Chapter One
Nine years later
Leo Romano, who was walking and talking as he spoke into his phone, paused by the glass wall that afforded thrilling views across the City landscape. But he ignored the view as he ended the call with a crisp, ‘Ciao.’
He slid the phone into a pocket of the tailored dark jeans he wore and applied the towel hanging loosely around his neck to his wet hair before discarding it in a crumpled heap.
It landed wetly on one of the designer leather chairs arranged to enjoy the view as he shook his head, leaving speckles of moisture on the dark blue of the silk shirt that he had not yet buttoned.
It hung open, revealing a slice of his golden, densely muscled torso.
His broad chest had a light dusting of dark body hair, his flat belly was ridged with muscle.
The dull gold buckle of his unfastened belt was a shade lighter than his skin.
Fastening his shirt one-handed, he paused by the open laptop set on a table.
The screen was frozen on a shot of a slim figure.
In the background, the building she was leaving was totally blocked out by hordes of press wielding sound booms, microphones and cameras.
There was no sound on the clip but it had to be bedlam, yet she appeared calm, if very pale, with her eyes fixed on a point up ahead, her tilted chin displaying the graceful curve of her neck.
The rich caramel-coloured hair—hair he had once tangled his fingers in—was drawn back from her face in a thick glossy braid that was pinned around her oval face. The puritanical hairstyle left nothing to hide behind, but there was nothing to hide.
Amy Sinclair was beautiful, more so now than she had been nine years ago.
The delicate bone structure of her face and melting softness of her wide-spaced, darkly-lashed brown eyes were perfectly balanced by feathery dark brows and the lush curve of her mouth—a mouth that had launched a thousand fantasies. Many of those fantasies, he thought grimly, belonged to him.
Leo looked away, resenting the degree of effort it took to break the connection, unable to deny the scalding rush of frustrated heat that had settled in his groin.
It was humiliating for a man who prided himself on his total objectivity, the ability to take the emotion out of decision-making or, for that matter, from life in general.
Amy’s rejection had made him the man he was today, so he had that much to thank her for.
Taking a couple of deep breaths, lips compressed, hands clenched tight with his long brown fingers bone-white from the pressure, he forced himself to turn back. It would have been simpler to pretend he felt nothing, but after nine years the act was wearing thin.
The moment had come to break the cycle of denial, face his weakness and conquer it.
Some might say not before time, he thought, his nostrils flaring as he huffed out a snort of impatient self-contempt.
For nine years he had told himself that the Sinclair family were history, consigned to some dusty corner of his mind.
He had moved on.
It was a self-delusion that had been exposed the moment the George Sinclair scandal had spawned a wealth of banner headlines: Wealthy Financier Caught with Hand in the Till.
It would have been reasonable, given their shared history, to indulge in a few moments of what-goes-around-comes-around satisfaction, raise a glass to karma then get on with his life.
Instead, he had become totally…obsessed with the story.
Even admitting to this weakness in the privacy of his own head, just thinking the word made him clench his teeth, but what else could you call his encyclopaedic knowledge of every tabloid headline, every online podcast covering Sinclair’s trial and eventual incarceration?
He’d also hoarded every scrap of information, including every photo, old or new, of Sinclair’s daughter, whose loyalty and quiet dignity had apparently won her a fan base.
There were a lot of photos and he had looked at every single one of them.
Leo had read it all and filed away the opinions of both the crazy people and the serious commentators.
Those who loved Amy Sinclair for being a dutiful, loving daughter were countered by an equal number of conspiracy theorists who had concluded she was the criminal mastermind behind the crime and she’d got off scot-free, while the real crazies framed a possibility that she came from Mars.
He had read it all, watched it all—and all because nine years ago Amy Sinclair had rejected him.
Something he had recovered from completely.
Having the lie revealed for what it was meant he was not well-disposed towards the author of his humiliation or, more especially, himself.
It wasn’t as if he was the only person in the world to be rejected by his first love, and it wasn’t as if rejection had been a new experience for him. Sure, his mother hadn’t exactly rejected him, but she had died, which as a child had felt pretty much like the same thing.
Then came the foster homes, where a couple of unpleasant experiences had left their mark, but most carers had been well-intentioned, or even kind, but by that point in his life Leo had been wary of kind.
Even the better people he’d come across had found the aloof kid he’d been too self-contained.
A child who didn’t smile or cry was hard to warm to.
School hadn’t supplied the sort of stimulation his quick mind had craved.
His last report had basically read: a bit of a loner, but good with animals.
When he’d met Amy Sinclair, he’d been working at stables that ran a sanctuary sideline for old and abused horses.
She had been one of the rich kid volunteers, the sort he’d normally steered clear of.
Amy was the first person in his life who had believed in him.
Except, of course, she hadn’t. She’d simply strung him along as they had created a future together in their heads, but when push came to shove, the novelty value of slumming it had inevitably worn off.
And when faced with the prospect of actually leaving her spoilt, fairy tale princess lifestyle for a life with a no-hope loser as her father had so charmingly phrased it, she had revealed her true self.
Leo didn’t look back on the immediate post-Amy era of his life with any pride, those weeks and months when he had wallowed in self-pity, often found in the bottom of a glass.
