Buch lesen: «The Scandal Behind The Italian's Wedding»

CHAPTER ONE

IT WAS RUMORED that Dante Fiori could condemn a man to any level of hell he chose with the mere lift of his brow.

Powerful. Ruthless. Determined.

Dante was not a man to be trifled with or tested. He’d raised himself up from the slums with the aid of his mentor, Robert King, but then not only had he gone on to exceed the man’s expectations, he’d increased his fortune, as well.

Dante was a force in the world. A man all other men looked to—save his best friend, Maximus King, who found him overrated in the extreme and was the only person who had the nerve to say so. A man all women wanted to be with.

A king in whichever kingdom he chose to rule, whether he was a King by blood or not.

So it was shocking, then, when the world turned on its axis right in the middle of the King family’s grand living room.

Dante was in town, and he’d been invited over, as he often was, to join the family for their rather loud and raucous get-togethers. They were celebrating the launch of their oldest daughter Violet’s new makeup line, in a live video being broadcast from a nearby San Diego beach, to millions of viewers on her various media platforms.

Robert was lounging in his oversize chair, his wife, Elizabeth, sitting on the arm. Maximus was sitting back on the couch, one leg flung out in front of him, phone in one hand, a scotch in the other.

There was one family member missing. Two, actually. Minerva King, the youngest daughter and constant irritant, and her baby.

Dante had difficulty accepting the existence of the newest, smallest member of the King clan.

Min was nothing like Maximus or Violet. Maximus was a brilliant PR mind. A handler to the most difficult clients in the world. He did everything with a smile that the untrained eye might not be able to see was shot through with steel.

Violet was stunning. Keen and ambitious, she’d transformed her beauty into a multimillion-dollar enterprise. She was the driving force and face of her brand.

Then there was Min.

A little brown mouse who scurried about the grounds, always trailing about the place with animals dripping from her arms and a skinned knee. Her cheeks were always red, her hair always in a state.

And she talked. Constantly. About nothing.

She’d gone abroad to study nearly one year ago, and when she’d returned, it had been with a baby who was barely a month old. While initially shocked, over the past four months her family had accepted the existence of the little girl easily enough. The Kings weren’t old-fashioned.

The shock hadn’t come from the fact their daughter had broken with tradition and had a child out of wedlock—presumably with a foreign stranger—but that it had been Minerva and not Violet.

Dante did not feel accepting of it at all. He felt a strange burning in his chest when he looked at Min with the baby. This untamable, wild thing now tied down to earth by a child. By motherhood. She should be...out climbing trees. No matter that she was twenty-one, he couldn’t wrap his mind around the fact that she was a woman now.

A mother.

The other urge he had was to find the man who had done it to her and send him back to dust.

Send him straight down to the ninth level where he could sit next to Lucifer himself.

It infuriated him perhaps because Minerva always seemed so hapless. Running around like a windmill, and falling down, often undented. Though she had been badly dented once at an event of her father’s, and he remembered it well.

Some boy she liked publicly humiliating her on the dance floor.

Robert King had nearly had a stroke, and his anger had only embarrassed Min all the more.

She’d been seventeen or so. Dante had danced with her because she’d needed a partner.

Don’t let them see you cry.

He’d said it sternly. More than he’d meant, but it had done the trick.

The idea that someone had harmed her now enraged him all over again.

He wasn’t in the habit of questioning himself. He simply acted when he felt action needed to occur. And perhaps that was the issue here. There was no action to be taken.

It didn’t matter. Minerva didn’t matter. Neither did her current situation.

All eyes were on Violet and would be for the next fifteen minutes while she unveiled her next series of products. And then it would be time for Dante to speak to Robert about the joining of the two companies again.

He had been trying to tell Robert it was the best thing for everyone. And, of course, some of it was that Dante felt entitled to King Industries as he had helped to build it. He had gone off and made his own fortune, but his ultimate goal was a merger between the two.

Of course, Robert had feelings about keeping it all in the family.

But Maximus had no interest at all. Maximus was a billionaire, and his business methods were unorthodox. He had no interest in manufacturing.

Violet was much the same, and while she used King Industries to help make her products, she developed them on her own, and used her father’s business simply for the manufacturing end, containing development and distribution within her own brand.

Only Minerva remained to take over the family business, and he knew that Minerva would have no interest in such a thing.

She was not... Ambitious.

Minerva was not brave.

If she were here now, it would be as if she weren’t. She would simply be sitting in a corner, clutching her baby and looking around.

Unless she began to chatter.

But typically, she was quiet as her father commanded during times such as these.

