ANTONIO HAD STARTED to wonder where Emma had got to about an hour ago. Danyl had left—he was returning to Terhren—and Dimitri had turned his attentions to a rather beautiful Iranian woman.
Antonio had no intention of blocking his pursuit. Ever since Dimitri’s imprisonment a cloud had hung about him. And the news of his half-brother’s involvement in his imprisonment had not done as much as he’d thought to lighten it.
Unease started to nibble at the edges of the excitement he’d felt earlier in the evening. It wasn’t like Emma simply to disappear. He knew he hadn’t missed her amongst the glittering, bejewelled guests at the Hanley Cup’s closing party. He had lost that sense of her. That he could feel her presence should have been warning enough. But the fact that he couldn’t...
He made his way back to the suite, his heart pounding, aware that something must be terribly wrong. Which was perhaps why he was not surprised to find the rooms shrouded in darkness when he entered.
Emma stood in front of the huge windows, illuminated by the bursts of lightning that fired through the night sky. The storm that had been promised was finally breaking.
His gaze caught a glimpse of the private investigator’s dossier on the side table—open. And that was the moment he knew that everything he thought he might have had, everything that had made him feel so much hope, was about to slip through his fingers. Not just the Bartlett deal, but Emma too.
In the time it took for another burst of lightning to burn through the night-time sky he realised suddenly just how much she had come to mean to him—how much he wanted her to be his. And not just until after the deal...after Hong Kong. He wanted to show her the world. He wanted to help her achieve everything on her Living List. He wanted to make her his for ever.
But then he saw her bags, packed and waiting by the door to her room, and knew he’d been foolish to allow himself to think such thoughts. He could never have her—not whilst seeking his father’s punishment. He could never have her and still do the things that needed to be done—to become a monster to catch a monster. But it didn’t stop him from wanting to try.
‘What is this?’
Her voice cut through the silence. The question echoed in the burst of thunder that rolled across the race course outside.
‘Emma—’
‘What is it?’ she demanded, her voice suddenly more powerful and commanding than the elements raging beyond the windows.
‘It’s a file I requested to be compiled on Bartlett.’
‘Do you not think that you offered the best deal to Bartlett?’ she asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Do you not think that you deserve to win this contract on your own merit?’
‘Yes,’ he growled, his anger, his fear, all working to meet her tone.
‘Then explain to me what that is.’
‘It’s insurance.’
‘Insurance?’ she spat.
He had never heard her tone so dark, so angry, and he hated that he had made it so. Hated that he had tainted her in any way because of his need for revenge.
‘That isn’t insurance. That is the complete and abject desecration of a person, Antonio. Your PI has dug up dirt on Mandy Bartlett and—what? You were going to use it to blackmail Bartlett into letting you invest in his company?’
He met her accusations with silence. There were no shields to protect him from the truth of her words.
‘Is this because of what I said the other night? Because I followed her on social media and saw that she was young and foolish?’
The heartbreak in Emma’s voice was too much for him to bear. But he simply couldn’t tell her that she was wrong.
‘Did it give you a lead to where your PI should look?’
‘Yes,’ he said, the word drawn from the very depths of his soul.
She turned her back to him and finally he glanced at the open folder—pictures of a young student spilled from it. Snapshots of a small blonde partying with her friends. And while one or two showed a happy, fun-loving girl, a few he could see peeking out beneath showed that she had started to experiment with drugs, that images of her scantily clad, showed her in poses that were highly salacious.
The thought of sharing them with the girl’s father turned his stomach.
But the accusation, the pressure of the weight in Emma’s eyes made him angry. Angry that his father had forced him to this—angry at himself. So he turned that anger and used it against Emma.
‘It’s hypocrisy. That I needed you to make me seem more palatable to Bartlett when his daughter is—’
‘Stop,’ Emma commanded, her hand coming up between them to accentuate her words unconsciously. ‘Stop right there. It’s not hypocritical to hold to a moralistic lifestyle while another human being chooses not to. This is a young girl taking a bad path. Those frozen snapshots aren’t the whole picture of who she is and what she will be. Though they will be the only picture if you give them to her father.’
