Chapter Three
CHAPTER THREE
Six months later...
D OM WALKED INTO his father’s empty office and left the lights off, allowing the wet, New York day to cast everything in shades of pewter and ash. It suited his mood.
Not because he was depressed and grieving. His responsibilities were heavy and his thoughts grim, but there was relief in his father’s passing. Thomas Blackwood had been a bitter, combative man and, when his heart began to fail, had been even more quick to punish those around him who still possessed optimism for the future.
The funeral had been a somber affair, but there had been a collective exhale from everyone in attendance, Dom’s mother especially. Dom’s stepmother, Ingrid, had been the only one still projecting tension and discord. She didn’t like that she’d lost the ear of the patriarch. She would live out her life in comfort with a suitable allowance, but like everyone else, she was now reliant and beholden to Dom. The heir.
Dom glanced at the open bottle of Scotch in the refreshment nook, but as much as he would like to disappear into oblivion, he had too much to do—starting with fending off the Viscontis.
In the ten days between his father dying in his sleep and his body going into the ground, Romeo Visconti and his three sons had swept across the globe like an invading army.
Granted, WBE wouldn’t have been in such a vulnerable position if Thomas Blackwood hadn’t insisted on staying at this desk while he had breath in his body. Dom’s father had made some terrible decisions in the last years, determined to see the Visconti Group destroyed before he died. Dom had regarded that vendetta as a waste of time, energy, money and resources, but there had been nothing he could do except argue and watch.
Privately, he had hoped the feud between the Blackwoods and Viscontis would end with his father. He had been prepared to let it fall away into history since that’s all it was.
Dom’s great-grandfather had bootlegged and smuggled alcohol with Christopher Winslow during the Great Depression. When Prohibition ended, they turned their stills into breweries and their speakeasies into nightclubs. They invested their ill-gotten gains into hotels and casinos then, to ensure their combined fortunes stayed in the family, they arranged for Maria Winslow to marry Michael Blackwood.
Maria hadn’t turned up at the church. She eloped with Aldo Visconti instead.
Humiliated, the Blackwoods did their best to ruin the Winslows, taking ownership of their shared properties and cutting them off from income streams. The Winslows hung onto a few assets, barely, then reconciled with the daughter they had shunned and used Visconti money to rally.
Through the ensuing years, there’d been some territorial disputes between the Blackwoods and the Viscontis, but the fight should have stayed between Michael and Aldo. Dom’s grandfather had pushed it into the next generation, though. When his twin sons, Thomas and Peter, had discovered that Romeo Visconti was at Harvard with them, Michael goaded his sons into an academic rivalry with the Visconti heir. That enmity carried into their business dealings when they all began working at their family companies.
A war of empires ensued through the eighties and nineties. Visconti Group and Winslow-Blackwood Enterprises became synonymous with five-star accommodation, luxury entertainments and a battle as competitive as those between the top cola brands. At one point, Romeo had launched a trademark suit, coming at Winslow-Blackwood for continuing to use the Winslow name—which he had no right to, either. The suit itself was frivolous, but he won over public sentiment, forcing the rebranding of Winslow-Blackwood Hotels and Resorts to the less elegant WBE.
Dom had vague memories of his father from those days. Thomas had never been gregarious or fun, but he hadn’t been mean. He and his siblings had been the product of a fraught marriage so they were all taciturn people who showed little emotion except anger. Uncle Pete had never married, hadn’t had children, but he’d worked side by side with Thomas at WBE. They’d been focused and intent. Workaholics to some extent, because their father constantly whipped them to work harder, be more. Win .
After Michael Blackwood died, there’d been another chance to take the personal out of the battle. Elbowing for market share was to be expected, but there was no reason for Dom’s father to hold onto a grudge against Romeo.
Perhaps he would have let it go if Romeo hadn’t been implicated in Peter’s death. Romeo was cleared of wrongdoing, but losing his brother changed Thomas. From then on, he had one goal: to annihilate the Viscontis. His thirst for vengeance cost him his marriage to Dom’s mother, but Thomas simply found a wife who agreed with him and kept on his one-track quest to punish.
Dom was sorry for his father’s loss. He felt cheated of what might have been a better relationship with him if things had been different. His childhood had been isolating at best and too often punctuated with his father’s harsh moods, bullying and unreasonable demands. Dom had shouldered responsibilities well beyond his years, purely because his father was trying to turn him into a foot soldier in his personal war. Dom had been caught in the impossible position of wanting to inherit something he knew inside out, something he believed he could do great things with, but he had to appease the old man to do it.
He had never blamed the Viscontis for any of that. Never hated them or wished them ill.
