Kerry had expected him to look at least guilty and discomfited. She had not been prepared for him to fight back on the most unacceptable of macho terms. ‘Are you calling your efforts to ruin my father’s livelihood a business decision?’
Luciano leant back against the edge of his desk with a galling air of self-assurance. ‘Yes, I am. In the last two months alone, Salut has doubled its profit margins. It’s breaking records as one of the most successful new companies ever and I’m proud of that. You’re my wife. I don’t care if it kills you…it’s your job to be proud of my achievement too.’
Kerry was so shattered by the outright manipulative cunning of that retaliation that she trembled. ‘I don’t believe I’m hearing this—’
‘And by the way…’ Luciano had decided that it would be unwise to conceal any information that she would soon learn for herself ‘…my efforts to destroy your father’s firm have been equally successful. The receivers were called in at Linwoods the day before yesterday.’
Turning pale as milk at that declaration of appalling fact, Kerry took an actual step back from him.
‘It is also probable that I will buy Linwoods’ more profitable outlets at a knockdown price and relaunch them under the Salut banner,’ Luciano completed.
‘Dear heaven…’ Kerry whispered strickenly. ‘You went out after my family and ruined them—’
‘But Harold won’t be in need of a homeless hostel or a soup kitchen to survive. Heathlands and a sizeable pension fund were placed in your stepmother’s name a long time ago to safeguard his old age,’ Luciano cut in very drily. ‘Let’s not dramatise the situation.’
‘Dramatise it?’ Kerry repeated with sick distaste at his flippancy. ‘You can’t conceal the wrong of what you’ve done just by calling it business…I looked in that file! You set out to systematically destroy Linwoods by stealing their customers and you spent a fortune doing it. That’s not normal business, that’s revenge!’