She was almost out of breath. She desperately wanted him to see what he was doing, to see where he was going. It was a path she wasn’t sure he was going to come back from.
‘Mandy Bartlett is a young girl making mistakes and hopefully she will learn from them. What she is not, Antonio, is a pawn to be used in a sick game between you and your father.’
‘It is not a sick game, Emma. My father deserves to burn in hell for what he did.’
‘Because he left you? Antonio, I realise that it must have—’
‘No!’ he roared. ‘This isn’t about him leaving, nor blackening my mother’s name, nor forcing us to leave our home. Dio, we could have handled that. But Cici... She had more than just nightmares after the divorce,’ he said, his voice hoarse with the emotion he had bottled up for years.
*
As if it were yesterday he remembered his mother’s frantic phone call from Italy, just six months into his time in New York, begging him to come home immediately. She had been incoherent, and the only thing he’d managed to gather was that Cici was in hospital.
Nothing—nothing—had ever made him feel so terrified as those seven hours on the private jet Danyl had secured for him.
Until he’d seen the sight of his sister’s small, impossibly emaciated frame. The doctors had explained that she must have been hiding it for years.
Antonio had known exactly how long she’d been hiding her eating disorder from them. At sixteen she’d weighed less than she had at thirteen, when Michael had changed their lives for ever.
And he’d not known. He’d not seen it.
His mother had been as truly shocked as he, and together they’d spent the next two weeks not leaving her side. The sounds of his sister’s sobs had cut him deeply. He just hadn’t been able to comprehend the negative sense of self coming from his once fun-loving, happy sister.
She had taken all the hurt and all the pain of her father’s rejection, of being cut off from her friends and the life she had once known, and turned it in on herself. And he’d felt...angry and furious. He had known exactly who was to blame and had vowed to have his revenge.
Antonio hadn’t realised that he’d been speaking—saying the words of his mind out loud to Emma in the suite—until he felt the rawness in his throat, saw the gathering tears framing her eyes.
She crossed the distance between them in quick strides and wrapped her arms around him. Her body gave warmth and life to his that had turned so cold. She pressed kisses to his neck, pulling his mouth to hers, and he greedily consumed what she had to offer.
This kiss was so different from those that had passed between them before. Not one borne of a selfish need for satisfaction, of the infernal heat of their desires, but one of warmth, of comfort, of support and the one thing he could not bring himself to name.
He sought out the areas of her skin not concealed by the lace fabric of the dress. He needed to feel her beneath him, to take every comfort she was offering and more. In their kiss he tasted the salty sweetness of her tears, evidence of her grief for him and perhaps even of his own.
‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered against his lips. ‘So sorry that you and Cici had to go through that.’
And he felt it down in the darkest part of his heart—her words beginning to shine a soft light on a place he’d thought unreachable. The place he’d thought irrevocably damaged by his father, by shock and fear for his sister.
*
Emma’s heart had wrenched open at the sight of Antonio in such pain. He was on a precipice—one foot on land and one hovering above an abyss. Her only thought at that very moment was to comfort, to love the man she knew he could be—the man torn apart by a sense of injustice, the man who was devastated by the consequences of the careless actions of his father.
Her hands traced the lines of his strong jaw. His skin was cold to her touch, as if his memories had leached the warmth from his body. She imbued her kisses with every emotion she felt for him, desperate to show him that love had the power to heal. Not with words. Antonio wasn’t ready for words. But with actions, deeds.
For just a moment he seemed simply unable to accept what she had to offer, and she wondered if she might not be able to reach him. Then, on a deep shudder, as if a barrier had fallen down and crumbled through his body, she felt his hands on her body. Touching, caressing, pulling her towards him.
Soft warmth turned to molten heat and threatened to consume them both whole.
Pulling him gently within her embrace, she walked them backwards towards her room, sidestepping the bags she’d placed there only an hour before. She drew him further, feeding him with need and desire and the love she felt for him.
Her hand went to her hair, releasing the pins that held it in place, allowing it to tumble down around her shoulders and arms. She found the discreet zip hidden at her side and pulled it down, peeling the lacy fabric from her skin.
