a hatchet, Dr. Fellows.”
He didn’t have to see that smirk of hers to feel it, like one more knife shoved deep into his back. “Your character is your business, Mr. Combe. You explained to me that you felt justified in all of your choices. How, then, could I take a hatchet to your good name? Surely that would only be possible if you felt some sense of shame.”
“Because you are determined, one way or another, that you will make me feel this shame. No matter what it takes.”
“That you’re even discussing the possibility of feeling shame feels a great deal like a breakthrough. I didn’t think such a thing was possible.”
He turned then, holding on to his control by the barest of threads. He could feel temper, yes, but something far darker—and much thicker—pounding in his veins. Making his skin feel too tight. Making his self-possession feel threadbare at best.
But then, this was where he had always operated at his fullest capacity. When he was the most challenged, he shone the brightest.
He hoped he blinded her.
“You will have to tell me what you think it will take,” he growled at her. “Do you require me on my knees? Shall I rend my garments at your whim? You will obviously only be satisfied by a very specific performance. Why don’t you tell me my lines?”
Her smile was placid, but her dark eyes gleamed. “If it is not genuine, Mr. Combe, how can it be counted as real?”
“Tell me, Doctor. How would you know the first thing about genuine sentiment for one’s family?”
He took satisfaction in the way she stiffened, as if she hadn’t expected the hit. Her gaze flashed into something darker and he liked that, too.
“I would strongly caution you against making this personal,” she said, and this time her voice was stern. As if she thought he might back down simply because she sounded like she was in charge.
But Matteo wasn’t her client. As she had amply illustrated.
“Why ever not, Dr. Fellows?” he asked, his voice quiet. But he could tell by the way her chin lifted that she wasn’t fooled by his tone. “My board of directors feels that they can excavate my personal life at will. Why shouldn’t I do the same with the blunt instrument they have sent to do their bidding?”
“Am I...a tool in this scenario?”
“What you are is a woman who has no experience whatsoever in the sorts of relationships that led me to the choices I made at my father’s funeral.”
“You don’t think I’m capable of assessing human relationships. Is that what you just said?”
Matteo felt everything in him focus on his target, and thrust his hands into the pockets of his suit trousers before he reached out with them and ruined this little trail of breadcrumbs he was leaving for her.
“Your parents are lofty intellectuals,” he told her, as if she might have missed that. “Academics who have spent their lives locked away in elite institutions, catering to children of the rich and famous.”
“I’m going to stand back and wait for the irony to hit. If I were you, I would duck.”
“They had you when they were quite old, relatively speaking. You have no siblings. As your parents were each only children themselves, you have no extended family of any kind. Which made it doubly challenging, I imagine, that they ignored you so thoroughly as you grew up, if their lack of attendance at what might reasonably be considered your milestones is any guide. What I’m suggesting to you is that when it comes to the kinds of familial bonds and debts that govern the lives of most people, your view is necessarily limited by your experience.”
“I live in the world,” she shot back at him, with heat, and he wondered if she knew that she’d betrayed herself. That he could see he’d landed a hit. “Last I checked, the world was filled with human beings and human relationships. In fact, I made those things the focus of my life’s work. Rest assured that even if I never experienced the delight of a house filled with siblings—or even numerous houses shared with one much younger sibling and a whole lot of staff, like you—I have made a deep and comprehensive study of every possible permutation of human emotion.”
“Furthermore,” he said, the way he would if he was in a business meeting and didn’t wish to acknowledge that someone else had spoken, “you appear to lack any actual personal relationships yourself.”
She flushed at that, which told him a great many things he doubted very much she wanted him to know. Then she stood straighter, and he was sure he could see her vibrating with her own temper.
But unless he missed his guess, with decidedly less focus.
“You have absolutely no right to go digging around in my life,” she hurled at him.
“It seems only fair. Since you’ve taken a backhoe to mine.”
“You do realize, of course, that this is more evidence of the kind of antisocial behavior that got you into this position in the first place?”
“I am a man who does my research. I leave nothing to chance. No one who knows me—particularly my board—could possibly imagine that I would allow someone access to me, my thoughts, my entire life, and not perform my due diligence.”
“You must be very proud of yourself,” Sarina said, after a moment, that flush still betraying her emotions. He wanted to touch the heat of it. Taste it, even. “Does it make you feel more in control of this downward spiral of yours to think you’ve unearthed the truth about me?”
“You have no relationships,” he repeated, as if he was delivering judgment from above. “You’re a driven, ambitious, professional woman. You live and breathe your work, and you usually do both from hotels. Your parents are fully preoccupied with their research. As far as I can tell, you are entirely solitary.”
They were standing, facing off, as if a brawl was about to break out. And Matteo knew that he was his father’s son, because his blood sang at the thought. But he was also heir to the San Giacomos and all the scheming and plotting that had made them one of Italy’s most prominent families—for centuries.
Sarina should have done her homework.
“You must be under the impression that if you taunt me with my own life, this will somehow... Break me? Put me off my game? Unfortunately for you, Mr. Combe, all it does is give me further insight into your character. I wouldn’t be concerned about anyone else performing an assassination when you seem so willing and able to do it yourself.”
She’d wrestled that flush on her cheeks into submission. Now she gazed back at him pityingly, which he assumed was meant to make him feel small. Off balance.
But Matteo could see the way her pulse racketed around in her neck, and he knew better.
That response—the response he’d thought he’d seen in Venice, but hadn’t pushed—was what he’d been banking on. Somehow, he contained his own roar of victory.
“It turns out I have a fascination for psychology,” he said instead. “For example, I cannot help but wonder why a woman who lives such a lonely, empty life imagines that she should set herself up
