Chapter Two
CHAPTER TWO
S ERENA HAD DRIVEN HERSELF , as she liked to do when she wanted to feel most in charge, and she took the long, scenic way home, enjoying the play of light and dark as she drove from Genoa up to her estate.
Serena loved her home. Her privacy. The one place she could go and not worry about being Serena Valli. Even before her father had died, the old Valli castle atop a hill looking out over the Ligurian Sea had been her safe place. Her hideaway and sanctuary.
She had moved there permanently in her early twenties to aid in caring for her ailing grandfather. He’d been ninety-one to her twenty-one, and still she thought he was the one person in the world who’d understood her, and vice versa.
When he’d died two years ago, she’d decided to stay. If there was no one left on earth who understood her, at least this place did.
She drove up the winding pathway to the castle now. It was dark up here—very little artificial light at night. Her headlights led the way, and she could see only the shadow of the old house on the jagged peak of hill.
Her mother called it a morgue. Her father had called it a crumbling atrocity.
Serena had begun to call it home and meant it. Because neither her father’s ostentatious estate in the city, nor her mother’s unending array of apartments, houses, villas—all usually funded by the next man down the line—had ever been home.
She parked in the garage, then moved inside, unlocking and then re-engaging the security system. As was so often her habit, she went straight to her room and began the process of taking Serena Valli off.
The heels went first, then the expensive dress and jewelry, making sure to put her mother’s belongings in a little case to be returned as soon as possible. She scrubbed her face clean of makeup, took out her contacts and replaced them with her glasses. Neatly, she put everything back where it belonged.
The house could get drafty at night, so she grabbed a shawl before she went down to her sitting room, where a hot mug of tea, a book and her cats would be waiting for her while a fire crackled cozily in the hearth.
She’d need a good hour to decompress before she could even begin to consider sleep. Leopold immediately meowed at her as she entered the luxurious room she’d done little to change since her grandfather’s death.
She knew to anyone else it would appear fussy and outdated. Elderly even with its dark woods, floral wallpapers and heaps of shawls and throws, but she loved it, and now that some of the sharp grief of losing her grandfather had softened into a subtle missing him, the room comforted her as her grandfather once had with just his presence.
What she had done was add another kitten—this one after her father’s death. She was also considering a bird, though Pierro, her house manager, had threatened to quit over that. Her trio of dogs had been trained as guard dogs and they had their own little outbuilding for the evenings, but she was considering getting a puppy that was just a dog. Just a companion. To be allowed inside to cuddle up in bed with her and the cats. Something tiny and yappy and wonderful.
Serena loved animals. They were so simple. They could be so loving, and interesting with their own little personalities. They could be pleased easily with daily meals and attention.
She settled into her chair now and took a sip of tea as Leopold hopped onto her lap, and Kate watched with jealous eyes but did not move from her perch at the window. On a sigh of pleasure, Serena smoothed her hand down Leopold’s spine, closed her eyes and finally relaxed.
In the quiet, only the sound of the fire crackling, she sipped her tea, but she did not pick up her book. She was exhausted, but she would not be able to sleep.
The solution she had suggested to her sworn enemy was not one she relished, not one she wanted . It was simply the only one available to her. And now she’d have to wait—for days, no doubt—to see if Luciano would be smart enough to take such an unfortunate deal.
She worried there. It had always been clear he had no real loyalty to Ascione. She had been surprised, in fact, that he hadn’t sold it upon his father’s death. It was well known in their world that he would not take over any role in his father’s company.
But apparently he’d inherited it all the same.
Now she just had to wait.
“I am good at waiting,” she told Leopold as he hopped off her lap, no doubt to go harass Kate.
She let her eyes drift closed for a minute. Maybe if she fell asleep here, she would actually sleep for more than an hour or two, before another worry woke her up.
Then she heard someone enter. Reluctantly, she opened her eyes to see Pierro standing in the doorway. He looked…perplexed, which was unlike him.
“Ms. Valli. I apologize for interrupting, but you have a rather…insistent visitor.”
“I am not seeing any visitors at this hour, Pierro. You of all people should be able to see to that.” She was in her pajamas , with a shawl wrapped around her. Honestly, what would possess Pierro…?
She heard it then. A familiar dark, ill-boding voice somewhere in the house. Getting closer by the moment.
“We could call the polizia ,” Pierro offered.
But he knew, as well as she did, that this would be a tactical error and bring all the wrong kind of attention to a problem they were trying to hide. That was why he posed it as a question, rather than going ahead and doing it.
Serena sighed, tried to find some inner center of strength here as she got to her feet.
She’d taken off all of her armor, but she could hear him.
“Please, show him in,” Serena said between clenched teeth, hoping Pierro could take some control of the situation.
“You must be on your best behavior, Leopold,” she murmured to her younger cat, who had a habit of getting a little rambunctious at night. Sweet Kate was placid in her old age and blinked from her perch in the window.