His gaze seared her as she stood before him but she bore it, stood tall and proud beneath it. Wearing only panties and her heels, she felt no sense of the self-consciousness she had experienced the first time they had come together. There wasn’t even a thought to her breasts or her femininity. There was only her need for him, her love for him, and it felt more powerful than anything she had experienced before. She revelled in the way his gaze ravaged her body—not just one part, not just that part, but all of her. As if he were seeing her for the very first time.
But he seemed struck still by the storm of emotion she read in his eyes. Not unsure, but unmoving. So she crossed to him, her hands going to the buttons of his shirt, undoing them so that she could feel the warmth and heat of his powerful chest. She marvelled at the light but rough dusting of hair beneath her fingers, at the way his heart raged beneath her hand. She followed the hollowed dips to the waistband of his trousers and unbuckled their fastening.
Throughout all of it he had yet to move, as if he were simply incapable of it. But tension and energy pulsed beneath his skin, begging for release, demanding it.
She left the trousers open and returned to his chest, pushing the shirt from his body, relishing the way he shivered beneath her touch, warmed beneath her kisses. But still he held himself back from her in a vice-like grip of control.
He was so glorious. Standing shirtless in her room. Her fingers traced the span of his upper arms, the defined muscles of his torso, the tense muscle offering such power and protection. She wanted to feel his arms about her, wanted to be in his embrace.
And suddenly, as if he’d heard her need, her desire, Antonio swept his arms around her, holding her to him as his open-mouthed kisses plunged the hollows of her neck. Electric currents matched only by the lightning crashing outside the windows licked up her spine and across her exposed skin.
In the space of a heartbeat he had taken control—or lost it. Emma couldn’t really be sure. He devoured her with his touch, fed on her as a starving man would his first meal. He walked her back to the bed and came down on it with her, not once breaking the contact of his lips.
His hands and mouth worshipped her body, exploring every inch of her. She kicked off her shoes, leaving only the small thong covering her modesty. His hands gently pressed her thighs apart and he pressed hot wet kisses against the material. Her own answering wetness was no longer an embarrassment, simply a declaration of her desires and needs. He teased her through the fabric, making her desperate to remove this last barrier between them.
She groaned—or he did. Their united need was no longer distinguishable. Her hips bucked off the mattress, her body making its own demands while her mind and heart simply loved.
With swift movements he removed his clothing and shoes and leaned over her, his arms coming to rest either side of her face, holding her, cherishing her there. He pressed the length of his body over hers, the weight comforting, enticing, and elicited a restlessness from her body that was almost fevered.
His erection pressed against her abdomen and she sneaked a hand between them, taking hold of the length of him, exploring him with her fingers. His skin was smooth and hot, his arousal powerful, as she stroked teasing shudders of pleasure from him.
His gaze found hers in the darkness of the room and no words were necessary. He removed her thong—not quickly, or urgently, but slowly, pulling the lace slowly down each thigh, his hands sweeping it further, over her ankles, taking his time. Not to allow her fears to be allayed, but her desires to be inflamed.
He came back over her, gold flecks shining in the hot molten lava churning in his eyes. It seemed for a moment as if he wanted to say something, as if the words had somehow caught in his throat. But she didn’t need words.
She reached for him then, her hands coming to his back, urging him to her, urging him into her, and as he entered her she felt him fill all the empty spaces she hadn’t realised she had until she’d met him. Until she’d seen the man beneath the outer layer he wore about him like armour. Until she’d seen the man he could be.
He pressed deeper, further into her, filling her from the inside out as if they were no longer two people but one. And then there was no room for thought, only sensation. The slick slide of him within her was teasing dizzying need and arousal from her. Pushing her closer and closer to the edge of that same precipice she had sensed him upon.
*
Lost. He was lost. Antonio was drowning in a sea of emotion and sensation. Emma had cast a spell over him, soothing long-held hurts and filling the spaces with her. She was all he could see, all he could feel.
He plunged into her, wringing a cry from her lips, answering the one made by his soul, no longer wanting to think, no longer wanting to hurt. He took her mouth with his, exalting in the sweetness of her, his tongue mirroring his body’s actions. He consumed the breath she exhaled, not wanting even that to escape his reach.
