LITMIR.BIZ

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of clothing inside it as she struggled to fasten the zip. Where was she going to go—what was she going to do?

      ‘Let me come with you,’ Sonya begged suddenly as if she could actually read what was going on inside her head. ‘Wait for me to pack and we’ll go and stay at that hotel where the rest of our group is staying.’

      ‘Do they know about your affair with Angelo?’ she asked quietly.

      Silence met that—one of those stark, thick silences that screamed the answer loud and clear.

      She took a final quick glance around her to see if she’d missed anything, then bent to pick up her little denim jacket and pulled it on over her dress. Next she hauled up the suitcase.

      This was it. There was nothing left for her here. Mouth tight, eyes hard, she turned to walk towards the door.

      ‘Please…’ Sonya’s painfully shaken cry followed her. ‘Don’t leave me here to face the music alone, Francesca. You’re my friend—you’re the only real friend I’ve ever had! Let me come with you—please!’

      Francesca turned to look at this petite, flaxen-haired, sylph-like friend who was just too beautiful for her own good. Even the tears shining in her anxious blue eyes enhanced that beauty, as did the quiver of her lips.

      ‘Enjoy the rest of your life, Sonya,’ she said, then left with her great-uncle Bruno’s chilling form of goodbye still ringing behind her like the toll of death.

      CHAPTER SIX

      SHE must have inherited some of the Gianni genes after all, she thought with a bitter-wry smile. Funny, she mused, but she’d always assumed she missed out on most of them. Her mother had insisted she had.

      No thick and glossy raven hair, none of the Gianni bone features that had given her mother’s face such a striking impact. Her mouth was too wide, her skin too pale—but that cold and unforgiving final cut she’d just used to sever her friendship with Sonya had to have come from the Gianni gene stock.

      Along with her mother’s propensity for falling in love with the wrong kind of man. Like lightning striking twice, or that nasty thing called fate other people liked talking about. Had it been written at her birth that she was fated to fall in love with a mercenary like Angelo then be seduced by a vengeful rat like Carlo?

      She saw him then and had to pause at the top of stairs while she dealt with the way her heart dipped then shrivelled like a dried-up prune in her chest.

      He was standing at the bottom of the stairs, waiting for her, looking stunning as always. The shockingly perfect profile, the smooth, olive-toned skin, the gorgeous mouth that was a mere shadowy outline from up here but could still tighten muscles all over her body on the knowledge of the way it could kiss. His black hair was making her think of ravens’ wings again as it captured the overhead lights and his curling black eyelashes hovered sensuously against those chiselled cheekbones as he stood looking down at his watch.

      In a rush to get this over with, signor? Francesca quizzed. Do you want to get the poor little fool out of here so you can finish what you started in the name of revenge?

      He could have heard her for the way his dark head lifted. He smiled the most relaxed, warm smile then began walking up to meet her. ‘I was just coming to get you,’ he murmured in that rich, dark voice of his.

      Francesca was contemplating telling him where to put his lying smile—when she noticed the people still gathered in the hall. The gauntlet, she remembered, and snapped her mouth shut again then carefully hooded her cold, glinting eyes. There was no way she was going to show herself up again while she told Carlo Carlucci what she thought of him on the Batiste staircase with the mob listening in.

      The mob, she thought again, struck by her own acid turn of phrase and almost—almost found it in her to laugh. If these people were a mob they were a very exclusive kind of mob with their designer clothes and their designer jewels and their designer expressions that made her think of wax.

      Carlo stopped two steps down from her and reached for her suitcase. ‘Like the jacket,’ he said in a husky attempt to break the tension laying whip cracks across all of them. ‘It goes with the dress.’

      ‘Can we go, please?’ she responded in a voice misted with frost.

      He stopped smiling, his eyes narrowing on her cold face. ‘Of course,’ he replied without any notable change in his rich voice tones but her senses began to scramble about inside her when they detected a change. It didn’t do to return his warm overtures with ice, she realised. He was used to orchestrating the moods of others not altering his own mood to suit.

      His fingers closed around her fingers where they clutched the handle to the suitcase. The suitcase changed hands within a hooded silence. Stepping to one side, he indicated that she should continue down the stairs. As she passed by him he fell into step beside her, his tall, dark bulk trying its best to hide her from most of those curious faces down in the hall.

      What were they thinking? How much did they know? Was she the sinner in their eyes, caught by Angelo kissing Carlo Carlucci on the night of his engagement to her, or the one to be pitied for falling for Angelo’s smooth, slick, calculating charm at all?

      Angelo—Angelo, she suddenly repeated. And felt a shaft of pain as her love for him exploded right here on this fabulous marble staircase. How could he have done this to her—treated her like this?

      How could Sonya?

      Delayed shock to her night of revelation really began to kick in as they made ground level. She was shaking so badly that she had a horrible suspicion she was going to further humiliate herself by falling into a sobbing huddle on the cold marble floor. Beside her, Carlo must have sensed it because his free hand came to rest against her back as if in assurance. She almost jumped out of her skin as the old warning prickles of hostility and self-defence arrived to remind her that he was not her saviour—far from it. He was as guilty as the others for trying to use her for his own ends.

      ‘Don’t touch me,’ she hissed in a taut, teeth-clenched whisper.

      He did the opposite. Shifting the hand until it arrived at the indent to her waist and with a single warning curl of his long fingers, he brought her into full contact with his side. Then he made the ultimate move to subdue her by stopping them walking so he could propel her around to face him, then in front of their audience he bent his dark head.

      His lips arrived against her ear lobe, his breath scoring her frozen white cheek. ‘Behave until we get out of here or I will kiss you stupid,’ he warned very grimly.

      There wasn’t a split-second when she thought he might be bluffing. This was yet another man on a mission and she was just his disposable pawn. Bitterness welled, the fine tremors of dismay converting themselves into silver-shard tremors of contempt as he set them moving again.

      It was then that she saw their farewell party waiting by the open front door. Mr and Mrs Batiste were standing straight-faced and soldier-like, ready to play the perfect hosts to the bitter end even as their glittering party lay in a wreck around their elegant feet. Did they know what their son had done? Had they been in on his deceit? ‘Your business is safe, Papa, and don’t forget who is paying the price for it.’

      Yes, they’d known from the beginning, she concluded and shuddered. Did that also mean they knew why she was being escorted from here by Carlo Carlucci?

      Of course they did, she derided her own question. Everyone knew. Everyone knew everything but me!

      ‘I hate you,’ she hissed.

      He ignored that one, the hand keeping her moving towards the open door.

      ‘Carlo, we need to talk—’ Alessandro Batiste jerked into anxious speech as they reached him.

      ‘Next week,’ Carlo Carlucci cut him off curtly, passing by him without a single pause. ‘And without your son,’ he added abruptly. ‘If you want to hold on to my business, that is…’

      ‘Y-yes,

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