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  Maybe she never had. Maybe she’d only been bottling it up, pretending to be back to normal. Maybe she did need some blow to jolt her out of her simulated animation. Maybe if this was an email from him, it would trigger some true resolution so she’d bury his memory once and for all.

  She clicked open the email.

  Her gaze flew to the bottom. There was a signature. His. This was from him.

  All the beats her heart had been holding back spilled out in a jumbled outpour. And that was before she read the two sentences that comprised the message.

  I can send your family to prison for life, but I’m willing to negotiate. Be at my penthouse at 5:00 p.m., or I’ll turn the evidence I have in to the authorities.

  * * *

  At ten to five, Glory was on her way up to Vincenzo’s penthouse, déjà vu settling on her like a suffocating cloak.

  Her dry-as-sand eyes panned around the elevator she’d once taken almost every day for six months. The memories felt like they belonged to someone else’s life.

  Which wasn’t too far-fetched. She’d been someone else then. After a lifetime of devoting her every waking hour to excelling in her studies, she’d reached the ripe age of twenty-three with zero social skills and the emotional maturity of someone a decade younger. She’d been aware of that, but hadn’t had time to work on anything but her intellectual growth. She’d been determined she wouldn’t have the life her family had, one of precarious gambles and failed opportunity hunting. She’d wanted a life of stability.

  She’d worked to that end since she’d been a teenager, forgoing the time dump others called a social life. And she’d believed she’d been achieving her goal, graduating at the top of her class and obtaining a master’s degree with the highest honors. Everyone had projected she’d rise to the top of her field.

  But though she’d been confident her outstanding qualifications and recommendations would afford her a high-paying and prestigious job, she’d applied for a position in D’Agostino Developments not really expecting to get it. Not after she’d heard such stories about the man at the helm of the meteorically rising enterprise. In his corporation, Vincenzo D’Agostino had grueling standards. He interviewed and vetted even the mailroom staff. Then he had vetted her.

  She still remembered every second of that fateful meeting that had changed her life.

  His scrutiny had been denuding, his focus scorching, his questions rapid-fire and deconstructing. His influence had rocked her to her core, making her feel like a swooning moron as she’d sluggishly answered his brusque questions. But after only ten minutes, he’d risen, shaken her hand and given her a much more strategic position than she’d dared hope for, working at the highest level, directly with him.

  She’d exited his office reeling at the shock of it all. She hadn’t known it was possible for a human being to be so beautiful, so overpowering. She hadn’t known a man could have her hot and wet just looking at her across a desk. She hadn’t even been interested in a man before, so the intensity of her desire after one meeting had had her in a free fall of confusion.

  But while she’d gotten a job she’d thought impossible, she’d thought the real impossibility would be him. Even if he hadn’t had an absolute rule against mixing work and pleasure, she couldn’t imagine he’d be interested in someone like her. Cerebrally, she knew she was pretty, but a man like him had stunning and sophisticated women swarming all over him, and she’d certainly been neither. Something he’d confirmed when he kicked her out of his life.

  She’d been determined to stifle her fantasies so she wouldn’t compromise her fantastic position. At least she had until he’d called an hour later, inviting her out to dinner.

  Silencing her misgivings about his change of M.O. and its probable negative effects on her career, she stumbled over herself saying yes. She’d thrown discretion to the wind and hurtled full force into his arms, allowing her existence to revolve around him on every level, personal and professional.

  Yeah, she’d hurtled all the way off the cliff of his cruelty and exploitation. And she could only blame herself. No law, natural or human-made, protected fools from their folly.

  But there’d been one thing she’d learned from that ordeal. Vincenzo didn’t joke. Ever. He was as serious as the plague.

  In her eyes, it had been the one thing missing from his character back then. Of course, her eyes had been so filled with the plethora of his godlike attributes, she’d given the deficiency nothing but a passing regret. But that fact forced one belief on her. His email had been no prank.

  She’d reached that conclusion minutes after she’d read it. After the first shock had passed, she’d gone through the range of extreme reactions until only rage remained.

  A ping yanked her out of her murderous musings.

  Forcing stiff legs to move, she stepped out into the hall leading to that royal slimeball’s floor-spanning penthouse.

  Nothing had changed. Which was weird. She’d thought he would have remodeled the whole building to suit the changing trends and his inflating status and wealth.

  He’d once told her this opulent edifice in the heart of New York was nothing compared to his family home in Castaldini. He’d pretended he couldn’t wait to take her there. His desire to take her there, and the prospect of visiting his home, had kept her in a state of constant anticipation and excitement.

  But she hadn’t been able to imagine anything more lavish than this place. His whole world had made her feel what Alice must have felt when she’d fallen into Wonderland. It had alerted her to how radically different they were, how it made no sense that they’d come together. But she’d ignored reason.

