mouth.
A barely audible lethal growl charged through the air.
Eva flinched.
She wanted to face Zaccheo. Demand that he crawl back behind the bars that should’ve been holding him. But that glimpse of fear in her father’s eyes stopped her. She tugged the wrap closer around her.
Something wasn’t right here. She was willing to bet the dilapidated ancestral pile beneath her feet that something was seriously, dangerously wrong—
‘Move, Eva.’
The cool command spoken against her ear sent shivers coursing through her.
She moved, only because the quicker she got to the bottom of why he was here, the quicker he would leave. But with each step his dark gaze probed her back, making the walk to her father’s study on the other side of the manor the longest in her life.
Zaccheo shut the door behind him. Her father turned from where he’d been gazing into the unlit fireplace. Again Eva spotted apprehension in his eyes before he masked it.
‘Whatever grievance you think you have the right to air, I suggest you rethink it, son. Even if this were the right time or place—’
‘I am not your son, Pennington.’ Zaccheo’s response held lethal bite, the first sign of his fury breaking through. ‘As for why I’m here, I have five thousand three hundred and twenty-two pieces of documentation that proves you colluded with various other individuals to pin a crime on me that I didn’t commit.’
‘What?’ Eva gasped, then the absurdity of the statement made her shake her head. ‘We don’t believe you.’
Zaccheo’s eyes remained on her father. ‘You may not, but your father does.’
Oscar Pennington laughed, but the sound lacked its usual boom and zest. When sweat broke out over his forehead, fear gripped Eva’s insides.
She steeled her spine. ‘Our lawyers will rip whatever evidence you think you have to shreds, I’m sure. If you’re here to seek some sort of closure, you picked the wrong time to do it. Perhaps we can arrange to meet you at some other time?’
Zaccheo didn’t move. Didn’t blink. Hands once again tucked behind his back, he simply watched her father, his body a coiled predator waiting to strike a fatal blow.
Silence stretched, throbbed with unbearable menace. Eva looked from her father to Sophie and back again, her dread escalating. ‘What’s going on?’ she demanded.
Her father gripped the mantel until his knuckles shone white. ‘You chose the wrong enemy. You’re sorely mistaken if you think I’ll let you blackmail me in my own home.’
Sophie stepped forward. ‘Father, don’t—’
‘Good, you haven’t lost your hubris.’ Zaccheo’s voice slashed across her sister’s. ‘I was counting on that. Here’s what I’m going to do. In ten minutes I’m going to leave here with Eva, right in front of all your guests. You won’t lift a finger to stop me. You’ll tell them exactly who I am. Then you’ll make a formal announcement that I’m the man your daughter will marry two weeks from today and that I have your blessing. I don’t want to trust something so important to phone cameras and social media, although your guests will probably do a pretty good job. I noticed a few members of the press out there, so that part of your task should be easy. If the articles are written to my satisfaction, I’ll be in touch on Monday to lay out how you can begin to make reparations to me. However, if by the time Eva and I wake up tomorrow morning the news of our engagement isn’t in the press, then all bets are off.’
Oscar Pennington’s breathing altered alarmingly. His mouth opened but no words emerged. In the arctic silence that greeted Zaccheo’s deadly words, Eva gaped at him.
‘You’re clearly not in touch with all of your faculties if you think those ridiculous demands are going to be met.’ When silence greeted her response, she turned sharply to her father. ‘Father? Why aren’t you saying something?’ she demanded, although the trepidation beating in her chest spelled its own doom.
‘Because he can’t, Eva. Because he’s about to do exactly as I say.’
She rounded on him, and was once again rocked to the core by Zaccheo’s visually powerful, utterly captivating transformation. So much so, she couldn’t speak for several seconds. ‘You’re out of your mind!’ she finally blurted.
Zaccheo’s gaze didn’t stray from its laser focus on her father. ‘Believe me, cara mia, I haven’t been saner than I am in this moment.’
ZACCHEO WATCHED EVA’S head swivel to her father, confusion warring with anger.
‘Go on, Oscar. She’s waiting for you to tell me to go to hell. Why don’t you?’
Pennington staggered towards his desk, his face ashen and his breathing growing increasingly laboured.
‘Father!’ Eva rushed to his side—ignoring the poisonous look her sister sent her—as he collapsed into his leather armchair.
Zaccheo wanted to rip her away, let her watch her father suffer as his sins came home to roost. Instead he allowed the drama to play out. The outcome would be inevitable and would only go one way.
His way.
He wanted to look into Pennington’s eyes and see the defeat and helplessness the other man had expected to see in his eyes the day Zaccheo had been sentenced.
Both sisters now fussed over their father and a swell of satisfaction rose at the fear in their eyes. Eva glanced his way and he experienced a different punch altogether. One he’d thought himself immune to, but had realised otherwise the moment he’d stepped off his helicopter and singled her out in the crowd.
That unsettling feeling, as if he were suffering from vertigo despite standing on terra firma, had intrigued and annoyed him in equal measures from the very first time he’d seen her, her voice silkily hypnotic as she crooned into a mic on a golden-lit stage, her fingers caressing the black microphone stand as if she were touching a lover.
Even knowing exactly who she was, what she represented, he hadn’t been able to walk away. In the weeks after their first meeting, he’d fooled himself into believing she was different, that she wasn’t tainted with the same greed to further her pedigree by whatever means necessary; that she wasn’t willing to do whatever it took to secure her family’s standing, even while secretly scorning his upbringing.
Her very public denouncement of any association between them on the day of his sentencing had been the final blow. Not that Zaccheo hadn’t had the scales viciously ripped from his eyes by then.
No, by that fateful day fourteen months ago, he’d known just how thoroughly he’d been suckered.
‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ she muttered fiercely, her moss-green eyes firing lasers at him.
Zaccheo forced himself not to smile. The time for gloating would come later. ‘Exacting
