LITMIR.BIZ

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href="#uf4bb8b10-a35a-5a12-b47c-50375de89d44">CHAPTER ONE

      DINO ROSSINI SAT FORWARD, an ugly sneer on his face. ‘You’re making a mistake, Cavallari. You think this is what your father wanted?’

      Seated behind the desk in his late father’s study, Luca Cavallari met Rossini’s angry stare with a steady one of his own. Glancing away—even blinking—would show weakness, and this man, like all bullies, preyed on those he considered weaker than himself.

      It was why Luca had just fired him.

      ‘What my father wanted ceased to matter the day he died,’ he said. ‘We do things my way now.’

      Rossini’s expression darkened. ‘The old ways—’

      ‘Will not be tolerated. I made that clear two months ago.’ A warning his father’s security chief had blatantly ignored. Disgust turned Luca’s voice rough. ‘What you did yesterday was indefensible.’

      ‘He stole from you,’ Rossini said, as if that justified his brutality.

      ‘You should have called the police.’

      Rossini laughed, the sound harsh. Mean. ‘This isn’t New York. You think a fancy suit and haircut gets you respect?’ He shook his head. ‘America made you soft, Cavallari. Here, when someone steals from you, disrespects you, you don’t call the police. You teach him a lesson.’

      Anger sent Luca surging to his feet. He leant forward, planting his fisted hands on the desk. ‘A lesson?’ His voice boomed inside the high-ceilinged room. ‘You set your men—your thugs—onto a sixteen-year-old boy! He has a fractured leg, broken ribs, a dislocated shoulder and a serious concussion.’ Bile burned the back of Luca’s throat. Controlling his temper, he sat back down and said coldly, ‘Get out.’

      ‘What about my men?’

      ‘They’re fired, too.’

      Rossini stood, another sneer distorting his face. ‘It won’t be easy replacing us.’

      ‘I already have.’ Luca punctuated the fact with a hard, satisfied smile. ‘There are two men outside the door waiting to escort you off the estate.’

      Rossini’s cheeks turned a deeper shade of mottled red. He strode to the door, shot Luca one last belligerent look, and stalked out.

      Luca stood and moved to the window behind the desk. Outside, in the bright glare of the Sicilian sun, two large, muscular men accompanied Rossini to where his black sedan was parked. He got in, gunned the engine and sped off, the car’s tyres spitting gravel and kicking up a cloud of pale dust. Luca watched the vehicle vanish from sight.

      Good riddance.

      He should have fired Rossini two months ago, his twenty years of service to the family be damned. Perhaps the man was right to some extent, although it galled Luca to admit it. He wasn’t ‘soft’—far from it—but years of self-imposed exile in America had left him ill prepared for the mammoth job ahead.

      ‘Signor Cavallari?’

      He turned away from the window to find Victor, the family’s long-serving butler and head of the domestic staff, standing in the room.

      Luca returned to the chair behind the expansive hand-carved desk—the place from where Franco Cavallari had ruled both his empire and his family with an iron fist—and sat. ‘What is it, Victor?’ he said, casting his gaze over the endless piles of paperwork demanding his attention.

      ‘I need to show you something.’

      The urgency in Victor’s voice brought Luca’s head up. He studied the man. Not a hair out of place as usual, and his standard pinstriped suit looked as if it had come straight off the housekeeper’s steam press. But his brow glistened with beads of sweat and the knuckles on his left hand, which clutched an oversized envelope against his chest, shone white.

      Luca leaned back in his chair. Well, well. Something had got the unflappable Victor in a flap. ‘For God’s sake, man,’ he said. ‘Sit down before you fall down.’

      Victor dropped into the chair Rossini had vacated. ‘Thank you, signor.’ He plucked a pristine white handkerchief from his breast pocket and dabbed his brow.

      Growing impatient, Luca held out his hand.

      Victor hesitated, opened his mouth and closed it again, then relinquished the envelope.

      Expecting documents of some kind, Luca removed the contents and instead found himself holding a bunch of eight-by-ten colour photographs. He examined the top one. A young woman stood on the grass in what looked like a public park. Other people milled about, but the photographer had clearly focused on her. The weather was sunny and presumably warm since she wore shorts, a sleeveless T-shirt, and a straw sunhat that cast her face in shadow.

      ‘Stunning,’ he murmured, trailing an appreciative eye over shapely curves and long, slender legs.

      Victor clicked his tongue. ‘The other photos,’ he urged, pointing at the pile. ‘Look at them...the child...’

      Luca put the picture down and picked up the next, this one of a young boy playing outdoors. No older than three or four, the child had tousled dark hair, brown eyes fringed with thick lashes, and olive skin flushed with exertion.

      The hairs on Luca’s forearms lifted.

      It was a photo of him as a boy. Except it wasn’t, because the date stamp was only ten months old.

       What the hell?

      He glanced at Victor, who mopped his brow with renewed vigour. ‘Where did these come from?’

      ‘Your father’s apartment in Rome. I had his things packed and sent here, as Signora Cavallari requested. She asked me to sort through the boxes—’

      ‘She has seen these?’

      ‘Of course not.’ Victor’s voice held a note of affront. ‘I brought them straight to you.’

      Good. He wasn’t close to his mother, but he had no wish to see her humiliated. It was possible, even likely, that Eva Cavallari knew her husband had kept a mistress—but an illegitimate child? A half-sibling to Luca and his brother Enzo?

      He ground his teeth together. Another goddamned mess to clean up, but this went beyond the realm of money laundering and illegal business activities.

      This involved a child. A child who could one day stake a legitimate claim for a share of the Cavallari wealth.

      Luca flicked through the rest of the photos, found one of the woman without her sunhat, and held it up for a better look.

      Blonde and beautiful. Of course. If nothing else, Franco Cavallari had had good taste in women. And she really was exquisite. Startling blue eyes, amazing bone structure, flawless skin...

      Luca frowned.

      A voice whispered in his head. You know her.

      No. He shoved the notion away. It was crazy. Fanciful. The world was full of blue-eyed, flaxen-haired beauties. Why would his mind even go there after all these years?

      And yet...

      He drew the photo closer, trailing his gaze over an elegant cheekbone and down to her pretty mouth.

      The camera had caught her at a circumspect moment, and, as such, no smile adorned her face. But Luca realised with sudden, heart-stopping certainty that he already knew this woman’s smile. Knew the exact angle at which her lips would tilt, how perfect her teeth would look, and how prominently those incredible cheekbones would stand out. Her blue eyes would sparkle like sunlight on water and when she laughed...

      Luca swallowed, his throat gone dry.

      When she laughed, it’d be the sweetest, most alluring sound he’d ever heard.

      He closed his eyes, his mind catapulting him back to a frigid February

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