Chapter Six
You need to get down here right now.
Micha looked at the message Ivy Gallo had sent him less than ten minutes ago and checked the location share on the map. He was less than fifty metres away from the shop they were in, but he forced himself to stop. To breathe. To think.
It had been four days since he had left Maria’s rented cottage near Lake Trasimeno and with only two days before the wedding he still hadn’t wrapped his head around her.
His assistant had kept him updated on her movements, Maria seeming to prefer to communicate with Eduardo rather than him—something he was both thankful and slightly resentful over.
Eduardo had informed him that Maria had checked into the hotel La Tormalina last night but her belongings and personal effects were still at the lake house.
It wasn’t that he’d expected her to magically uproot her life and integrate it into his, he told himself.
That would be an outrageous assumption for anyone to make, he recognised, even as the twist of dissatisfaction tightened in his gut.
But he couldn’t help but feel that it was symbolic of her holding back.
Of her not realising the situation that she was in.
They were in. He wouldn’t, couldn’t accept half measures in this.
He’d been young when he learned that lesson and he’d learned it hard.
But it was a lesson that had dragged him from the streets to the dizzying heights of control of one of the world’s largest conglomerates.
At seven years old, he’d not had the luxury of time to adjust. He’d known that if he hadn’t acted immediately, the next man his mother sold herself to might just kill her.
That was the day he’d met Gio Gallo and his life had changed.
It wasn’t luck. It was because Micha had made a decision.
It was because he had decided to go all in that Micha had picked the richest mark, the person he could steal the most from.
And honestly, for a moment there he’d thought he’d got away with it.
But Gio had been too clever for him. The Italian businessman had let him escape, but only so far.
Micha hadn’t even imagined that the man had followed him all the way back to where he lived.
And while it wasn’t in the way he’d expected, Micha’s life had changed that day.
Gio had plucked him and his mother from the slums they’d barely been able to afford, and given them housing, given Micha an education, given first his mother work and then, when he’d been old enough, Micha had worked for Gio too; whatever the older man said, whatever he wanted, Micha made it happen.
And in just two days’ time it would change again.
When Maria became his wife.
Micha followed the location arrow on the map on the screen of his cellphone until he was right on top of it. Looking up at the boutique Ivy had brought him to, he winced. Mentally cursing, he blew out a reluctant breath of air and braced himself.
The bell chimed as he crossed the threshold, but no one rushed to greet him and he soon discovered why as he ventured further into the bridal store.
‘Absolutely not.’
The sounds of a somewhat heated argument came from somewhere in the back, he guessed, because he couldn’t see past the rows and rows of dresses in various shades of white and increasing states of bouffant.
‘But Ms Gallo, the designer assured me—’
‘As the designer isn’t here, I’m having considerable trouble wondering how on earth she could have assured you that I look anything other than absolutely hideous!’ he heard Maria insist.
If the shop assistant knew what was good for her, she should probably give up the argument. Maria had never been one to back down from a fight, ever.
And just like that, a childhood memory flashed into his mind.
About two years after Gio had ‘adopted’ him, in an attempt to civilise the hellion that he’d been, Micha had been sent to the same school as Antonio and Maria.
They’d been inseparable back then. Not that it had stopped some opportunistic kids trying to bully him.
The day he’d been about to prove exactly why it was futile to do so, Maria—half a head smaller than both him and the wannabe bully—pushed her way in between them and threated what amounted to grievous bodily harm if the kid didn’t stop.
He rubbed his jaw, fighting the smile that threated to crack across his features from the memory.
‘The style of dress perhaps—’ the shop assistant pressed on, heedless of Maria’s ire.
‘Is terrible? Awful? Makes me look like my grandmother? Ivy, you can see it, can’t you?’
‘Well…’
‘Oh, you’re so English, Ivy. Too polite to say anything negative,’ Maria dismissed as Micha drew closer to the dressing area. Between peach-coloured draped silk, he caught glimpses of a raised dais, and several mirrors.
The assistant was helping Maria out of something puffy and white as Ivy turned, her eyes widening to see him, both in relief and warning.