But he had eventually come out the other side and moved on, telling himself, and really believing it, that he had shrugged off the past and learnt from it.
He had viewed, and still did, the gullibility of his old self with a mixture of embarrassment, scorn and disbelief.
And there were even positives to the experience, which he had acknowledged; he had definitely learnt some very important lessons.
He’d never thought of a woman as his again, and never would. The term soulmate had been expunged from his vocabulary. Somewhere between the bottom of a beer glass and deciding to fight back, Leo had discovered that being a lone wolf and thinking outside the box did not make you a loser.
Actually, those traits could be positive ones when it came to making money, as his early success in crypto had shown. The self-belief that success had given him had helped him deal in a pragmatic way with the next bolt from the blue when it came.
He had family in the form of an Italian billionaire grandfather, who appeared to think that Leo would view this news like a lottery winner and run after the dangling carrot he’d extended.
Whereas, actually, Leo’s first inclination had been to tell this stranger, who had turfed out his only daughter because she had fallen in love with a man he didn’t approve of, to take a hike.
Leo had no interest in being the chosen one, and he was more than capable of making his own success; he didn’t need to inherit it.
‘You think I care about the Romano name, or how old and noble this family is, or how much money you have? You came looking for me because there isn’t anyone else, but maybe you should have thought of that before you threw my mother out.
I’m not about to kiss your ring or anywhere else, old man, because you need me more than I need you! ’
A faint, ironic smile tugged at Leo’s lips at the memory of that first encounter, which had been, to put it politely, stormy.
Over the years, there had been several storms while he worked alongside his grandfather, and even now that the old man was no longer taking an active part in the day-to-day working of the Romano estate, there were still occasions when they butted heads.
Men who threw their daughters to the wolves did not fill Leo with admiration, but over the years an understanding of sorts had developed between the two men.
His heavy-lidded glance strayed one last time to the screen.
He wasn’t filled with admiration for weak, compliant daughters who supported their guilty fathers, either.
His half-smile had vanished, and his eyes were cold as he closed the laptop with a decisive snap. He had allowed ghosts from the past to take up space in his head. Now, he needed to free up that space and reclaim his life, which, as lives went, was a pretty good one.
Nine years ago, he had not been in a position to take revenge on the family responsible for humiliating him.
Flexing his broad shoulders, he reached for the leather jacket he had discarded earlier. He was the one calling the shots now.
As he slid into the driving seat of his car, he glanced at the time on the slim platinum-banded watch on his wrist. It was a thirty-minute drive to where the fast-food truck where Amy produced culinary miracles, according to the reviews he’d read, was parked up.
She had gone from being the head chef at a fashionable Michelin-starred restaurant in the capital owned by her father to running a fast-food truck. Her fall in social and professional standing had been as meteoric as his journey in the opposite direction had been.
According to his research, she would still be there. Apparently, she always put in a long day and her only help was a kid on a government employment scheme and a well-known chef who had fallen off the wagon and on hard times.
Amy should have fallen apart without Daddy to tell her what to do, Daddy to buy her a restaurant as a plaything, Daddy who, for all he knew, still had to approve her boyfriends.
Yes, Leo had confidently waited for her to fall apart.
But she hadn’t.
It was common knowledge that she had received multiple offers from tabloids to tell her story, casting herself in a favourable light.
But it turned out she had not taken up even one of the book offers that would have established her as a professional victim, with her story eventually serialised profitably in one of the red-tops.
Leo assumed she had money stashed away and was biding her time to push the price up, a risky strategy. But there hadn’t been a bidding war, no sob story; instead, she’d resurfaced as the part owner of Gourmet Gypsy, a glorified greasy spoon food truck—not anyone’s idea of an easy route.
Despite being a social pariah, she obviously still had a few friends in the industry, because some low-key publicity for her down-market venture had emerged. A couple of food critics had written good things, and she was making a living of sorts.
She was called resilient; she was called imaginative and hard-working.
It took a tough person to do what Amy had, but Leo knew she was not tough. Reading praise, however faint, of her was like hearing a nail scratching a chalkboard.
Then when her father had been released from incarceration early and the information filtered through to Leo about the sudden increase in Sinclair’s cash-flow, he finally understood what was going on.
Amy always had followed Daddy’s orders and this was all part of her father’s long-term plan.
Her business was just a front for him to help out his new friends with a bit of money laundering.
Could she really be part of this latest con, or was she just a dim, unwitting pawn? It was time to find out.
Half an hour later, Leo had parked up.
His position, giving him a view of the SilverStream with Gourmet Gypsy written along its sides, was pretty much perfect. The interior was still illuminated and he could make out a figure moving around inside.
Then the lights went out, the door opened, and he watched as a small figure, slim beneath an unattractive padded coat that reached to mid-thigh, pulled down the shutters and locked up.
She seemed unaware of a group of three or four youths in hoodies sharing a bottle they passed between them, their lurching progress suggesting they were not just high on booze.
Like many parts of London, extreme deprivation sat cheek by jowl with wealth and privilege. The Gourmet Gypsy van sat squarely on the dividing line between the boarded-up windows and the chic, expensive shops, in a sort of no-man’s-land.
Leo got out of the car and, as he did so, the irony hit him. He had come to punish her and instead he might actually end up saving her.