Chapter Eight
CHAPTER EIGHT
New Year’s Eve two years ago, Amsterdam
T HE SOUND OF laughter was painful to Santo’s ears. He’d flown in from a meeting in Helsinki with Mads in his private jet and not bothered to stop at his hotel room first.
He felt...angry, disappointed. Frustrated and just damn tired of playing this game.
‘She’s not a game, Santo.’
‘Then tell her the truth yourself and leave me out of it.’
‘If you want to stop...’
‘No.’
No. Santo didn’t want to stop. He wouldn’t break his promise to Pietro. The old man—who was really beginning to look every day of his sixty-two years—had made the visit out to Puglia especially.
They’d spent hours talking about it. About how Pietro had been reaching out to Analise Carson in secret. How he’d never stopped loving the woman he’d spent only a few short months with when she was travelling around Europe on her own.
Pietro had been devastated when she’d returned to England, believing that her family would never agree to let her be with someone like him, so he’d acted rashly and become engaged to a family friend from Naples. It hadn’t taken long for the news to get back to Analise, who had found herself rebounding into the arms of Edward Carson. And when she’d discovered she was pregnant, it was too late. Edward had believed the child was his and proposed. It had all spun so out of her control that she’d been unable to stop it.
When Pietro had finally found out he’d broken the engagement amicably with his fiancée and tried to win Analise back, but they’d discovered just how dangerous Edward Carson could be. He might not have got his own hands dirty, but the ‘mugging’ which had broken Pietro’s leg, collarbone and several ribs, as well as fracturing an eye socket had left him with all the money in his wallet. The message to Analise’s ‘ex’ couldn’t have been clearer. But that didn’t stop Carson from going after Pietro financially for years. Every now and then Carson still poked and prodded, believing, like most, that Pietro’s finances were simply the middle of the range business acquisitions that appeared on paper. But he hadn’t been born the son of an ex-Mafia enforcer for nothing.
‘We just have to keep playing the long game, Santo.’
The past and the present swam in his mind like flotsam, catching and snaring on thoughts and holding for a moment before slipping out of reach. Like mother, like daughter, Santo thought as he saw Eleanor talking to Kat and another member of the group that failed to draw any of his attention. He saw a glint and wondered whether it was fancy, or whether he’d seen the glitter of Eleanor’s new engagement ring.
Someone passing gave him a strange look and he wondered whether the growl that had sat at the back of his throat had somehow drawn their gaze. It was possible. The control he usually had on his emotions was pushed to the limit this evening.
And he blamed it on her. Her and her absolute unwillingness to learn from her mistakes.
The announcement had been fairly quiet this time. Whether that was because of Edward’s reluctance to acknowledge Eleanor any more or because of the insignificance of the man she had apparently fallen in love with, who could say.
Love.
Even the thought of the word turned his stomach and brought a sneer to his lips. He swallowed another mouthful of whisky and turned his back on her, telling himself that he didn’t care what she did, as long as it kept her out of Edward’s reach.
He spent some time catching up with Karl and Aditi, pleased to hear that Amita was getting on so well back in Jaipur at university. He could tell that Aditi missed her daughter, but they all agreed that she was better where she was. She’d found the gathering too intimidating last year, but her mother said she sent Santo her regards.
A little later he was cornered by Ivanov, who wanted to know when they could expect to see returns on the new expansion of the land in Puglia after the sale had gone through with Santo’s neighbour. After that, Müller tried to get him to invest in his latest venture, and failed miserably.
All the while he sensed Eleanor on the outskirts of the crowd, being pushed closer and closer to where he stood, each footstep ratcheting up his pulse, pushing a little harder at the blood pounding through his veins. His irritation inching higher.
Unaccountably, he was absolutely convinced that she didn’t want to be anywhere near him. And that, perversely, only pissed him off more. After their encounter last year, he’d thought, hoped , even, that she might have actually learned something. Might have grown up a little.
Her laugh, getting closer and closer, grated on already stretched nerves.
‘How did he manage with Analise and Edward?’ he heard someone ask.
