Chapter Four #2
The floor seemed to shift beneath her. The closer he came, the more overwhelmed she grew, yet some twisted part of her reveled in it.
Her pain and fury had formed a ball of pent-up energy inside her, one that had no immediate outlet. She wanted to release it and lay waste to everything that Otto had ever held dear.
Rocco triggered something else in her, though. If she was the bomb, he was the detonation switch. The spark.
Goodness, she’d forgotten how tall he was. Not as tall as the first time she’d met him because she’d worn sandals then, but she was still only at eye level with his mouth in her spiked heels.
He smelled good, she noted with a heady, fuzzy sensation that was not unlike the buzz of drinking on an empty stomach.
Her senses altered, becoming sharper in some ways, duller in others.
Her focus narrowed to the way his shirt clung to his powerful shoulders.
The corners of his mouth dug in, making her think he was amused by her.
That stung, but sweet sensations followed, trickling through her limbs.
For no reason that she had ever been able to understand, she was drawn to him.
Every single time she’d seen him, she had responded this way—as though something in him awakened a part of her that didn’t otherwise exist. On those other occasions, while her inner radar had pinged, her blood had heated and waves of humiliating yearning had accosted her, she had run away.
Today, she stood still. Waiting. Feeling her body silently call to Rocco’s while she wished with her few remaining brain cells that this wasn’t happening.
“What exactly did you have in mind, Mirabella?” He hooked the tip of his finger into the ring on the tab of her zipper where it sat between her breasts.
“Oh, my God, not that!” She shoved at his hand, which only caused the zipper to be yanked low enough to show the catch of her bra.
He pulled both hands away, holding them up as though she had pointed a gun at him.
“Oh, my God,” she said again as she pulled the zipper back up. “He doesn’t care who I screw, Rocco.”
It was a galling truth that made her voice quaver.
Nobody in this world cared about her. Even her mother, whom she had always believed loved her above all things on this earth, hadn’t cared enough to tell her the truth about her own father.
As for the man who had conceived her? He probably didn’t even know she existed.
“Nothing you do to me will have any effect on him so don’t bother trying to use me like that again.” She pinched the bridge of her nose, fighting the press of angry tears in her eyes. She walked away a few steps. “And to think how worried I was that he would find out about London.”
“Axel? He was there.”
“Otto.” She spun. “I’m talking about Otto.”
His dark eyebrows crashed together. “You’re here for revenge against Otto?”
“I want to annihilate him,” she said fervently.
“So I came to the most ruthless, cold-blooded, conscienceless scumbag I know. I thought the enemy of my enemy would be my friend,” she said, spelling out her reasoning with a disparaging twist of her mouth.
“But, of course, all you think I’m good for is sex. Why are men such pigs?”
“Don’t hold back, cara. Tell me how you really feel.” He casually leaned his ass on the edge of his desk, arms crossed, mouth quirked in dark humor.
“How the hell do you think I feel after the way you behaved?” she cried.
“Look.” He put out a hand. “You have a right to be angry, but I didn’t mean for that to happen the way it did.”
“Save it,” she muttered. “I know that you only came on to me because of Otto. Now’s your chance to go after him directly, without using sex with me to do it.”
“Why?” His expression hardened to granite and his gaze grew watchful. “What happened?”
She drew a breath, then remembered that her new trustees had urged patience. Let us do our work. Don’t go public with what you’ve learned. He’s been hiding your paternity all this time so it seems to be a bargaining chip. Use it wisely.
“He did something that upset me,” she prevaricated, pacing again in stalking steps across the tiled floor.
The office was huge. One corner was dominated by the floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked the busy streets of Rome’s business district.
Along with his desk, there was a meeting table for six, and a sofa and love seat arranged to the side.
“I gathered that much,” he drawled. “What did he do?” He dropped his hands to the edge of his desk, which was a slab of green marble atop legs of black marble. Even that casual stance strained the seams of his white shirt across his powerful shoulders.
“It was enough to make me leave the company and come to you, so what does that tell you?” she challenged.
“That you need a job?”
“Don’t be obtuse. I want you to hurt him.”
“Physically? You really do have a low opinion of me.”
“Are you having fun?” she asked with fraying patience. “I came to you because I thought you would want to team up with me against him. This is an opportunity. Take it.”
