LITMIR.BIZ

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shifted like that, he seemed to take up the whole of it.

      “I would ordinarily spare a visitor a dreary history lesson, but there is very little personal about this villa. It appears as it always has. It is my job to be its steward, not a resident in any real sense. I must hand the villa on to the next generation intact. As it has been handed down, eldest son to eldest son, since the day it was built. For me, Doctor, there is no distinction between what is corporate and what is personal. My mother was a San Giacomo. Surely you must know what that means.”

      “Is this your way of reminding me that you’re famous, Mr. Combe?”

      “My family is not famous,” he said gently. “Fame is the stuff of a moment, here and gone. My family—both of my families—are prominent and of significant means. And have been for some centuries.”

      “Do you think—”

      “Let us cut to the chase, please.” He interrupted her smoothly, but she was sure that was impatience she could see in his face. And his please wasn’t any sort of supplication. “What is it you are looking for from me? Is it a certain set of words, arranged in a specific way, so as to assuage whatever offended dignity my board is currently pretending they feel? Tell me what it is you need, I shall provide it, and then we can all move on with our lives.”

      That felt like a slap, and the fact that it did made her wonder why she hadn’t noticed that he was getting to her the way he was. Not just that thing she could still feel like a new pulse, low in her belly. He was nice to look at, yes—magnetic, even—but it was more than that. She was leaning forward in the uncomfortable chair she’d chosen and now felt she had to pretend she found pleasant.

      But Sarina wasn’t assessing Matteo Combe the way she should have been. Instead, she was hanging on his every word. She was enjoying sparring with him a little bit too much.

      She was...enjoying this. Him.

      A wave of self-hatred crashed over her, and on some level she was shocked it didn’t sweep her away. That he couldn’t see it.

      I’m sorry, Jeanette. And as she thought of her lost friend, her sister in her soul, another wave hit her—this time, of the grief that never quite left her. And never would, she thought, until she did her part to give a little back to the kind of men who preyed on pretty girls like Jeanette had been. And did nothing when they fell apart, because they’d already moved on to another victim.

      Sarina had vowed that she would honor her best friend’s memory right there where she’d found Jeanette’s body, there in the bathroom of the apartment they’d shared while Sarina finished up her graduate work. She would do what she could to bring supposedly untouchable men to justice, if they deserved it. She would identify predators, look hard at arrogance, and where appropriate, help dismantle systems that kept abusive men in power.

      That vow hadn’t simply been words. She’d made it the cornerstone of her life.

      One beautiful, brooding much-too-rich man with eyes like smoke wasn’t going to change that.

      “I’m afraid that’s not how it works.” Her voice was much chillier than it had been before. Overcompensation, maybe. But there was something about Matteo that encouraged her to...lean in too much. Be a little bit too much engaged. Try to match wits with him when she should have been quietly and competently undermining his confidence. “I understand that you’re a man who’s used to being in charge of things, but you’re not in charge of this. I am. I will tell you when and where the next meeting is. You already agreed to show up. In the same fashion, I will let you know when we’re finished.”

      “Surely you cannot have convinced my board to allow this to drag on forever. They prefer instant gratification, I must tell you.”

      “What I did or did not offer your board isn’t something I can discuss with you. They are my client. The nature of our relationship must remain private.”

      “How convenient.”

      “Here’s what I want you to think about,” she said, and smiled at him, encouragingly. With too much teeth, perhaps. “Control is obviously very important to you. You control your company, now more than ever. You apparently think that you ought to be able to control the reproductive choices of your own sister. You’re a very powerful man, and powerful men, as a rule, tend to be under the impression that they should be able to control anything and everything. But you don’t control this. You don’t control me.”

      “As it happens, I have thought of little else.”

      Again, he was far more dry than she’d been prepared for. It unnerved her—but Sarina hid that. Or hoped she did.

      “Good. And as you continue to think about it, as I’m sure you will, I’d like you to find your way to viewing this as an opportunity.”

      His mouth curved into something sardonic. “An opportunity for what, exactly?”

      He was still leaning forward, and despite herself, so was she. And the room suddenly felt breathless. Fraught and tight around them, like a fist.

      But Sarina didn’t sit back. She didn’t break that connection—because she refused to show him that she noticed it in the first place.

      “Why, for you, Mr. Combe.” She made her voice light. Very nearly airy. “It’s your opportunity to be a better person. Once you learn how to give up control, you might find that you don’t have to struggle with concepts like toxic masculinity.”

      His expression suggested that he was not overconcerned with said concepts, or indeed any kind of struggle. But he only gazed back at her, his gray eyes steady in a way that made her breath feel shallow.

      “And I will be free of this struggle because my corporation will crumble into dust, as it requires my control and attention at all times? Or perhaps it will be my family that suffers, once I release my grip—as I am the only thing currently holding us together? I think you misunderstand the fundamental nature of my character, Dr. Fellows. I am not trying to control the universe. Between you and me, I do not much care about the universe. But I do like to control what I am, in fact, in control of.”

      “Says the man who descended into an all-out brawl at his own father’s funeral.”

      She saw it then. That blaze of pure, stark temper in his gaze that made his whole face change. Into something taut and dark. Powerful in an entirely different way.

      Thrilling, something in her supplied, as she pulsed anew. But she ignored all of that.

      Or she tried.

      But Matteo’s eyes were smoke and ruin, and she had the oddest sense he knew it.

      “Oh, Doctor.” He sounded almost pitying. Almost. “Do you think that I was goaded into punching that man? On the contrary, I very much meant to do that. And am glad I did.”

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