Sensation and need became overwhelming as he drove them again and again towards the edge of their release and pulled back. Desperate to stay in this state of bliss, desperate to hold back from the moment it would all come crashing down.
He teased and taunted, wringing pleasure from them both in equal measure. Sweat slicked his brow and hers. The room was filled with the gasps and sighs of exquisite arousal as time suspended its march as if just for them, giving them the simple gift of each other.
But soon need became a palpable thing and he could no longer hold back. He drove them both to the brink, holding them there on the edge. He could taste it on his tongue, in his throat, and hear it in the desperate cries falling from Emma’s perfect lips.
With one final thrust he plunged them into the abyss, the joint feeling of their completion sending them into a spin he was sure would never stop.
*
Antonio woke from the sleep he hadn’t realised had fallen over him. He knew before he had even opened his eyes that Emma wasn’t with him. It was as if his body had become so attuned to her presence that he no longer needed sight.
And he didn’t want to move. Didn’t want this moment to happen. Because despite what had just passed between them he knew there was only one outcome—could only ever have been one outcome.
Reluctantly he left the bed, making his way to a bathroom wet with condensation from a shower he hadn’t heard Emma take. He couldn’t look at himself in the mirror as he stepped beneath the hot spray of water, shutting off the voice that called him a coward in his mind. Whether because of what he would do or couldn’t do he didn’t know.
Drying himself with a towel, he grabbed his discarded trousers and thrust his legs into them. The fact that only twenty-four hours earlier he had done the same, taken the same action, wasn’t lost on him.
The night before he had been about to make a decision that would turn the tide in his battle against his father, no matter the cost. And now he knew instinctively that he would be asked to make the same decision again.
He walked through to the living area of the hotel suite, sidestepping Emma’s bags, still packed from hours before. If his heart ached to see them there, he forced it aside.
Emma was sitting on the sofa, illuminated only by the light of dawn breaking over Buenos Aires through the windows. He tried to force a smile to his lips, but couldn’t. There wasn’t one answering his gaze as she caught sight of his presence.
Antonio was surprised to find that he no longer felt the sting and heat of anger. There was only resignation and sadness for something that was yet to pass. The kind of prescient ache that met inevitability.
‘Are you going to use this?’ she asked, holding the dossier on Mandy Bartlett.
*
Emma’s heart was torn in two as he stood there, bisected by the shadows of the sunrise. Half in shade, half in light. She wondered which side he would choose. She had asked him the one question she wasn’t sure she was ready for him to answer, but knew that she needed hear it.
‘If I have to,’ he said, and his words made her want to weep.
‘Really? You’d destroy this man’s family, just like your father did, to get what you want?’
‘He deserves it, Emma.’
‘Michael might—but does Benjamin Bartlett? Does Mandy?’
She hoped that she could make him see. Before he did something that would change him for ever.
‘I will do whatever it takes. You already know that.’
She was surprised to hear softness in his voice—not anger, not fury, but gentleness, as if he were preparing her for news she didn’t want to hear.
But she wasn’t done fighting yet.
‘No, I know you, Antonio. I have seen the person beyond the bitter hatred of your father, beyond the fear of the damage done to your sister. I’ve seen the love you have for her and your mother, the love you have for Dimitri and Danyl. I have seen the man you think you are not, and he is amazing. But if you do this,’ she said, hoping against all hope, ‘if you use this dossier you will destroy the goodness in you.’
She hated it that she was almost pleading now.
‘You don’t need to stoop to this level, Antonio. You’re better than that. You could win the deal without it. I know it... I know it because I love you.’
Antonio’s hand flew up between them, as if warding off her words.
‘Don’t say that, Emma.’
‘Why not? It’s the truth. I love you. I can see the man that you are beneath this path of revenge you’re on.’ She just hated it that he couldn’t see it for himself.
‘Emma, please—’
‘No. You’ve shown me that all this time I’ve been hiding. You told me as much last night, when we were together. But it wasn’t just my body that I was hiding. And you know that. You knew it then and you know it now. I was hiding from reaching for what I really wanted.’
No longer could Emma hold back the words and thoughts that had been forming, slowly shaping in her mind and heart.
