Dante Moncado jumped into the car beside his driver, two of his men clambering in behind him. This was all he needed, someone breaking into the old cottage that had been in the Moncada family's possession for generations.
As his driver navigated Palermo's narrow streets and headed into the rolling countryside, Dante thought back to his earlier conversation with Riccardo D'Amore. The head of the D'Amore family had put the brakes on a deal Dante had been negotiating for the past six months. Riccardo ran a clean, wholesome business and was concerned Dante's reputation would tarnish it.
He muttered a curse under his breath and resisted the urge to punch the dashboard.
What reputation? So he liked the ladies. That was no crime. His business empire was built on legitimate money. He did not play the games many Sicilian men liked to play. He kept his nose clean literally and figuratively. He liked to drink and party, but so what? He didn't touch drugs, never gambled, and avoided the circles where arms, drug dealing, and people trafficking were considered profitable business enterprises. He worked hard. Building a multi-billion-euro technology empire from a modest million-euro inheritance, and with an accountancy trail, even the most hardened auditor would fail to find fault with, took dedication. For sure, he cut the odd corner here and there, and his Sicilian heritage meant he did not suffer fools, but every cent he'd earned he'd earned legitimately.
But the legitimacy of his business was not the factor behind Riccardo's foot coming down on the deal that Dante and Alessio, Riccardo's eldest son, had spent months working on. The D'Amores had developed the next-generation safety system for smartphones that had proven itself hack-proof, outperforming all rivals. Alessio and Dante were all set to sign an exclusivity agreement for Dante to install the system on smartphones and tablets his company was Europe's leader. This system would give him the tools to penetrate America, the only continent Dante was still to get a decent foothold in
Riccardo's talk about reputations boiled down to one thing. Dante's parentage. His recently deceased father, Salvatore, had been a heavy gambler and the ultimate playboy. His mother, Immacolata, was known unaffectionately as the Black Widow, a moniker Dante had always thought unfair, as she had never actually killed any of her husbands, merely leeched them for money when she divorced them. His father had been her first husband. She was currently on number five. His mother lived like a queen.
Riccardo, on the other hand, had had one wife, and eleven children, and thought gambling the work of the devil and sex outside the confines of marriage a sin. Riccardo was concerned Dante was the apple that hadn't fallen far from the tree. Riccardo wanted proof that Dante was not the mere sum of his parents' parts and would not bring Amore Systems and by extension Riccardo himself into disrepute. Riccardo was now in advanced talks with Dante's biggest rival about contracting the system to them instead.
Damn him. The old fool was supposed to have retired.
He had one chance to prove his respectability before the deal was lost for good, Alessio's forthcoming wedding.
Dante's angry ruminations on his business problems were put to one side when his driver pulled the car to a stop in a small opening amidst the dense woodland that ran along the driveway to the c
cottage. A few meters away, also cunningly hidden in the woodland, was a much smaller city car...
Dante reached into the footwell for the baseball bat he hoped he wouldn't have to use.
Flanked by his bodyguards, he neared the run-down farmer's cottage through the thick trees that hid their approach from watching eyes and rubbed his arms against the bracing chill under the cloudless night sky. The remnants of what had been an unusually cold winter still lingered in the air.
The small cottage with its peeling whitewashed exterior walls came into view. All the shutters were closed but smoke curled out of the chimney that hadn't been used in two decades, wisping upwards into the still darkness of this early spring Sicilian evening. Marcello, who managed the land, had been correct that someone was there.
Keeping to the shadows, Dante and his men approached it. The door was locked.
Brow furrowing, he pulled his key out and unlocked it.
He winced as the sounds of the creaking hinges echoed through the walls and stepped inside for the first time since his teenage years when he would sneak girls there. It hadn't been his father he'd worried about catching him, it had been the girls' fathers. Sicilian men did not take kindly to their daughters having a sex life before marriage; at least, they hadn't twenty years ago.
The open-plan interior was much smaller than he remembered. The lights were already on, and he scanned it, looking for damage. The window above the sink had been boarded in cardboard. He guessed that was where the intruder had gained entry, but there was no other visible damage, nothing to suggest his unwelcome visitor had come here intent on vandalizing or robbing them. Not that there was anything to take unless the intruder had a penchant for decades-old musty furniture. An air of neglect permeated the walls, mingling with the black smoke billowing from the log fire. A pile of what looked like educational books was stacked on the small table.
He stared at those books, brow furrowed again at their incongruity.
A floorboard creaked above his head.
Adrenaline surged through him.
Keeping a tight hold on the baseball bat, Dante nodded at his men to follow and trod slowly up the narrow staircase, cursing that each step was received with yet another creak. He could have left his men to deal with the intruder but he wanted to see the face of the man who'd had the nerve to break into his property before deciding what to do with him.
Like all men with his wealth and power, Dante had enemies. The question he asked himself as if it was one of those enemies hiding behind this door plotting against him or just a cold vagrant chancing his luck.
He nodded at his men one more time and pushed the door open.
His first thought as he entered the empty bedroom was that he was too late and the intruder had escaped. There was no second thought, for a figure suddenly burst through from the en suite bathroom and charged at him, screaming, with what looked like a showerhead in hand.
It took a long beat before his brain recognized the screeching figure for what it was—a woman.
Before the showerhead in her hand could connect with Dante's head, Lino, the quicker of his men, grabbed hold of the woman and engulfed her in his meaty arms.
Immediately she started kicking out, hurling a string of obscenities in what sounded like English, but with a strong accent, he had trouble placing.
Dante stared with amazement at this struggling intruder dressed only in a thick maroon robe.
Her eyes fell on him. There was a wild terror in the returning stare.
'Let her go,' he ordered.
Lino removed the showerhead from her hand and released her.
As soon as she was free from his hold, she backed away from them, her eyes going from Dante to Lino, to Vincenzo, and back to Dante, the terror still there.
He quite understood her fear. Dante was tall and physically imposing. Lino and Vincenzo were mountains.
'Leave,' he barked at his men. 'Wait downstairs for me.'
Her eyes settled on him.
This woman might be an intruder, her reasons for being there to be revealed but, unless she had a gun hiding beneath that robe, which she would have already used if she'd had one, she posed no danger.
His men were too well trained to argue and left the room. Stealth no longer being needed, they thumped down the stairs like a herd of wildebeest.
Now that he was alone with her, Dante's senses became more attuned. A wonderful scent filled the room, a soft floral smell that clung around the intruder, who had backed herself into the corner of the room. The only sound to be heard was her ragged breathing.
He stepped slowly towards her.
She pressed herself more tightly into the corner of the room and hugged her arms across her seemingly ample chest, strikingly angled eyes ringing with fear at him. If she hadn't broken into his property and made herself at home, he could feel sorry for her.
He guessed her to be in her early twenties, petite yet curvy, snub nose, plump lips, and freckles covering a face that was either naturally pale or white from fright. The color of her long, wet hair was impossible to judge. Whatever the color, nothing could detract from the fact that this was one beautiful woman.
Under any other circumstance, he would be tempted to let a whistle escape his lips.
Her long, swan-like neck moved but she didn't speak. Those strange eyes did not leave his face.
He stopped a foot away from her and asked in English, 'Who are you?'
Her lips tightened and she hugged herself even harder, giving a quick shake of her head.