  Until he’d thrown her out of his life like so much garbage.

  Another wave of fury crashed over her as she stopped at his door.

  He must be watching her through the security camera. He always had, barely letting her enter before sweeping her away on the rapids of his eagerness. Or so she’d thought.

  She glared up at where the camera was hidden. She still had the key. Another memento she hadn’t thrown away. He probably hadn’t changed the lock. Why should he have? With enough guards to stop an army, she wouldn’t have gotten here without his permission.

  He probably expected her to ring the bell. Yeah, right. He might have dragged her here, but she was damned if he’d leave her waiting until he deigned to open the door.

  She stabbed the key in, imagining the lock was his eye.

  Her breath still hitched as the door clicked open, then again as she stepped inside.

  He stood facing her at the end of the expansive sitting area, in front of the screen where he’d once displayed their videotaped sessions of sexual delirium as he’d drowned her in more.

  Her heart clamored out of control as his steel-hued eyes struck her with a million volts of sexiness and charisma across the distance.

  He’d once been the epitome of male beauty. Now he’d become impossibly more, his influence enhanced, his assets augmented.

  Dressed in all black, he seemed taller than his six foot five, his shoulders even wider, his waist and hips sparser in comparison to a torso and thighs that had bulked up with muscle. His face was hewn to sharper planes and angles, his skin a darker, silkier copper, intensifying the luminescence of his eyes. The discreet silver brushing his luxurious raven hair at the temples added the last touch of allure.

  But she wasn’t only checking off his upgrades against what she’d known…too intimately. She was reacting to him in the same way, with the same intensity she had when she’d been younger, inexperienced and oblivious of his reality.

  Weird, this disconnect between mental aversion and physical affinity.

  She could barely breathe, and that was before he spoke, his voice deeper, strumming hidden places inside her with each inflection, with that trace accent, those rolling r’
s…

  “Before you say anything, yes, I do have evidence that would send your father and brother to prison from fifteen to life. But you must already be certain of that. That’s why you’re here.”

  Her momentary incapacitation cracked.

  She moved steadily toward him, roiling rage fueling each step. “I know you’re capable of anything. That’s why I’m here.”

  His eyes smoldered as they documented her state. “I’ll dispense with the preliminaries then and get to the point of my summons.”

  She stopped feet away, scoffing, “Summons? Wow. Your ‘princehood’ has gone to your head, hasn’t it? But then, you must have always been this pompous and loathsome, and I was the one who was too blind to notice.”

  Those sculpted lips that had once driven her to insanity twisted. “I don’t have time now for your scorned-woman barbs, Glory. But once my objective is fulfilled, I might accommodate your need to vent. It will be…amusing.”

  Bringing herself under control, she matched his coolness. “I’m sure it will be. Sharks do relish blood. And that, along with anything I say to you or about you, isn’t a barb. Just a fact. So let’s stop wasting calories and get to the point of your ‘summons.’ What will it take so you won’t destroy my family? If you want me to steal some top secret info from your rivals, I no longer work in your field, as I’m sure you know.”

  An imperious eyebrow rose. “Would you have, if you were?”

  Her answer was unhesitating. “No.”

  Something streaked in his eyes, something that looked like…pain? What made it even more confusing was that it was tinged with…humor? Humor? Vincenzo? And now of all times?

  “Not even to save your beloved family?”

  She wanted to growl that they were no such thing.

  Oh, sure, she loved them. But they drove her up the wall being so irresponsible. They were why she was now at this royal scumbag’s mercy. He must have acquired some debts of theirs. And if he could send them to prison using those, they must be huge.

  “No,” she said, more forcefully this time. “I was just analyzing the only thing you might think I have to offer in return for your generous amnesty.”

  “That’s not the only thing you have to offer.”

  For heart-scrambled moments it felt as if he meant…

  No. No way. He’d told her in mutilating detail what an exchangeable “lay” she’d been. He’d discarded her and moved on to a thousand others. And he was known to never return to an already pollinated flower. He wouldn’t go to these lengths, or any, to have her in his bed again.

  Her glare grew harder. “I can offer you a much deserved skull fracture. Apart from that, I can’t think of a thing.”

  This time, the humor filling his eyes and lips was unmistakable, shaking her more than anything else had.

  “I’ll pass on the kind cranial-reconstruction offer. But there is another alteration you can offer me that I vitally need.” His lips quirked as if at a private joke. “ASAP.”

  “Will you stop wasting my time and just spit it out? What the hell do you ‘need’?”

  Unfazed by her fury, he calmly said, “A wife.”

  ISBN: 9781460315415

  THE WESTMORELANDS: ZANE

  Copyright © 2013 by Brenda Streater Jackson

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