Chapter Two
GIACO TAVIAN HAD long ago made his life into performance art, the more outrageous and inaccessible to the observer, the better.
Also, he did indeed enjoy a good daily fuck.
But never had he enjoyed himself more than he did right now.
He had assumed that his objectively hideous father was cooking up some or other unfortunate plan—because Umberto was always so busy with all his plotting that Giaco assumed it was what kept him alive—when the old man had summoned him home to the family castle.
Particularly when he’d insisted rather darkly that it was Giaco’s turn to pay the piper.
He had been tempted to ask his father what, if any, experience Umberto himself had with pipers of any description.
Because Giaco knew that the old man was the sort who believed that he could buy himself out of any situation.
And frequently did. No pipers requiring payment.
None to lead blind mice. It was a piper-free existence for a man so corrupt he made the crime families all over Italy seem virtuous in comparison.
But Giaco was nothing if not committed to the role he played. To finding a new low in everything he did.
Though he had to admit that looking up from a morning dip to find his former stepsister ogling him was really more of a high.
Especially because Ivy hadn’t been anything like this attractive when she’d lived here.
He’d barely noticed her, appropriately, as she was a good ten years younger than him.
He had been in his early twenties and had only returned to the castle for his monthly sessions with his father, wherein Umberto had made him perform for his monthly stipend.
Luckily, Giaco had discovered long before that all he really needed to do was disgust the old man with tales of his exploits.
The monthly meetings had been discontinued at some point in his twenties.
These days Giaco preferred that his father read about his exploits in various papers or hear about them from his business associates.
He dedicated himself to this task for many reasons, one of them being that Umberto thrived in the murkiest of shadows.
Umberto was the sort who liked to hide behind a throne because kings came and went, but men like Umberto always remained.
Giaco liked to think of himself as a bright bit of sun—a spotlight, if you would—that shone upon Umberto wherever he went. Umberto had usually sent him off again in a fury, stipend dispensed, just to get Giaco out of his sight.
If Giaco had seen Ivy over the course of those years, she had made no impression on him.
That had changed in that last year, when her mother was ill. He had noticed her then. She had grown into her angular face, he could remember thinking. And she had looked far too pretty next to her mother’s coffin, an observation even he had known to keep to himself.
But he couldn’t say he’d thought much of her or about her since.
The Ivy who had turned up today and who had watched him like he was her favorite dirty movie, on the other hand, was a surprise.
And Giaco could not remember the last time that he been even remotely surprised. By anything.
He scoured his memory for hints of her when she was younger, but all he could pull up were vague impressions of the adolescent version of her—the odd glimpse of blond hair and a sullen expression.
That had changed when he’d seen her at her mother’s funeral.
And also before it, if he recalled correctly, when he’d allowed an overeager acolyte to pleasure him and had looked up from the bench he’d been lounging on—just before the woman in question was about to busy herself with him—and had seen Ivy loitering about in the doorway.
There had been a look on her face, however briefly, that had…made the situation far hotter than a desultory bit of oral usually was.
Today Ivy did not have grief in her eyes.
She looked polished to a gleam. She was still blond, though today all of that blond hair was pulled back into a sleek sort of ponytail that looked effortless and had therefore likely taken hours to perfect.
She had impossibly, distractingly blue eyes.
A different sort of man might have been tempted to compare them to summer skies or the deep blue sea.
Giaco was more interested in the way they appeared to be clear, yet were unreadable.
Not what she seemed, then, was Ivy. That was intriguing.
Her mother had been a great, rare beauty.
Giaco could see Alana Amis’s famous influence in the exquisite bone structure of Ivy’s face.
In her aquiline nose and wide, offhandedly sensual mouth.
She looked like one of those women who heaved about on those recovery machines and called it a workout, then attributed their lithe forms to the practice when it was clearly just genetics.
In Ivy’s case it was excellent genetics. He had no idea if she’d ever taken a Pilates class in her life, but he knew where she’d gotten that inherent elegance she wore so easily.
