never had and they never would.
Only one thing about Rachel Vaile was of any concern to him.
The price she was intending to exact.
Sitting back calmly in his chair, he merely allowed the sweep of his lashes to lower minutely over his eyes.
‘And your price is—?’
There was contempt in his voice. He didn’t even bother to hide it.
Did something move in her face? He couldn’t tell. But she answered in the same voice as she had first spoken. ‘I didn’t say “price”. I said “conditions”.’
That spurt of rage iced through him again. She had the insolence to come here, forcing his hand like this—
Because she was forcing it, all right! For three years—three years—he had tried by every means he could to get back what was his—his! His lawyers had been useless. Imbeciles! A gift, they had told him, was a gift. It conferred legal title on the recipient. And his father had, after all, given his mistress many gifts. Valuable ones. Expensive ones. Including jewellery…
Vito had cut off their prating with an oath.
‘Dio mio, do you seriously mean to compare the trashy baubles he gave his whore with the piece she stole from him?’
His lawyers had looked even more spineless and useless.
‘It would be difficult to assert that she did so in a court of law, Signor Farneste,’ one of them had ventured uneasily.
Vito had rounded on him mercilessly. ‘Cretino! Of course she stole it! My father was no fool! He didn’t even give her the villa! Why the hell would he have given her something worth even more?’
‘Perhaps as a token of…ah…appreciation…er…instead of the…ah…villa?’
Vito had stilled. A closed, deadly look had come over his face. In a soft, lethal voice that had made the lawyer step back automatically, he had said. ‘You think so, do you? Tell me, what man gives his mistress his wife’s wedding present? What man gives his whore the Farneste emeralds?’
The Farneste emeralds.
Rachel could still see them now. It had been nine months ago. Her mother had insisted on Rachel accompanying her to the bank. Demanded she go into a little room, set aside, where a bank official had brought a sealed parcel to them and placed it on a table, together with a form. They had been left alone, and her mother had pulled off the restraining string around the boxlike parcel, unwrapping the brown paper to reveal a jewel box. Not a very grand one, just one that opened up, revealing a shallow upper layer and a deeper one beneath. Her mother had only glanced at the top layer, lifting it up out of the way to expose the lower one.
And Rachel had gasped. She hadn’t been able to help it.
A river of green fire had flashed in the light. Her mother had lifted it out and sat back. A look had settled on her face. An expression of extreme satisfaction. She’d let the jewels flow through her hands and given a deep, contented sigh.
‘It’s incredible!’ Rachel breathed.
Her mother smiled.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘And it’s mine.’
There was a strange note in her voice. Not just pleasure at owning such a treasure. More than that. And Rachel recognised what it was.
Triumph.
A sense of foreboding started to sound in her.
‘The Farneste emeralds,’ said her mother. ‘And they’re mine.’
Then a strange, haunted expression came into her eyes.
She looked at Rachel.
‘They’ll be yours. Your inheritance.’
Vito leant back in his chair behind the vast desk that befitted the chairman and chief executive of Farneste Industriale. The company was only three generations old, but the Farneste family went back a lot further than that. The Farnestes had been merchant princes at the time of the Renaissance, and though the family’s fortunes had fluctuated wildly over the intervening centuries, now, thanks to Enrico’s shrewd, hard and brilliant brain—a throwback to his Quattrocento ancestor—the Farneste fortune was riding high again. Vito’s task was merely to steer Farneste Industriale into the expanding global economy of the twenty-first century.
But though the Farnestes looked forward, Vito had not forgotten the past. The ancient past—which had brought the Farneste emeralds into existence in the eighteenth century—and the recent past—which had scarred his youth.
Thanks to Arlene Graham’s poisonous presence in his father’s life.
A poison he had not yet quite drawn. The very last drop of that vicious venom had yet to be extracted.
And Arlene’s daughter was here, offering him the chance to draw it.
‘Conditions?’ he said expressionlessly. ‘By this you mean exemption from prosecution for theft.’
Vito’s voice was flat. Unarguable.
Rachel shifted her weight slightly. The tension in her spine was making her back ache.
But when she replied her voice was as flat as his.
‘Had there been justification for prosecution you would have gone ahead years ago,’ she replied. ‘The conditions I require to be met are quite different.’
She watched Vito’s face for his reaction. There was none. Not even anger at being reminded of how completely impotent he was to use the force of the law to return what he considered his. He would have done so if he could. She knew that. Without the slightest hesitation Vito Farneste would have used the full force of the law to regain his possessions.
After all—her eyes shadowed—he had done it once already.
What Vito Farneste wanted, Vito Farneste got.
He made sure of it.
Whatever it was and whoever it was.
For whatever reason.
She stared at him. Stared at the man who sat there, who had nearly—so very, very nearly—destroyed her.
I was young. I was stupid. I was gullible.
She was none of those things now.
And Vito Farneste meant nothing to her. Just as she meant nothing to him. Had always meant nothing to him.
Now, only one person meant anything to her. It had come very late, but it had come. And it was for that reason she was here, standing in front of Vito Farneste, offering him the one thing he wanted from her—the only thing of any value to him.
But you were never of value to him—never! Not once, at any time! You were nothing more than a fool, to be used.
His