‘All this time, all these years, despite my Living List, despite the things I wanted to achieve—events and experiences that are almost meaningless in themselves—what I was really hiding from was love. And now that I am reaching for it, asking for it—asking to be loved by you and asking you to be worthy of that—you refuse?’ she demanded.
She knew that he felt something for her—possibly even met her love with his own. Whether he would choose that instead of his need for revenge she really wasn’t sure. But she knew that their love wouldn’t survive if he chose wrong.
‘I told you when we first made this deal, Emma, that emotions weren’t going to be involved. They can’t be involved.’
‘But emotions are the one thing that’s been driving you this whole time!’ she cried.
‘I can’t afford to let my father get away with it. He is a villain, Emma.’
‘But are you willing to become him to get what you want? Are you willing to become a villain yourself?’
‘Emma, if I found this, then I guarantee you that my father will have.’
For the first time Emma heard something like desperation enter his voice.
‘Then help Bartlett find a way through it,’ she said, hoping that Antonio would find a way through his need for revenge. ‘Show him the kindness that your father never showed to your mother or you or your sister.’
‘I just can’t take that risk. I need to do this.’
The despair in his voice nearly broke her. Nearly sent her running to this man who had stolen her heart like a thief. But she couldn’t—no, she wouldn’t.
‘Then you do it without me.’
She made her way towards the cases by the door, but his words stopped her mid stride.
‘It wouldn’t have really mattered, though, would it?’ he said, his words icy cold and ruthlessly quiet.
‘What are you talking about?’ she asked, turning towards him, confused at the change in his tone.
‘Whether you had discovered this or not. You wouldn’t have trusted me—trusted this—so you’re leaving before you find out.’
‘I—’
He didn’t let her finish. ‘Just like you did to that scared seventeen-year-old boy who might have battled through his fears for you. It’s just another excuse to stop yourself from taking a chance.’
Emma felt the blood drain from her face, sucked into the vortex of ice running through her core. Fear. She felt fear.
‘What is it, Emma? You think we’re all going to leave? That we’re not strong enough to stick it out with you?’
Antonio’s words cut her, chipped away at the frigid centre of her. She hated him then. Hated it that his words were unearthing her deepest fears. The fears she barely allowed herself to admit to owning. The fears that held a mirror up to herself while she threw her accusations at him.
Of course she was scared! She was terrified. Terrified of him using the information in the dossier and even more scared of what it would mean if he didn’t.
Because then she’d have to stay—really invest—wouldn’t she? Not just some giddy, excited fantasy feeling such as she’d been enjoying these last few hours. But the harder stuff—the things that would make her or break her. In that moment she was on the precipice. The edge of a giant cliff-face. One that meant she would have to finally place her trust in someone not to hurt her. Not to leave.
Had she done that? Had she really let her seventeen-year-old boyfriend go without giving him a chance? Was she doing the same again with Antonio?
Her head ached and her mind swam, and in that moment she clung to the only thing she had in front of her.
‘You want me to give what a chance? Your deal? The role of fake fiancée? Or could we actually be more than that, Antonio?’ she demanded.
It was as if they had become prize fighters, each taking the most painful chunk out of the other.
‘There’s just six days until the final meeting.’
It seemed neither was willing to admit just how far they’d come, just how much they meant to each other.
She shook her head, her heart breaking into a thousand pieces, the hurt magnified by each fracture, as if punctured by the shards of itself.
‘If you can come up with this,’ she said, gesturing to the documents that had torn them apart, ‘then you can come up with an excuse as to where I am for Bartlett. But, Antonio,’ she said—her last warning, her last hope, ‘I’m telling you. There’s no coming back from this. If you do this you’ll be worse than your father. Because you know what you’re doing, what you’re risking, and just how many people you’re hurting.’
Antonio didn’t move while she retrieved her bags from the doorway to her bedroom. He didn’t react to the kiss she placed on his cold cheek and he didn’t say a word as she closed the door to the suite behind her.
Emma knew that it was the last time she would see Antonio. Oh, she was sure she would see pictures of him—might even happen upon him in person. But that person wouldn’t be the man she had fallen in love with. If he did this—if he used that folder—she would never see that man again.