‘He...did well,’ Eleanor replied, and Santo barely concealed his cough of disbelief. There wasn’t even a chance that the hedge fund manager to whom she was presently engaged had even met Edward Carson. Not a single chance.
He could practically feel Eleanor bristling behind him.
‘And how long until the wedding? Are you looking for a long engagement?’
‘No, actually, we’re hoping to marry in April.’
‘So soon?’
‘We’re just so excited,’ came the patently false reply from lips the flavour of which he could still taste on his tongue.
It was obscene. Her desperate plea for truth from him, and then this .
‘Well, you and James have my congratulations,’ insisted whoever it was Eleanor was speaking to.
Santo all but sneered, watching Eleanor smile and accept them graciously in the reflection of the large mirror on the opposite side of the wall.
Whoever it was made their excuses to leave, and he didn’t have to turn around to hear the angrily delivered whisper from over his shoulder, aimed for his ears alone.
‘Just stop it,’ Eleanor bit out, glaring daggers at him in the mirror’s image.
He clenched his jaw, intensely disliking that she thought she could have any say over his actions whatsoever. He glared back until she averted her gaze, smiling and waving at another guest.
Eleanor felt his gaze like a hand clasped loosely around her throat, a little like a leash with enough rope to run, but not get far. And that was the problem. It always had been. Her thoughts, her mind, her body’s wants, always came back to him. Inescapably and inexorably. And she had realised this last year that if she had any hope of escaping this life, this world, she’d have to escape him too, wouldn’t she?
He was just as much a part of this entire machinery as Edward Carson was. Even if he did want her in the same way that she wanted him—which she honestly didn’t believe any more—there would always be this . There would always be one night a year spent amongst these people, the majority of whom made her skin crawl.
And even if there were times when she’d thought differently of him, when she’d thought she’d seen something else beneath the surface, she had been wrong, clearly. Because she’d seen the financials, read the reports in the newspapers, lauding the joint venture between the Sabatini Group and Ivanov Industries. Not to mention the supposedly secret project between Mads and Santo. No, the Italian was as deeply intertwined with this group of people as the rest of them. He might despise them as much as she did, but that wasn’t stopping him from being here, year after year. And that was why she’d agreed when James had invited her for dinner early last year, believing that the only way to get over Santo was to meet someone else.
No, James didn’t have the same dramatic impact that Santo had on her. Eleanor wasn’t na?ve, she knew it was highly unlikely that anyone would. She was bound to Santo by a connection forged at a moment in her life when she’d been so utterly impressionable. When he’d protected her, even as he’d teased her and taunted her. He’d changed her and she would be thankful for the rest of her life. But a part of her felt as if she was always missing the one piece of information that would make sense of their interactions, and a small part of her wondered whether that was the reason for her infatuation with Santo.
But it had been so different with James. He’d been...calm. Considered. Attentive. Kind. He wasn’t trying to score points in some powerplay. And he had absolutely no interest in her family name or investments. He was handsome and nice and hadn’t baulked when she’d intimated as much as she could about her family. She’d forced herself to tell him the truth—that theirs wasn’t, and quite possibly never would be, a love match—and James had understood. What she wanted from their marriage was safety and security for her mother and brother, and freedom for herself. And, in exchange, what he wanted seemed almost easy to give: companionship.
In the meantime, Edward’s chokehold on their interactions lessening just enough, she had been able to carve out some time with her mother, who had revealed her father’s name to her. Pietro . That was all she knew. The way that her mother had looked when she’d spoken of him...it nearly broke Eleanor’s heart. She knew in that moment that her mother had loved Pietro and had never stopped loving him.
She’d wanted to ask more, she’d wanted to ask if he’d tried to find them, if her father had tried to come for her, but she couldn’t afford to ask that question. Couldn’t afford to be so reliant upon another man ever again. And at least she knew with startling clarity she would never have that with James.
Eleanor found herself unable to avoid the reflection in the mirror. Santo was still looking at her. A flush of angry heat painted her cheeks and she went to walk away, when suddenly Dilly appeared right before her, forcing Eleanor back a step and causing her to brush up against the wall of Santo’s immovable back.
