LITMIR.BIZ

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of the pie getting smaller? Maybe you’re the one manipulating me?”

      He laughed, as if the very idea was ridiculous.

      The confidence he wore like a second skin—that didn’t come without bending life to one’s will. Giovanni had told her how Raphael had taken VA public, made gains they hadn’t seen in the last decade. He’d been ruthless about the changes he’d enforced, wasn’t the least bit sentimental about what needed to be done, but his execution was always effective, she’d been told by her grandfather, curiously with something like regret in his eyes.

      More profits. Better stock prices. He had no friends he trusted, no one was indispensable to him. No weakness was allowed in himself or tolerated in others.

      The shadow of his father’s suicide, Pia realized now, would forever cast a black shadow on Raphael’s life, and would never let him be anything but a man who loathed weakness.

      “If you’re wealthy, then why would your mother worry?” she countered.

      He shrugged, but Pia could see it bothered him by the tightness of his mouth. “She grew up in a very wealthy family and my father kept her in the same style. When we lost the house and our lifestyle, a lot of her friends and connections turned their backs on her. She took it very hard—wouldn’t leave her bedroom, refused to eat. She became a ghost.”

      “It couldn’t have been harder on her than it had been on your father, could it?” Pia was unable to keep the sarcasm out of her voice.

      She waited for a cutting comeback. He simply frowned.

      “I’m sorry, that was unkind. It’s just that...your father was betrayed by people he trusted. People with whom he shared his fears and dreams and hopes. Your mother still had him and you and your sisters. What’s a fortune when you have family and friends who love you?”

      “You really believe that, don’t you?”

      Pia shrugged, uncomfortable with his scrutiny. “I just... I can imagine what your father must have felt. What Frank did to me is minuscule by comparison, and yet I have days where I can’t trust my own judgment. Days when I can’t believe that everything he did was with a motive—pulling me from the dark cloud of Nonni’s death, persuading me to step out of the house for an evening.

      “Gio didn’t help by doing what he did either. I can’t trust anyone—man or woman—when they say something nice to me. I can’t help but search for deeper motives. Perversely, it’s what makes me trust you.”

      His frown only deepened. “What about me?”

      “Your animosity, your suspicions. I can count on you to be brutally honest, even if I don’t like your assumptions. The reason why I...” like you. She cut herself off at the flare in his eyes. Words solidified the feeling in her chest. The last thing he needed was to learn that he was beginning to grow on her. “I don’t understand why your mother doesn’t like me still.”

      “She lives in a permanently terrified state that I will take the same risks with my money that my father did and doom them all. She made sure I allocated lifelong separate funds for my sisters, for Alyssa and her.”

      “Funds you cannot invest in your business?” Pia asked, shocked by the implications. It not only showed a distinct lack of faith in Raphael’s abilities as a businessman but also a callous obsession with wealth over her son’s feelings.

      “Si. Over the last few years, she got used to hearing Gio’s continual claims that he will leave everything to me—which he did to annoy his ex-wives and their constant bickering for more settlements. It has turned into her insurance against my possible failure and downfall. Now you are a threat to that insurance.”

      Was it any wonder he assumed she was out to fleece Gio with the mindset he already had?

      To believe that one’s own mother saw one as nothing but a source of her income... Could Raphael see himself as anything but a provider? Had he even been allowed to grieve for his father before he’d had to take on the mantle of his family?

      Because, despite everything, it was clear he cared about his family. She had called him ruthless, but not enough to stop shouldering the responsibility of his sisters and their families.

      And he adored his daughter.

      Suddenly, Pia saw Raphael more clearly than she ever wanted to. She didn’t want to see any depth to his hardness, any soft edges beyond his cynicism. She didn’t want to see Raphael as anything but an impossible fantasy and a reluctant ally.

      She didn’t, couldn’t afford to see him as a man worth knowing.

       CHAPTER SIX

      WIDE EYES DRESSED with the longest lashes searched and studied his face unblinkingly as Raphael waited. Dappled in the sunlight, she looked exquisitely innocent. Desire was a permanent drumbeat in his blood anytime he was near Pia. But it wasn’t just that anymore.

      She had a way of looking at him that made him feel bare. Of making him speak of things he’d never mentioned to anyone. Of looking deep beneath his words and showing him a side of himself he’d never seen before.

      The shame of his father’s suicide was a wound that had festered for too long. And yet, beneath it, he recognized the pain of betrayal he hadn’t seen until now.

      He had worshipped his father and overnight, his hero had both abandoned and betrayed him. But in memory, his father had lingered on in what he had felt then was the epitome of weakness.

      “Take care, Pia,” he whispered. Until now, he’d let Gio coerce him. But the feeling of losing control made him snarly. “Is it any wonder Giovanni wants you tied up to some man as protection? You stare at me as if you mean to gobble me up.”

      “Not any man, just you,” she replied, and then blushed furiously. “It’s good to know that you care about your daughter.”

      Instead of mollifying him, her apparent approval riled him. Damn it, the woman turned him inside out. “Because you assume I’m an uncaring monster?”

      Another step forward by him and another backward by her. “All indications said so.”

      “Stop backing away.” The comment hissed out of him in a low growl.

      “Stop crowding me. Stop...” A panicked gasp fell from her mouth. “This is a bad idea on so many levels.”

      Every time he came near, he could see the pulse fluttering madly in her neck. See her breaths hitch in and out. Feel warmth arc between them.

      But despite the attraction, he was beginning to believe she wanted nothing to do with him. The thought rankled.

      He’d never been vain, but no woman had ever resented his attentions. Not since he had become taller and broader than any boy he had known in his teens. Not since he had remade his family’s fortune ten times over. Not since he’d become one of the most powerful men in Milan. “What is a bad idea?” he asked, closing the distance between them once again.

      “Why would Gio involve Enzo and Stefano even indirectly if he knew how much you loathed him? You were right, he...”

      “Manipulated us, si,” Raphael finished for her.

      It burned Raphael that Gio would use Stefano to rope him in, but Pia was right. Unless Raphael did something to calm Gio down, his schemes would only get wilder. No measure would be unacceptable if Gio thought he was doing it for their good.

      If he thought it would push Raphael into taking Pia off his hands.

      “Then you know why we can’t—”

      “Let Gio think he’s been successful. Let the whole world think you’ve beguiled me,” said Raphael.

      “How do you think I feel knowing that he went through this elaborate charade to...coerce you into

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