Violet’s beautiful, perfectly made-up face appeared on the screen, and the whole family paid heed. Dante looked up, sparing the screen only a glance before looking back down at his own phone.

But then, a moment later it wasn’t Violet’s voice he heard.

“I know you’re watching to hear about my sister’s products, and not to hear family gossip. But, as her new makeup line is called Rumors, I thought that I would put some rumors about me to rest.”

He looked up and saw his brown mouse.

There was Minerva, her dark hair hanging loose and unstyled past her shoulders, not straight, not curled, somewhere in between. She was holding the baby, gripped tightly against her body.

“There has been much discussion in regards to the paternity of my baby girl. I’m used to being the King that no one has any interest in. And yet, the interest surrounding Isabella’s birth has been unprecedented for me. Well, it’s time for the secret come out.” Brilliant green eyes met the camera, Min’s only stunning feature. And they were glowing now. “The father of my baby is Dante Fiori.”

Whatever else was happening on the screen, not a single person in the family was watching now.

All eyes had turned to him.

He looked into his friend’s eyes. And he saw only murder there.

She had done it. In a panic, she had done it, and Violet had been more than happy to allow her to step up and make the announcement because Violet loved nothing more than a spectacle.

Well, Min had promised her spectacle. She had delivered.

And now, in the limo, after the announcement was done, Violet had exploded.

“Dante?”

“Yes,” Minerva said, lying through her teeth and feeling more and more terrified by the moment.

“Dante? Dante slept with you?”

She couldn’t work out if Violet was shocked because Minerva was not the sort of woman Dante typically went for, or if Violet was angry that Dante had touched her, or if Violet was angry because she was... Well, maybe a little bit jealous.

Violet was the great beauty in the family, there was no questioning that. Minerva wasn’t much at all. She never had been.

Until she had returned from a trip overseas with a baby. And then speculation about her had begun to swirl. She should have known there would be no avoiding rumors. She should have known that avoiding the press would be impossible. She should have known that every jerk with a smartphone would try to take her and Isabella’s picture, and that those pictures would be posted everywhere, for anyone in the world to see. And that Carlo would see them. And he would suspect.

And once she had gotten the threatening text, she knew that she had to act.

She was in danger. Isabella was in danger.

She didn’t believe that Katie’s overdose had been purely accidental, and she never would. Carlo was the kind of man who had access to all sorts of things, and her friend had been terrified during those last days of her life. Because he had found them.

It had been so simple for a while, to stay under the radar in Europe. Minerva wasn’t a particularly famous face, in spite of her connection to the King family, and outside the United States nobody ever gave her a second glance. If she had been with Violet, everyone would have recognized them.

But on her own, she was just a university student. The same with her friend and roommate.

But clearly, Carlo had figured out who she was, and where she was.

And worse, where Isabella was.

She had no choice but to tell this lie. To throw him off the scent.

Because this baby could not be Carlo’s baby. Not if it was hers. Not if it was Dante’s.

There was a reason the deception about Isabella had been so paramount when she had first come home. That she insisted the child was hers.

Everyone had believed it. And she had thought it would be enough. It was one reason she hadn’t worried over much when photographs of herself and Isabella had begun circulating.

She had never slept with Carlo. Therefore, any child of hers could not be a child of his. And besides, she was used to her superpower. Invisibility.

A wren among a gaggle of peacocks, Minerva was simply accustomed to being forgotten. She didn’t imagine for a moment that Carlo would remember her face. He had only seen her a handful of times during the time she’d spent studying in Rome. And he had been entirely focused on Katie.

But clearly, he had begun to piece things together.

And so...

And so.

She had promised her sister a show. She had delivered.

But she did not seem pleased.

“Dad is going to kill him,” Violet said.

“Do you think so?” Her father had responded to her return with a baby in an extremely sanguine manner. As far as Robert King was concerned, as long as none of his children were crack addicts he had done fine enough.

She had asked him if it bothered him. That she had a child without a partner.

He’d said: “Why would I mind? You’re not a teenager, and you have the money to take care of her. It’s not like the house isn’t big enough.”

And that had been the end of it.

She couldn’t imagine he would be angry simply because the baby was Dante’s.

Dante, on the other hand...

She could only hope that he was somewhere far afield. On the East Coast. In his New York office. Perhaps he would be in Frankfurt or Milan.

Just so long as he wasn’t...

The limo pulled up to the front of the King family mansion, and all of Minerva’s hopes and dreams were dashed when she saw him standing there.

Her heart nearly lurched up her throat and out of her mouth.

She had forgotten.

How imposing he was. How large.