Until now.
Now those opportunistic carrion-eaters were taking advantage of his father’s death to raid and pillage. In a matter of days, they had scooped up majority shares in half a dozen WBE properties that were mid-development. They were buying WBE debts so they could call them. They were attacking Dom on all fronts and he knew why .
Evelina.
He dropped into his father’s chair, but refused to close his eyes because, whenever he did, all he saw was her. He saw long black hair and long tanned legs. He saw small, high breasts as she twisted in erotic anguish under his touch. He saw white lips shaping his name while her dark brown eyes widened in horror.
For the millionth time, he looked back on every second of his time in Budapest, from his last-minute agreement to oversee the party to how Eve could have made that elevator open at that specific moment. There was no way she could have orchestrated any of it. He was only trying to convince himself that she was a criminal mastermind so he could absolve himself of blame for having touched her.
She hadn’t waved him to approach her from across a crowded club. His own feet had carried him there. She hadn’t danced with him until he’d asked. She hadn’t tried to come home with him.
She hadn’t known who he was.
And even though he had relived their interactions a thousand times, punishing himself for not recognizing her, he simply hadn’t. Why not? He knew all three of her brothers by sight and reputation, if not personally. He should have seen the resemblance.
Not that she looked much like her older siblings. They had wide jaws and broad shoulders and were full of machismo. Evelina was the happy surprise who was several years younger. Aside from her height, she took after her Italian grandfather’s family. That’s where she got her black hair and dark brown eyes and that touch of gold embedded in her skin.
She had attended an all-girls boarding school in Switzerland and she’d been too young to be in any of Dom’s social circles, not that Visconti and Blackwood worlds were allowed to overlap. After the loss of his brother, Dom’s father hadn’t allowed a Visconti name to be spoken in his earshot, let alone suffer the presence of one in a room with him. They were “that family” or, if he was referencing Romeo, “the mongrel.”
Thus, Dom hadn’t had a clue he was lusting after Romeo’s daughter that night.
All he’d known when the elevator opened was that he couldn’t let her go again. Compelled by what could only be called a primitive imperative, Dom had made all the advances, barely capable of his usual restraint. He always made sure a woman wanted his sexual attention, but he’d been more assertive than usual. More driven.
Eve had seemed surprised by his directness, but when it came down to it, she’d matched his level of carnality. That’s what still made him hard in a heartbeat, that she’d trembled and moaned and climaxed when he’d barely touched her.
He’d wanted inside her more than he’d wanted his next breath.
At that point, the gods had had their biggest laugh at his expense. They’d delivered the message he’d so far failed to grasp. Her phone rang and there was Nico Visconti’s smug face turning Dom’s lust to disgust. To ire at being thwarted. And rage at feeling tricked.
Eve had seemed equally aghast. Maybe it really had been a series of outlandish coincidences, but their innocent mistake didn’t make any of their actions less criminal. Not in his mind. Certainly not in the mind of his father if he ever found out.
For weeks, Dom had debated coming clean about the incident, wanting to get ahead of his father’s tantrum. No matter how or when Thomas learned of the betrayal, it could literally stop his heart.
Ultimately, Dom had stayed silent not out of shame or concern for his father, but from a misguided sense of decency. He had sisters. He knew that pinning a Scarlet A on a woman, humiliating her for having a sexual appetite, was as sexist and hypocritical as it got. His father would do it anyway. If it would hurt Romeo to have his daughter disgraced, Thomas would revel in making her suffer.
Dom’s heart was not quite as charred as his father’s. He kept his mouth shut and waited to see if she would move first. If she would reveal the intimate things they’d done.
There’d been nothing but silence.
Until his father died.
Now Eve’s father and brothers were jumping on WBE like hyenas on a wounded gazelle. There was a small chance they were acting independently, Dom supposed. As far as he could tell, Eve had recently been given a midlevel position with their head office so she didn’t have the frontline ability to lead these sorts of attacks, but she easily could have spun some story to her father that would fuel this action.
Either way, Dom’s father was dead. That meant the Viscontis were coming for him .
Dom understood his father’s perspective now, even his grandfather’s. The Viscontis were leaving him with no choice but to fight. He was angry enough at their tactics that he wouldn’t rest until he had his teeth in their proverbial throats.
A memory flashed of the mark he’d left on Eve’s neck. Heat pooled behind his fly.
Damn it, he wanted her out of his head! He wanted her and her family relegated to the fringes of his perception, where he would never think about any of them ever again.
It might take years. It might take playing the wounded antelope to lead them down a path toward an ambush, but he was a smart, patient man. He could do it.
One way or another, he would end this feud once and for all.