LITMIR.BIZ

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to keep her voice steady as she spoke ‘—and that’s all. You can have your precious emeralds back on our wedding day. No cash will be necessary.’

      She bit out the final sentence.

      Vito stared at her. His expression was veiled. And suddenly the way he was looking at her was far, far worse than when his eyes had been dark with fury, his face cold with disgust.

      She felt her heart start to quicken, her stomach plunge as though she’d just swallowed an ice-cube.

      ‘Why?’ he asked quietly, but there was no softness in his voice, just a low, disturbing shimmer of menace. ‘Why?’ he asked again.

      His shoulders eased into the soft leather curve of his executive chair and it swung slightly at the redistribution of weight. His eyes never left her face.

      She shifted uneasily. What was going on? Why was he looking at her like that?

      She tightened her jaw.

      ‘Why what? Why don’t I want money for the emeralds?’

      ‘No. Why do you imagine that I would entertain, even for a nanosecond, your…proposal?’

      His voice was still quiet, but it withered the flesh on her body.

      ‘Because,’ she answered, through gritted teeth, ‘you want the emeralds back. And this is the only way you’re going to get them.’

      Something flashed in his eyes. In a single fluid movement he was on his feet.

      His hand flew up.

      ‘Basta! This idiocy has gone far enough! I am prepared to buy back the emeralds in cash—but I am not prepared to have my time wasted a second longer with this farce! So either take the cheque or get out!’

      She was reeling from the force of his anger. Her fingers dug into the soft leather of her handbag.

      ‘If I walk now you’ll never get your precious emeralds back!’

      She tried to hurl her words at him, but they came out shaking.

      ‘Never is a long time,’ he retorted caustically. ‘At some point you’ll sell them—just to realise their value. And if you don’t sell them to me, what do I care? I’ll buy them from whoever you sell them to.’

      ‘My mother will never sell them!’ An image of the way Arlene had let the green jewels run through her fingers, gloating with triumph over her possession of them, shot through her mind. ‘Never!’

      ‘Then you can bury them in her grave with her!’

      Rachel’s face whitened, draining of blood. Faintness drummed in her ears.

      ‘You bastard,’ she whispered.

      His face stayed unrelenting, like unyielding marble. ‘No—that’s you. Remember?’

      It finished her. Finished her totally.

      Numb, she turned on her heel, walking back towards the closed double doors that seemed suddenly to be a hundred metres away. The urge to run, to get out, was overwhelming. Only at the door did she find one last vestige of courage. She took the handle, steadying herself.

      Then she turned. Her face was totally blank.

      ‘May you rot in hell, Vito Farneste!’

      She swung back, yanking open the double doors, and walked out. She just made it inside the lift before her legs all but buckled beneath her, and she had to sag against the bronzed wall for support.

      As the lift plunged downwards, so did her heart.

      She had blown it. Totally blown it. Her wild, stupid, insane idea had failed utterly, miserably.

      Despair filled her, and in its wake the floodgates to grief opened yet again, drowning her.

      In his office, Vito stood for one long, last moment, his face rigid. Fury so overwhelming he thought it would burst through tore at him, but he leashed it tight, with rigid control.

      How dared she come here! Stroll into his office and coolly, insolently, lay down conditions for the return of his own property?

      And such conditions…

      His eyes narrowed with cold, disbelieving rage.

      Had she really imagined that he would pay the slightest consideration to what she demanded? Could she really be that insane? Walking in, out of the blue, three years after he’d finally torn Arlene Graham’s grasping claws from the Farneste coffers, and thinking that he might actually consider, let alone accept paying such a price for the purloined Farneste emeralds?

      Out of what sordid hole had she crawled, anyway? And why now? Were times hard for the pair of them these days? He’d made sure Arlene Graham had taken the minimum of booty with her when he’d despatched her after his father had died, but a woman like her would have squirrelled away funds for years. Other than sending his useless pack of lawyers to try and extract the one trophy she had managed to carry off, he’d let Arlene Graham rot, glad that he’d finally got her out of Italy. Where she’d gone he neither knew nor cared. If she’d taken another protector he’d have been surprised—her youth had gone and her market rate was all but zero.

      Another thought seared across his mind.

      Had she turned her daughter to the same trade? Leeching off rich men in exchange for sleeping with them? She was certainly dressed as if a rich man had paid for her appearance…

      Even at the thought something stabbed at him. So brief that he dismissed it. Instead he found himself jabbing at the intercom to his PA.

      ‘The woman who left my office just now. Have her followed.’

      CHAPTER THREE

      RACHEL turned the key in the lock and let herself into her flat. She felt overwhelmed with emotion, shaking in the aftermath of her encounter with Vito Farneste.

      It had been worse, far worse than she had imagined it could be—even though she had been dreading it ever since the realisation that she would have to go and confront him had gelled inside her all those weeks ago.

      She collapsed down on the bed. It sagged ominously under her weight. But she took no notice. The grim condition of the rented bedsit she lived in was of no concern to her—she had ceased to notice its noisome condition some time ago, and if she missed her small but beautifully decorated one-bedroom flat in the old Victorian house in a leafy inner London suburb, she did not regret its sale by an iota. It had had to go, and go it had. And that was that.

      Only one thing concerned her now—had concerned her for the last five gut-churning weeks.

      Getting Vito Farneste to marry her.

      Had she really thought she had a chance of succeeding? She might as well have tried to scale Everest on her hands and knees! She stared bleakly ahead of her, every excruciating moment of that ghastly scene playing itself inside her head like an unstoppable CD.

      Her stomach writhed as if it were full of sea snakes, and her hands, she realised, were still clenched tightly around her handbag. Forcibly she made herself unclench them, and tossed the bag on the bed’s shabby coverlet. She glanced down at the threadbare carpet.

      It had all been pointless. The whole sorry, stupid expedition! The idiotic, no-hope, ludicrous plan! How could she possibly have thought it would succeed? That Vito Farneste would actually consider going along with her proposal to get his precious emeralds back? Agree to anything so absurd, so insane as going through any kind of marriage ceremony with her? However temporary, however limited.

      Not even getting back the Farneste emeralds was worth such a sacrifice on his part.

      I must have been mad even to consider it…

      No, not mad, she thought, her eyes screwing shut in anguish. Just desperate.

      Desperate enough to do anything, anything to make Arlene happy…

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