LITMIR.BIZ

      MILLS & BOON

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      Special thanks to Joni Jones

       for sharing her love of Sicily and its people with me.

      CONTENTS

      CHAPTER ONE

      CHAPTER TWO

      CHAPTER THREE

      CHAPTER FOUR

      CHAPTER FIVE

      CHAPTER SIX

      CHAPTER SEVEN

      CHAPTER EIGHT

      CHAPTER NINE

      CHAPTER TEN

      CHAPTER ELEVEN

      CHAPTER TWELVE

      EPILOGUE

      CHAPTER ONE

      THE sun was a blurred golden orb in a lowering sky as the sirocco blew in from the sea, howling through the ruins of the castello like the voices of the rebellious gladiators who had once defended this bit of Sicily against the power and might of ancient Rome.

      Stefano Lucchesi thought of those men as he mounted the last stone steps and stood on the top of the cliff. To the west, Mount Etna slumbered in the humid air. Below, the stormy waters of the Mediterranean pounded the rocky shore.

      How many times had a sentry stood in this same place, watching for the enemy? Romans, Greeks, Arabs and Normans had all spilled their blood here in the name of dominion. Pirates had hunted offshore, lying in wait for unwary ships like packs of hungry wolves.

      Invader after invader had conquered this land of his ancestors, until, at last, it shook free of its shackles and created enemies of its own, an aristocracy that grew fat on the sweat of those who tilled this rocky soil.

      Stefano turned his back to the sea, dug his hands into the pockets of his jeans and surveyed his kingdom. Time had not treated it kindly. All that remained of the castello were tumbled stone walls and a handful of pillars.

      Perhaps that was as it should be. There was a certain ironic justice in the way time had evened the balance sheet. What his great grandfather three times removed had built here, what his grandfather had ultimately lost in a feud so bitter it had ended in bloodshed, had long-ago crumbled to dust.

      Even the land had been sold. Stefano had ordered his attorney to buy it back, piece by piece, from gnarled old men in baggy black suits who reminded him of his grandfather. Stefano had named a price that was more than fair, but the attorney’s representatives had no success.

      All the old men seemed eager to sell land that was basically dry and barren until they heard the buyer’s name.

      “Lucchesi?” they said.

      One even spat on the ground by way of punctuation.

      Stefano was amazed that the name should still evoke violent emotion after more than seventy years. He’d said so to his lawyer, who grinned, shook his head and said that Stefano needed to rent the Godfather movies and watch them from start to finish.

      “It’s the Mafia thing,” Jack said. “How can you have Sicilian blood running through your veins and not understand? Those old guys knew your grandpa. They hated him. Why should you expect a welcome from them?”

      Why, indeed?

      Stefano knew little about the Mafia. He’d grown up in America, where his grandfather had immigrated decades before his birth. His father died when he was a baby and his mother, a New Orleans homecoming queen, dragged him from city to city in a frenzied search for excitement. Stefano was twelve when she died.

      His paternal grandparents, who he hardly knew, took him in.

      Tough, street smart, hiding his fear behind a mask of arrogance, he couldn’t have been easy for them to handle. His grandmother fed him and clothed him and otherwise washed her hands of him. His grandfather tolerated him, disciplined him and finally loved him with all his heart.

      Perhaps his grandfather’s advanced years, coupled with Stefano having come to know him so late in the old man’s life, explained why he didn’t have what Jack called “the Mafia thing” in his blood. His grandfather never told him tales of bloodshed and revenge. He told him, instead, of La Sicilia, of Castello Lucchesi, of the cliffs and the volcano and the sea.

      Those were the things that beat in Stefano’s blood, the things he cherished without ever having seen them.

      It was only on his deathbed that the old man motioned him close, whispered of honor and pride and famiglia,

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