Here in his father’s office, which had all the aesthetic appeal of a prison, she looked cool.
Unruffled. She wore slim-fitting jeans, flats, and a simple sweater, but the cut of each of those items was exquisite.
There was the hint of diamond sparkle in her ears and single pearl drop around her neck.
Giaco knew battle armor when he saw it.
More telling, to his mind, was that she had said absolutely nothing since his father’s announcement.
“You seem undone,” he pointed out, pillowing his head on his folded arms. He shifted his legs, entertained by the way his father huffed and looked away and Ivy dropped her gaze. Both of them expecting to see him, cock out, on the sofa.
He did not intend to let them realize that he was wearing boxer briefs. What fun would that be?
Ivy still didn’t answer, so he lifted his brow. “Is it the acting job for such a wide audience that you find unappealing? Or is it the daily fucking that, it has to be said, a great many people do insist is excessive. I’m afraid I run at a higher intensity than some.”
“You will stop using that word,” his father growled.
“I know this is distressing, father,” Giaco said, so pleasantly he should have been smiling ear to ear. He wasn’t. “But I am, despite all protestations to the contrary, a fully grown adult. And will use whatever vocabulary I please.”
“I’m going to take this opportunity to make it clear that I don’t care who or what you fuck,” Ivy announced in that British accent of hers that made her vowels gleam like polished glass.
“That has nothing to do with me. If this is the only way that I can receive my inheritance, I suppose I will have to find a way to channel my mother’s gifts and pretend that when I look at you I feel nothing but adoration. Instead of the more natural revulsion.”
“Revulsion?” Giaco smirked at her. “Are we certain that’s what it is?”
And he was more pleased than he probably should have been to see the hint of color on her cheeks.
His father stood in a rush then, likely because this was no longer about him.
“I want to read about the two of you in the papers as soon as possible and I don’t care how you do it.
” Umberto glared at his only son and heir.
“I know perfectly well that you have contacts among the paparazzi. Sell the story I want to read, Giaco. Your total redemption at the hands of the sort of saintly female you would normally take such pleasure in befouling, etcetera, etcetera. Or you will wish you had.”
“Dearest Papà, I have never experienced a moment of regret in my life,” Giaco murmured. “I wouldn’t recognize it if I did.”
His father sneered. “You will recognize it, Giaco. This I promise you.”
And then Umberto stormed on out of the room, no doubt off to smite down some enemies and ruin more lives. It was his favorite pastime. And possibly his only pastime.
Giaco did not move. He did not allow himself to think too deeply about what was actually happening here, beneath the surface, because there was no point in it at this stage. He watched Ivy instead.
“I’m surprised that you allow him to threaten you,” she said after a moment. “It doesn’t really seem to go with your whole…” She waved a hand. “Aesthetic.”
That interested him against his will. He actually sat up and let the robe fall open as he did. He watched her jolt a little bit, hide it, and then release a breath when she saw that he was covered after all.
Most people did not pay enough attention to Giaco. Oh, they paid attention to the stories. To the spotlight that followed him wherever he went. To all the smoke and mirrors and the outrageousness he threw about like so much confetti.
But if there was tension between how he behaved and how he was thought to behave, or any question of aesthetics or intentions or anything else that didn’t match—well, that wasn’t the sort of thing people thought about when it came to him.
No one thought Umberto’s useless son was bright enough to know what he was doing.
He counted on that.
“And have you studied my aesthetic at great length, then?” he asked Ivy. “I am fascinating, it is true. There are many who have engaged in a doctoral level of research into the topic. Is that why you came back?”
“You know why I came back.” She blew out a breath. “Or maybe you don’t. My mother left me money. It’s my money. A normal person would have given it me according to her wishes five years ago, but, of course, we’re talking about your father.”
“Your first impulse was the better one,” he told her, making sure to sound idle and bored. His specialty. Even though he meant it. Maybe especially because he meant it. “Nothing good ever comes of succumbing to my father’s wishes.”