Prologue #2
‘I don’t care what you acquire. You’ll be wasting your time.’
Time to plunge the knife in and twist, even though there was a prickle of conscience reminding him of the pain of a broken relationship you believed would last forever. How karma might punish him for unwarranted cruelty.
He ignored it.
‘Word on the street says your EA might be looking for a new job. Or a new husband. Or both. She was wasted on you. The woman needs a real challenge.’
Rocco’s only interest in Zanetti’s wife, Simone Taylor, was professional.
He despised people who cheated …like Carla.
The one woman he’d believed he’d loved. Rocco had been a stupid twenty-three-year-old.
She’d been a little older, painfully beautiful and seemingly vulnerable, invoking a misplaced need to care for her.
Yet she’d played him like a fool. Claiming she’d wanted a future.
His children. Reeling him in. He’d only discovered she was married when he’d proposed and she’d giggled in his face like he’d made some kind of joke.
He’d been nothing but a toy to play with for her.
Rocco slammed the door of his memory on a past he had no wish to revisit. He’d learned a painful lesson, though as his father said at the time, ‘Heartbreak is nothing. At least you didn’t bring me home a bastard.’
Now Rocco was never invested where women were concerned.
He loved them. Perfumed, soft, seductive.
And women loved him. The interactions delicious and fleeting, like a cup of gelato on a baking summer’s day.
That was the way he liked it. He had a whole life ahead of him and still myriad flavours to sample, if he ever settled down at all.
Marriage suggested you trusted someone enough for permanence.
Fidarsi è bene, ma non fidarsi è meglio.
Trusting is good, not trusting is better.
He’d learned from bitter experience to only trust his family.
Zanetti’s face twisted, his lips pulled back, and he lunged at Rocco and grabbed him by the shirt. Rocco wasn’t concerned. The man was drunk, and he could take Leo Zanetti. He enjoyed sparring at the gym and whilst it had been a while, Rocco knew how to fight.
He always fought to win.
‘Leave her alone. If I ever hear you’ve been bothering Simone—’
‘Then what? You’ll try and destroy me? You’ve been trying in your own way for as long as you’ve been in business, and yet I’m still here.
It’s like you want everything I have,’ Rocco taunted.
‘And why? I’ll tell you. You’re a pretender with no substance.
All envy, when the truth is, I’ve done nothing to you. ’
Leo Zanetti was a brash nobody from the streets who’d made good through luck and his looks.
Whilst Rocco might have been able to admire a man who’d come from nothing and established a style and design company that was now worth billions, from the moment Zanetti had burst onto the scene, his loathing for the Silvestri family had been renowned.
Rocco loathed him right back. The Silvestri family had a history here.
Zanetti had nothing but his looks and his ego.
He was jealous of the Silvestris because they had what he didn’t: family, a legacy.
Rocco knew it to the marrow of his bones, which made the man easy to taunt.
‘Done nothing?’ Leo’s voice cracked. He gritted his teeth as if steeling himself. ‘Ask our father what was done to me. Ask him about his designs. Remind him that he’s a thief who stole them.’
It was like being hit by lightning, the shock of the words. They knocked Rocco off balance. His chest tightened.
‘Our father?’
Leo released Rocco’s shirt and pushed him away. It was as if Rocco had lost some anchor to reality and entered an alternative universe. He stumbled back.
‘Vito Silvestri. Our father. Who had an affair with your mother whilst he was still living with mine.’
Never. Leo Zanetti was winding him up, and this was no joke. The slander against his family. Against his mother. Now it was Rocco’s turn to grab Leo by the shirt, twisting the neck tight.
‘Liar.’
Leo laughed, a mirthless, mocking sound. ‘They were in business together. He stole my mother’s furniture designs and left us destitute. Ask him. Take my DNA, I don’t care. It’ll prove I’m telling the truth, brother.’
He wrenched from Rocco’s grasp, a few buttons on his shirt tearing off, scattering on the floor. The collar ruined. Rocco couldn’t breathe, the space closing in on him. The raucous sound. The air in the place now cloying with the scent of stale alcohol and too many people crowded into one place.
Leo threw down some money then turned and pushed his way through the crowd, stalking into the night. Rocco should follow, end this, but he was rooted to the spot. Staring at the empty glass of grappa left behind.
None of this was true. Leo Zanetti was telling lies, but that glass on the counter of the bar taunted him.
‘Take my DNA, I don’t care …’
It was as if the chains that had bound Rocco released and crashed to the floor. He reached into his coat pocket and grabbed a handkerchief. Carefully covering the glass, he picked it up, then left the bar. He’d prove Leo Zanetti wrong, then he’d destroy the man.
Yet all the while a voice whispered in his head.
What if Zanetti’s right …