‘Congratulations,’ Dilly said with disdain.
‘Thank you,’ Eleanor replied, trying to find her equilibrium.
‘Maybe this time it will stick?’
Eleanor felt as if she’d been slapped.
‘I mean, it would look almost incompetent to lose two fiancés.’ Dilly leaned in, as if confiding, in the way that she used to when they were friends. Before Eleanor had caught her with Tony.
Eleanor felt indignation at Dilly’s words swimming in her blood, rushing to her head, urging her to say or do something rash. She was so bloody tired of being everyone’s punching bag. But next year would be different. Next year she would be married, and could finally stop coming to these damn things.
‘I don’t have to listen to this,’ she said, trying to sidestep her one-time friend.
‘What are you going to do? Run back to Daddy?’
Eleanor spun round on the woman, fury sparking like electricity. Dilly couldn’t have known the effect of her words, would never understand how much they had cut and sliced and twisted. But this woman, who had been so wrong to do what she’d done, had no right to be angry with her when she had done nothing wrong. She’d never done anything wrong.
‘I don’t have to run back to Daddy,’ Eleanor said in a low voice, with more control than she felt at that moment. ‘I have everything I need right here. I have an audience of nearly two hundred of your nearest and dearest,’ Eleanor continued with a smile on her face, while Dilly began to lose hers. ‘I could easily tell them what I overheard you and Tony doing, but I haven’t. If people know, it is because Tony told them, not me.’ Eleanor took a breath and looked, really looked, at her once best friend. ‘I know what desperation looks like, Dilly,’ she said not unkindly. ‘And I can see it in you, coming out of every single pore.’
‘You ruined me,’ Dilly whisper-hissed in accusation.
‘You ruined yourself,’ Eleanor replied without missing a beat. ‘So what are you going to do about it?’
‘Do?’ Dilly asked, as if genuinely confused.
‘You got yourself into this mess. Stop blaming other people and do something about it.’
With that, Eleanor smiled, aware of the attention they had drawn, and placed a kiss on Dilly’s cheek, hoping that she could wait until she’d left the room before wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.
Spinning on her heel, she exited the room, blind to the sea of faces swimming before her, driven forward by the building pressure in her chest. It was a sob, a cry, it was tears and oxygen, it was sadness, grief, loss wrapped in anger and frustration. But the one thing it wasn’t was helplessness.
She just needed a moment to gather herself. Just one.
But then she felt him hot on her heels and her stomach flipped, her heart pulled on a string tied to him, yanked hard, and her body felt flushed for all the wrong reasons.
Oh, why wouldn’t he just leave her alone?
She opened a door and slipped into the room, knowing that a closed door wouldn’t keep him from coming after her. She backed into the room and was halfway across when Santo came in, closing the door behind him.
Battling hard against the realisation that she wasn’t scared but thrilled, her breath punctuated the air between them. Why was he the man her body surrendered to? Why was he the man who made her pulse leap and her heart pound? Why was he the man who, no matter what she wanted, what she needed, she always came back to?
‘I want you to leave,’ she tried.
‘No.’
‘No?’
‘No,’ Santo repeated.
Every step he took into the room not only made her step back but also drew them closer and closer to that damn line that, once crossed, couldn’t be taken back. But there was something primal in the air, working a magic that was unrecognisable to his brain, but known fully by his body.
It was the same alchemical reaction that always happened when they were near each other. As if they were magnets, unable to help the physics of their make-up. Drawn to each other, repelled from each other. It had worn him down to the last vestiges of his patience and it wouldn’t take much for him to lose it altogether.
‘You can’t say no,’ Eleanor accused, as if logic and etiquette had any place here.
‘I just did,’ he all but growled, hating that she had driven him to this, that he had become the very thing he’d never wanted to be. Completely driven by impulse and need. He clenched his teeth together, but one look at Eleanor and he could see that she was fighting this as much as he was.
‘What is your problem?’ she demanded.
‘You, Princess. It’s always you,’ he said, closing the gap between them as she came up against the back wall of the room.