How utterly, devastatingly handsome.

Which was ridiculous, because she had seen him only a month earlier.

She could still remember the awkward, horrible dance at one of her father’s parties. Her biggest crush ever had only agreed to be her date for a dare. To see the inside of the infamous King mansion and to report back to friends at school.

Dante had taken hold of her after Bradley had embarrassed her, and held her close, shielding her from curious eyes. He’d been so strong and solid, and all the anguish and shame inside her had caught fire and burned hot. It had been so embarrassing but she’d also been unable to pull away from him.

But he’d been pity dancing with her. He’d added to the confusion of...everything.

And compared to Bradley’s bony shoulders, Dante’s had felt so broad and solid.

It had all been weird.

Even with that she could forget.

But she didn’t think that the impact of a man like Dante Fiori could live in its genuine state inside a woman, or anyone. You would die of it.

It became clear only in person.

He had always made her feel small. Rattled.

She had the tendency to run at the mouth whenever he was around. He made her stomach feel like it was quivering.

She disliked it intensely. And yet, she had always felt drawn to him like he was a magnet. She had always felt compelled to get a response out of him. To go to him. And she could no more understand any of those tendencies then she could understand quantum physics.

Which was to say: not at all.

“He is unhappy,” Violet said softly.

“Well... He’ll just have to deal with it.”

Minerva lifted her chin, affecting a posture of determination she did not feel. Her brother appeared behind Dante, and behind him was her father.

Everybody did look remarkably unhappy.

Min was not accustomed to being the source of people’s unhappiness. She was used to being ignored, and when she’d shown up with her parents’ first grandchild, they’d been happy.

No one looked happy now.

The car stopped, and Dante didn’t wait. He marched over to the car and jerked the door open.

And she found herself face-to-face with his stormy black gaze.

It was fathomless. As if she could look all the way down into the depths of his soul. Into the depths of hell itself.

She knew the things they said about him. That when her father had encountered him in Rome when he was a boy, Dante had been attempting to rob Robert King at gunpoint. That something about the boy had made Robert pause. That he had given him his watch, but also his card, and told him that if he wanted to change his life, rather than just live to commit another robbery, he should contact him.

And that shockingly, Dante had.

But that he had been a man who had committed a great many atrocities prior to his salvation and education that had been financed by Robert King.

She had never believed the stories.

Mostly because her father loved a story, and it was one he did not tell. Which forced her to believe that the truth of it must be less dramatic, and far less interesting.

Now she wondered, though.

Because she felt like she was staring down the very devil.

“We have a lot to discuss, don’t you think?”

Dante took hold of her hand, and lifted her from the limo, depositing her gently onto her feet. She looked past his shoulder, at Maximus and her father.

“And when you’re done speaking to her,” Maximus said, “I think you and I need to have a talk.”

“I’m sure this will give you time to rally the firing squad,” Dante said, his tone dry.

He was still holding her hand.

She could recall, with perfect ease, another time Dante had touched her hand. Not the dance, but earlier.

She had been a girl. All of twelve, and she had fallen out of a tree in the backyard.

Dante had found her lying pitifully on the ground, pondering her fate, and he had been afraid that she had broken her neck. He had yelled as much at her as he had lifted her up. His touch, hot and strong, had started to quiver low in her body.

She hadn’t liked it. She had pulled away from him, then bent down to wipe the blood from her knee. “I’m fine.”

“You are a menace,” he’d said back.

She could imagine the exchange happening just that way now.

“I have to get Isabella,” she protested.

“Go,” he said.

She did, stumbling as she went. With shaking fingers, she undid the seat belt and lifted her baby girl up from the seat.

The thing was, it didn’t matter who’d given birth to Isabella.

Minerva was her mother.

She’d cared for her from the time she was born while Katie shrank away in increasing fear, self-medicating away the terror of the possibility of Carlo finding them.

Min was not brave by nature. But she’d known someone had to be brave for Isabella. And since Katie couldn’t, it had to be her.

They walked past her brother, who was looking at Dante as though he wanted to flay him alive, and her father, who looked stoic. Into the house. Up the stairs.

Totally silent.

Minerva clung to Isabella, thinking of her in some ways as a shield. Surely not even Dante would yell at her while she was holding a baby.

He opened up the door to her father’s study, and ushered her inside, slamming it behind them. “Explain this, Minerva, because you and I both know that I am not the father of your baby.”

Well, she was disappointed on that score. Dante was clearly fine yelling around an infant.

She cupped the back of Isabella’s downy little head. “Did you tell them?”