Few knew that he and Ivy had met several years ago when Gio Gallo had sent him to try to bribe her into divorcing Antonio, thereby leaving Antonio free to marry Maria as Gio intended.
Ivy had earned both his and Gio’s respect when she had turned down a life-changing amount of money, instead choosing to stand beside the husband of a convenient marriage that soon proved to be so much more.
And that respect had developed into like, forging a strange unspoken understanding and respect between him and Ivy.
In some ways, Micha felt that she had seen him in a light that Antonio and Maria would never, because she wasn’t tarnished by the Gallo family prejudice.
‘Help,’ Ivy mouthed and he couldn’t stop the smile that came to his lips—the moment of humour easing something of the stress and tension that had held him taut for the last four days.
‘It’s not funny!’ she mouthed again and he bit his lip to stop the laughter in his chest.
It wasn’t. It really wasn’t. But there was something painfully familiar about Maria’s frustration over something as simple as a wedding dress.
Behind Ivy, the assistant had manoeuvred Maria into another bright white dress that made him wince.
The low-cut neckline created more cleavage than he’d even thought possible for Maria, then puffed out beneath her breasts in a way that reminded him of a Victorian milk maid, creating an uncomfortable discord between the competing images of purity and impropriety.
The shocking bright white made Maria look almost sick in the harsh lighting and he wasn’t in the least surprised when Maria fisted her hands at her sides and let out a cry of frustration.
Which was nothing compared to the cry of alarm she made when she caught sight of him standing there.
Maria’s heart dropped to the floor the moment she caught Micha standing on the brink of the dressing area.
Oh god, what was he doing here?
‘You’re not supposed to see me in my wedding dress!’ she cried pulling her arms around her waist as if she could protect herself from his gaze.
She hated that he was seeing her like this. Hated that he was seeing her look so hideous.
Especially when he looked… She scrunched her eyes together, but the image of him standing there in that damn near perfect suit made him look like a model, harsh cheekbones, broad shouldered, thin hipped and that waistcoat that she remembered far too well.
‘Don’t worry about bad luck, cara, because there is no way that you’ll be marrying me wearing that,’ he assured her.
And she hated that she agreed with him too. At least, she thought, slowly prising her eyes open, he wasn’t planning to punish her by forcing her to wear something as hideous as this in two days’ time.
Two days.
We have very little time for alterations, Ms Gallo, so we will need to find something that fits as close to your size as possible.
Maria knew that. And she intensely disliked being difficult, she would never normally be so demanding. But this was important. It was her wedding dress. And while it might not be the day she’d ever imagined for herself, it was vital that her dress be perfect.
Because of what they would say, what they would think.
Her parents. Her family. The Gallos.
Clothes were armour. And she needed armour.
She needed to be as protected as possible when she stood before every single member of the Gallo family and married Micha.
Because no matter how many times she had proved herself worthy, had worked harder than any other family member, longer than any other employee, gone above and far beyond whatever anyone else had ever done at Gallo Group, it had never been enough.
Not for her grandfather, who deemed her inferior because of her gender, unworthy of inheriting a company she could run better than anyone.
Not for her parents, who had shown her nothing but irritation and disappointment for not being their much-needed male heir; the only way they thought they could have pleased Gio Gallo.
And not Micha, who had left the first chance he could get.
Oh, she could hear the snide whispers and barely concealed critiques.
Pregnant. Desperate. Coerced.
Or worse.
That she’d got her hands on Gallo Group the only way she’d ever be capable of getting it, by trapping Micha with a pregnancy.
Because she ‘wasn’t good enough’ to earn it.
But she had been. She’d been better than all of them.
Even Micha. But in the end none of that would matter, because now they’d all think that she’d manipulated all this to get what she didn’t deserve.
‘Could you give us a moment?’ Micha asked both the assistant and Ivy.
Ivy shot her a glance in the mirror and Maria nodded, not wanting to argue the point—certain that she didn’t want Ivy to hear what Micha was about to say. Maria waited, breath locked in her lungs until they were alone.
She felt…vulnerable, exposed and she didn’t like it.
‘What did you tell her?’ he asked as he started pacing the dais in a slow circle.