Cristo , she was exquisite. He wanted her. It was that simple and that undeniable. And how much of a bastard did it make him that he didn’t even care that she wore another man’s ring?
He peered down at her, aware that he was using his body to crowd her, relishing the way that their need for each other filled what little air there was between them.
‘Why are you angry with me?’ she asked, staring up at him, wide-eyed and begging for something she probably didn’t have the courage to name.
‘I’m not angry, I’m furious ,’ he clarified.
Only that wasn’t quite true, not any more. Because the fury that had ridden him so hard only minutes ago had been replaced and he had to call it what it was. Desire. Need. Wrapped in a fist so tight that no one could prise it apart.
No one but her.
She continued to stare up at him, as if aware that his arousal had stolen the heat from his anger. Did she feel it too? The swollen throb that poured through his body with every beat of his heart whenever she was near, the fist that gripped his lungs and made it impossible to breathe.
‘Why?’
‘Because you demand honesty from me, yet everything about you is a lie,’ he said, the truth slipping out into the air between them, surprising them both. Just the acknowledgement, just the memory of the promise she’d forced him to make, the lie she’d forced him to tell, tapped back into that heat and once again the magnets flipped and he was repelled from her, taking a few steps back, sucking air into his lungs that wasn’t tainted with the scent of her body.
Merda , he needed to get control over himself. He should never have come in here. But when he turned he found her right back there in front of him, having crossed the room with silent steps. This was madness.
‘You think this guy will be able to give you what you want?’ he couldn’t stop himself from demanding.
‘Yes,’ she said defiantly, her eyes flashing with warning.
‘He’ll be able to keep you, your mum and Freddie safe?’ he scoffed, incredulous—incredulous and more than just a little outraged. From the background check he’d authorised, the man was inconsequential at best. He didn’t have the power or the reach to protect her.
‘Yes. Yes, he can.’
‘So, you’ll marry and then what?’
Eleanor shrugged as if confused by the question, the elegant line of her shoulders drawn with tension beneath the dusky pink silk dress she wore.
‘Are you planning to hide out in suburbia for the rest of your life?’ he demanded, pushing her again, stepping closer, daring her almost to run from him. Cristo , why was it that just the thought turned his blood to molten lava in his veins?
‘If that’s what it takes,’ she replied, refusing to back down, refusing to bow to his blatant display of power.
‘You won’t last a week,’ he sneered.
‘I’ve lasted six already,’ she bit back.
Santo clenched his jaw, his whole body on fire with the tension it took to hold himself back.
‘Tell me he’s what you want,’ he growled.
‘He’s what I need.’
And while everything in his entire being roared at the thought that another man could be that for her, could fulfil that role for her, instead he latched onto the most important thing.
‘Eleanor. You are a strong, capable woman who can get what she needs for herself. Tell me he’s what you want .’
For a moment he saw it. The impact the first part of his sentence made on her. As if it were a surprise to her that someone would see her that way.
Did she not know? Did she not realise how amazing she was?
‘You are capable of so much more than being a housewife,’ he said. He knew that. He didn’t even need to read Mads’s updates to know that. Eleanor had become a highly valued member of his London office, having graduated with a first in her degree despite all the odds. She was wasting her potential and he couldn’t stand it.
‘There is nothing wrong with making a home,’ she cried, her own anger painting her cheeks pink, the flashes in her eyes now exploding like fireworks.
‘Of course not,’ he wholeheartedly agreed. ‘But you don’t want that. You want more.’
She spun away from him in frustration, her fists clenched and her growl of frustration audible.
He felt some sympathy. After all, this was exactly how she made him feel.
‘Why is it always like this?’ she asked, still facing away from him.
‘Haven’t you figured that out yet, Princess?’ he said before he could stop himself.
She turned, looking up at him, hoping for an answer. He would probably come to regret it, but he just couldn’t fight it any more.
‘It’s foreplay,’ he explained.
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she dismissed, but the blush on her cheeks told him she knew.