When Luciano strode into her cozy living room, she was not dressed to be Serena Valli, but she would not let that deter her. She stood, chin up, hazel eyes defiant. The fire that crackled in the hearth and the shawl around her shoulders might give the aura of cozy, but she would not.
He swept in, dressed as he had been in the club. Though his hair looked a little mussed, like he’d raked his fingers through it not all that long ago.
Or, more likely, someone else had .
He stopped on a half-stride, something in his expression moving toward surprise before he managed to hide it away. “You need better security,” he said by way of greeting.
“You need to take no for an answer.” She clutched the shawl a little tighter at her throat, pretending as though she was dressed in her boardroom best. “What on earth are you doing here at this time of night?”
His gaze perused her then. Took in the thick socks, the pajamas, the glasses, the shawl. His mouth curved ever so slightly in pure amusement, but only for a moment.
He scowled. “Explain to me how you have this information.”
“What information?”
“The numbers about my company. The projections. You should not have this information, and I want to know what dastardly things you’ve done to obtain it.”
She was shocked someone had already distilled the information for him. She figured he’d wait forty-eight hours out of spite at the very least. “Surely you did not wake up some poor employee to explain it to you when it could have waited until morning.”
“No one should have this information,” he said, ignoring her.
She supposed she should have seen this accusation coming. Not everyone was as thorough and good with numbers as she was. Certainly, Luciano wasn’t. But she’d assumed his man of business would explain this to him—how easy it was to know your job if you tried.
“It was easy enough to use what I know of the industry, what public information there is, and then extrapolate accordingly.” She shrugged. “I am brilliant, Luciano. Trust me, my father would not have allowed me near his company if I was not. If my choices, my decisions, my outcomes weren’t perfect. He had rather outmoded ideas about women in the workplace.”
“Perhaps we should have switched fathers, then. Mine often lamented that if I was a woman, at least I’d be good for something .”
For a moment, the silence around them was awkward instead of hostile. This sort of admission that they might have been better off in each other’s shoes.
Then his scowl intensified, and he stepped forward. “There is no way you simply surmised this information.”
She supposed his proximity was meant to be intimidating, so she refused to be intimidated. Even as her heart rattled around her chest in an unfamiliar rhythm. Without her heels, she had to look up at him, and she did so now, letting none of her nerves show. She clutched her shawl tight and refused to let herself sound winded by the strange sensations twisting through her. “There is, because I did.”
“You will tell me the truth.”
“I am telling you the truth.”
“Do you think I will go along with this ridiculous plan because of some pathetic lie? You will tell me how you got this information, or I will destroy you.”
She rolled her eyes, lifted an arm. “Destroy away, Luciano.” Because she was already almost there.
* * *
Luciano realized he was not handling this well, but that only spurred him on.
She had rolled her eyes at him. When he was actually being serious instead of his usual insouciance.
Something brushed up against his legs and he only just stopped himself from jumping back. It looked like a stuffed little ball of fur, but it moved, and then looked up, its cat eyes blinking at him.
“ Che cazzo , is that real ?”
The ball of fluff offered a pitiful meow . Luciano stared down at it for a full minute until his mind could accept it was another cat to go along with the one perched in the window.
Who was this woman sitting in a room better suited to an octogenarian cat lady? He knew she was stuffy, stiff, annoying , but he’d still assumed she’d live in something sleek and modern and befitting the CEO of a generationally successful shipping company.
He had not expected her to wear glasses . To look somehow…innocent and vulnerable standing there in her pajamas, even as she scowled at him, ever the picture of control.
“I think it would be best if you leave, Mr. Ascione,” she said primly, no doubt using the mister to remind him of his father. “Your assistant may call mine and set up a meeting whenever you would like to discuss my proposal, at an appropriate time and place, but I will not tolerate accusations against me in my own home, at this hour. Call Mr. Emidio and have him explain to you just how I would have gotten my information without whatever nonsense corporate espionage you are accusing me of.”
“I do not need to call Mr. Emidio,” he ground out.
“Surely he is smart enough to see that anyone with a deep understanding of the industry, and your father’s shortcomings, would know how to extrapolate that information. Call Mr.—”
“ I am Mr. Emidio,” he exploded.
Regret was a sharp pain, but he’d never allowed himself to let regret sink its teeth in. When he made a mistake, he embraced it, rolled with it, then made it a success.
Serena stopped short, studied him. “I beg your pardon.”
He would not explain to her. He would not compound one mistake with another. She was right. They needed a meeting. A business meeting.
“My assistant will be in touch,” he ground out, then turned on a heel and let himself out of the sprawling, ancient building. Into the dark, with a shining moon and dazzling stars and the sounds of the sea all around him.
He paused there in the drive, having driven himself over. He took a deep breath, then turned around and stared at the looming shadows of the old castle. A ridiculous place to live. Up here alone with the wind whipping and the sound of waves lapping all around him. There were a few lights on in different windows.
In one, he saw the clear shadowed outline of a cat.
Who the hell was Serena Valli?
Well, he intended to find out.