His gaze felt hot as a sunburn against her cheeks.
No, that was the fresh rise of a blush under her skin, making her feel as though she was overheating. Why did she respond to him like this, even when she loathed him?
“How do I know I can trust you?” His thick eyebrows lifted in challenge. “You obviously still hold a grudge against me.”
“My grudge against him is bigger. In this case, size does matter.” She tilted her mouth into a smarmy, humorless smile.
He snorted and moved to the cupboards near the sofa, taking out glasses with a bottle of Scotch.
“None for me. I don’t like hard alcohol,” she said as he started to pour.
“Wine? Coffee?”
“I’m not here for a date, Rocco.”
“It’s called hospitality.” He brought his own drink to the sofa and waved for her to take the love seat.
She sank down in one corner, but couldn’t relax.
She was wound tight by these flailing emotions within her and felt accosted by all that manliness across from her.
He hooked his ankle on his knee and splayed his arm across the sofa back.
Infuriating tendrils of erotic interest unfurled in her belly.
“When did you leave the company?” he asked.
“Three days ago.”
“The day you ended your engagement,” he noted.
At the memory of that day, her heart exploded with all the confusion and anger and hurt she was trying to suppress. Trying to expel. Who is my father? Otto couldn’t or wouldn’t tell her, but the question still dominated her thoughts.
“Are those two things related?” Rocco pried.
It depended on his definition of related, didn’t it? She waved an impatient hand, not wanting to get into it.
“Axel and I were only engaged because Otto promised to retire and gift the company to us. He changed the terms at the last minute. Otto did.” She couldn’t control the quaver in her voice. “So Axel and I had no reason to go through with the marriage.”
“And this thing that upset you. Axel knows what it is?”
“Yes.”
“Will he use it?”
“I don’t know.” She rubbed at the tension headache that had been sitting behind her brow since that distressing morning.
Axel still had the option of marrying Otto’s biological daughter. He had been impatient to strike out on his own two years ago, before Otto had lured him back with a false promise to give him Vorstoben. Axel wasn’t naive. Now that he knew what Otto was capable of, he wouldn’t trust him again.
“I don’t think he’ll use this information yet,” she said, making a deduction. “He has other avenues to take over Vorstoben. I think he would prefer to preserve the company. He’s put in a lot of work since he was made CEO. It’s been thriving under his leadership.”
“I’ve noticed,” Rocco said with irony.
“Don’t blame him for the attacks on GPS.” She dropped her hand from her brow. “I’ve seen Otto override Axel when he knew Vorstoben was up against your company. Whatever the grudge is between you, it’s in Otto’s mind, not Axel’s. Do you know why Otto hates you so much?” she asked curiously.
“Yes,” he said impassively. “Do you?”
“No.” Otto held grudges against lots of people for reasons she couldn’t fathom. Not so long ago, he’d reproached her for speaking French, seeming angry at that entire country. Maybe because of his mistress? The woman who’d hidden his daughter from him?
“Did you ever tell Otto that you and I—”
“No,” she interrupted, snapping at this vexing man. She really wished she didn’t blush every single time he referred to that day in London.
“Axel didn’t, either?”
“Otto would have said something by now if he knew.” It would have been something cutting enough to slice her to juliennes. “I’ve literally spent years feeling sick, you know. Waiting for you to tell Otto how slutty I was that day. I hope you enjoyed that, forcing me to live in fear.”
“We’re going to clear this up right now.
” He hitched forward on the cushion and set down his drink with the clack of a judge’s gavel.
“First of all, I don’t slut-shame. Most people like sex.
I do. It’s a nonstory that you do, too. And I would never discuss that day with anyone because my private life is exactly that. ”
“Then why—”
“I’m not finished.” He held up a finger.
“I didn’t realize you thought I was holding it over you.
I thought you must have told Otto by now.
Or that Axel had decided I needed punishing on your behalf, since Vorstoben was going so far out of its way to grind our profit margin under their heel.
But this is the truth, Mira. What happened in London took me by surprise, too. ”
“How? You knew who I was.”
“I did. And I could have been more clear about my relationship with your father.” His cheek ticked while he stared at her so hard she felt like an ant under a magnifying glass. He abruptly looked away. “But I only meant to have a drink with you.”