fixed her with a wolfish grin and swallowed the last of his banana. ‘It will be my pleasure to wake you up.’
* * *
Gabriele had known exactly what to say to get Elena out running with him. From everything she’d said about her childhood, the competition between her and her brothers had been fierce. Tell Elena she couldn’t do something on account of being a woman and she would work twice as hard to prove she could.
It was a quality he admired.
He’d woken her at five, knowing to leave it much longer would mean losing the tranquillity of the early morning sunrise. While he loved Manhattan in the early hours, no city on earth could match Florence for beauty.
Apart from a tiny yelp when she’d seen the time, she’d thrown a pair of running shorts and a plain white T-shirt on without speaking. They’d set out at a gentle pace, jogging down Via degli Strozzi and on to Via della Vigna Nuova. Now, as they crossed Ponte alla Carraia, one of the bridges over the Arno River, she finally seemed to be waking up, continually scanning the skies to watch the sun make its first peeks.
‘The best view to watch the sunrise is Piazzale Michelangelo,’ he said.
‘Can we go there now?’
‘There isn’t time—we’d need to leave at least an hour earlier than we did today.’
She made a noise under her breath that sounded remarkably like a curse.
‘Early mornings not your thing?’
‘Not that early.’ Suddenly she turned to look at him, still keeping her stride. ‘Have you been running every morning since we arrived here?’
‘I told you, I run every day.’
‘So you go for a run, get home and have a shower, all before I’m up?’
‘Yes.’
‘Are you a masochist?’
He laughed. ‘The prison day starts early—I spent two years waking at four a.m. for the four-thirty cell-check. It became a habit.’
‘That’s barbaric,’ she said with a shudder.
‘You get used to it. Lights out was at ten-thirty so there was plenty of time to sleep.’
Elena fell silent, the only sound her breathing as she continued at the pace he’d set.
‘How did you cope?’ she finally asked.
‘Prison?’
She nodded.
‘I was fortunate that my lawyers were able to negotiate getting me into a minimum security prison so it could have been a lot worse. I won’t lie; when I first walked through the doors I was sick with fear of the unknown but you adapt and it becomes...normal. But you know what kept me going?’
She didn’t answer. Probably she knew what he was about to say.
‘It was the thought of getting my revenge on your father. That’s what got me through each day.
‘But let’s not spoil our time together on a subject we’ll never agree on,’ he continued, suddenly feeling like a heel for spoiling the peace that had settled between them. ‘How are you finding the pace? Do you want to go slower? Faster? As we are?’
In reply, she accelerated, running ahead, her ponytail swishing behind her, her bottom swaying beautifully.
He laughed and increased his own pace to catch her. ‘One day we’ll have to have a proper race.’
‘You’ll beat me,’ she said with certainty.
‘That’s not like you to be so defeatist.’
‘It’s called realism. I’m as fit as you are but you’re more powerful. The only way I could beat you is if you were ill, which would make competing pointless.’ She threw him a sly look. ‘I’m certain I could beat you in a straight fight though.’
‘I thought you were being realistic.’
‘Wrestling and boxing were staples of our television viewing when I was a child. I copied their moves and used them on my brothers. They haven’t beaten me in a one-on-one fight since I was eight.’
‘You don’t think they were going easy on you?’
‘Not since the first time I beat them.’ She flashed an evil grin. ‘I wasn’t averse to using pinches and scratches in sensitive places when it suited me. In that respect I had an advantage—my father would have killed them if they’d used the same tactics back at me.’
He grinned at the image. ‘Didn’t your father mind you fighting?’
‘He thought it was funny to see his macho boys beaten by a girl. It’s how I gained his respect.’
‘You had to act like a boy to get it?’
By now they were crossing the Ponte Santa Trinita, back across to their side of the river.
‘It was all of them,’ she surprised him by saying. ‘Not just my father. My earliest memories are of my brothers treating me like a doll. It infuriated me. My father thought it was funny to see his little girl pounding her fist into his youngest son’s face. But it worked to his advantage.’
‘How?’
‘It gave him a legitimate reason to home educate me—he couldn’t send me to an all-girls private school if I was going to beat everyone up. My brothers went to school and had healthy social lives while I was kept locked away.
‘Do you think I’m exaggerating?’ she asked into his silence.
‘No. I’d already guessed as much.’
‘It was the excuse he needed. He wouldn’t have let me go to school however I behaved. I was still a female and even though I had proven myself physically, I needed protection from the big wide world.’
‘He wasn’t disappointed his princess turned into such a tomboy?’
‘Not in the slightest. There was no chance of me catching any boy’s eye if I was dressed in filthy ripped jeans and exchanging punches with them every five minutes.’
Gabriele laughed but he didn’t find it in the slightest bit funny.
‘If he kept you hidden away so much, why did he let you join the company?’
‘To keep me close and under his wing. My brothers and I always knew we would join the family company in one capacity or another and my father always knew he couldn’t wrap me up in cotton wool once I’d come of age.’ She stopped running and held a hand to her waist, kneading at a stitch with a pained face. ‘He does love me, you know.’
‘I know.’
‘And he’s changed a lot in his attitude towards me since I started working for him.’