“No, I didn’t tell them. You’re going to have to tell them, because if I tell them they’re not going to believe me. In the hour it took you to get home from the press conference, I had to tell your brother about ten reasons he shouldn’t kill me where I sat. And the leading one was that I might be the father of your child, and that you might need me in some capacity.”

“I do need you,” she said.

Silence settled between them as he waited for her to explain.

“I’m sorry,” she said finally. “I panicked.”

“Why did you panic? What is happening?”

“You were the only name I could think of. The only name that was big enough. I had to protect myself, Dante. I had to protect Isabella! And I thought seeing as you are so close with my family, it was believable enough that you and I...that we...”

“Yes, well. The problem is, child, that the idea I would touch you in that way is laughable in the extreme.”

Minerva had never felt so small, or quite so dull.

Standing next to the brilliant Dante Fiori made her feel as plain and inadequate as she was.

He was right. The idea that he would touch her was laughable, though it seemed as if Maximus and her father were more than willing to believe it. So why wouldn’t the rest of the world?

She knew he’d only ever danced with her four years ago because he’d pitied her. Everyone knew it.

Still, she held her head high.

“Men are renowned for touching women that don’t make sense. It is common knowledge that the secret sexual fantasies of men are unknowable.” She leaned in and did her best to seem confident when she was very much not.

“Is it?” he asked. “Well, mine are fairly knowable. Often plastered on the front page of newspapers here and there. You are plainly not my fantasy.”

She thought of all the women he’d been seen with over the years. Sleek, polished and curvy. Brunette, blonde, pale or brown, didn’t seem to matter to him, but there was a sophistication to the women he enjoyed.

Quite like her sister, and not at all like her.

“Well, that is good to know,” she said.

“Why did you do it, Minerva?”

“I am sorry. I really didn’t do it to cause you trouble. But I’m being threatened, and so is Isabella, and in order to protect us both I needed to come up with an alternative paternity story.”

“An alternative paternity story?”

She winced. “Yes. Her father is after her.”

He eyed her with great skepticism. “I didn’t think you knew who her father was.”

She didn’t know whether to be shocked, offended or pleased that he thought her capable of having an anonymous interlude.

For heaven’s sake, she’d only ever been kissed one time in her life. A regrettable evening out with Katie in Rome where she’d tried to enjoy the pulsing music in the club, but had instead felt overheated and on the verge of a seizure.

She’d danced with a man in a shiny shirt—and she even knew his name because she wouldn’t even dance with a man without an introduction—and he’d kissed her on the dance floor. It had been wet and he’d tasted of liquor and she’d feigned a headache after and taken a cab back to the hostel they’d been staying in.

The idea of hooking up with someone, in a circumstance like that, made her want to peel her own skin off.

“Of course I know who he is. Unfortunately... The full implications of who he is did not become clear until later.”

“What does that mean?”

She could tell him the truth now, but something stopped her. Maybe it was admitting Isabella wasn’t her daughter, which always caught her in the chest and made her feel small. Like she’d stolen her and like what they had was potentially fragile, temporary and shaky.

Or maybe it was trust. Dante was a good man. Going off the fact he had rescued her from a fall, and helped her up when her knee was skinned, and bailed her out after her terrible humiliation in high school.

But to trust him with the truth was something she simply wasn’t brave enough to do.

Her life, Isabella’s life, was at risk, and she’d lied on livestream in front of the world.

Her bravery was tapped out.

“Her father is part of an organized crime family. Obviously something unknown to me at the time of her...you know. And he’s after her. He’s after us.”

“Are you telling me that you’re in actual danger?”

“Yes. And really, the only hope I have is convincing him that he isn’t actually the father.”

“And you think that will work?”

“It’s the only choice I have. I need your protection.”

He regarded her with dark, fathomless eyes, and yet again, she felt like he was peering at her as though she were a girl, and not a woman at all. A naughty child, in point of fact. Then something in his expression shifted.

It shamed her a little that this was so like when he’d come to her rescue at the party. That she was manipulating his pity for her. Her own pathetic nature being what called to him, yet again.

But she would lay down any and all pride for Isabella and she’d do it willingly.

“If she were in fact my child, then we would be family.”

“I... I suppose,” she said.

“There will need to be photographs of us together, as I would not be a neglectful father.”

“No indeed.”

“Of course, you know that if Isabella were really my child there would be only one thing for us to do.”

“Do I?”

“Yes.” He began to pace, like a caged tiger trying to find a weak spot in his cage. And suddenly he stopped, and she had the terrible feeling that the tiger had found what he’d been looking for. “Yes. Of course, there is only one option.”

“And that is?”

“You have to marry me.”