‘Some people like sweet nothings and pretty gifts. It appears you like something altogether different,’ he said, as if observing the weather, while his mind already imagined a future where he could finally get his hands on her, when all this frustration and need was spent and he was free.
‘I’m leaving,’ she said.
‘You can try,’ he offered, having already seen how this would go down. It was inevitable really. Almost as if it were too late.
‘What’s that supposed to mean? I can leave if I want.’
‘You can, but you don’t want to,’ he said, leaning forward, his lips just above her ear. ‘This is the most fun you’ve had all year.’
‘Don’t be stupid,’ she replied, staring ahead at his chest, but making no attempt to move away from the press of his body.
‘Sorry, sweetheart. You made me promise not to lie to you,’ he taunted, half cruel, half driven out of his mind with lust.
Her swift inhale pushed her chest against the neckline, and pushed him even closer towards the precipice.
‘Tell me you don’t want this. Tell me I mean nothing to you. Tell me you haven’t thought about this, like I have, every night for years .’
‘I... I...’ The word ‘ can’t ’ had barely left Eleanor’s mouth when his lips crashed against hers.
The sudden shocking reality of what she had fantasised about for years stole her breath. He didn’t wait, he wasn’t patient, he just expected her to keep up—as if absolutely no time had passed between the kiss they’d shared two years before and now.
He walked them back to the far wall, her hands raising of their own volition to grab the lapels of his dinner jacket, her fingers slipping on the silk before fastening more securely around the material and, before she knew it, she had taken the lead, she was the one pulling him into her, she was the one drawing them further back until they couldn’t go any further.
Her back slammed against the wall at the same time as Santo’s hand swept to the back of her head, cushioning any possible blow. But then, sneakily, he used that same movement to his advantage and angled her to him so that he could tease her lips open.
To compare this to their earlier kiss was almost laughable. Oh, God, she all but dissolved into him. The heady moment his tongue met hers was enough to stop time and steal a heartbeat. He was a thief, taking what she didn’t know she wanted to offer. Her heart thundered in her chest, and all she could think was that it wasn’t enough. That it would never be enough.
He trailed his fingers down the arch of her neck to her collarbone, while his other hand fastened her to him at the waist. As he held, she pulled, and she wanted more. Her hands flew to thread through his hair, to encourage him to take more, to show her more, to give her more.
Breathless, heated, heart racing and aching in places and ways that could never be appeased by any other man, pleading, begging words fell from her lips, incomprehensible wants, pressed into his kiss. Each one met by an answering growl of agreement, or encouragement, she couldn’t tell any more.
His hand moved torturously along the side of her body, down her ribcage, skirting around the edge of her breast, sending a shiver of goosebumps across her skin, dropping to her backside, making her gasp, and finally to her thigh, where he reached for her leg. Hooking it over his hip, he pressed against her body powerfully, once, twice and the third time she could no longer deny what he was doing.
The mimicry of what she wanted more desperately than her next breath clogged her throat, thickened her blood and made her nearly blind with want. Again and again, she felt the press of his erection through the impossible barrier of their clothes, the large, hot, insistent ridge of his arousal finally proving beyond all reasonable doubt that he wanted her as much as she wanted him.
Her hands grasped his waist, not to stop him but to hold him, to delight in his need of her, to commit it to memory and to know what could have been. She teased herself with the feel of him, coming shockingly close to orgasm, which was enough to bring the sharp stab of sanity crashing down into her heart. She pulled back from the kiss, the breath panting in and out of her chest mixing with his hard inhalation and fast exhalation.
There was no touching moment like before, their foreheads pressed together, allowing the moment to sink in. No, instead, Santo glared at her, full of accusation, arousal, determination and resentment. In that moment she realised how truly he had proved his point. How James could never measure up to the wants and needs that Santo unleashed in her. Wants and needs deep within her, innate to her, part of her as much as her DNA.
She was devastated, he was victorious. But neither was happy.
He smoothed his shirt down over his torso, checked his belt and tugged on his cufflinks, all the while she was utterly incapable of speech.
He nodded to her once and then, with a, ‘See you next year, Princess,’ he left the room, the words less like a promise and so much more like a threat.