close exposure to him?
Then he spoke again, sending her every hair standing on end. “It’s clear contemplation has nothing to do with your decision. I wouldn’t even call such a knee-jerk reaction one.”
He again sounded like when he’d been addressing their assembly, making her realize how deliberate and calculated he had been in comparison to how he’d been talking to her now. He had been out to subdue and mesmerize everyone. He was trying to make her bow to his will now.
Well, he should have realized by now that his tried and true methods only backfired with her.
Bent on walking away this time, she stood as tall as she could. “Call it what you like. I quit, Dr. Balducci. I’m sure my loss will be nothing more than a negligible annoyance, since BIL is chock-full of those who will ecstatically do your bidding.”
“You can’t quit, Dr. Accardi.”
“Because the lump sum you paid included my price? Just a sec...” She took the bag off her shoulder, rummaged for her wallet, pulled the money she found and stuck the bills out to him.
“What’s that supposed to be?”
Extending her hand as close as she dared get to him, she met his glowering with her own. “I don’t know what the going rate per head was, but taking into account the premises and everything else, I’m sure I didn’t cost you more than that.”
His eyes fell to the notes before he raised them to her, full of mockery. “I assure you, you cost me much more than that.”
She refused to lower her hand. “You let me know exactly what I cost you, and I’ll pay for my freedom in installments. Consider this the first one.”
As he realized she wasn’t joking, his gaze clashed with hers as if to make her cower before him. She was sure such a glare had brought many adversaries to their knees. Tough, it was going to let him down this time. Even if she felt he’d set her on fire if she held his stare any longer.
A second before she averted her own eyes, he suddenly looked down at the money. He plucked three hundred-dollar bills from the bunch before he raised his eyes again and almost knocked her flat on her back with the mischief filling them.
“Now you really can’t quit.”
She gaped at his wicked grin. “What?”
“You just paid me for shares in your facility. Now you have to stay and run the place with me. Or for me.”
Before another thought could fire in her stalled brain, he turned and strode away.
Out of nowhere, a sleek black limo slithered soundlessly up to him.
Before he got in, he turned to her with a mock salute and said, “See you tomorrow, partner.”
Antonio caught himself grinning again and again all the way back to his mansion in Holmby Hills.
Shaking his head for the umpteenth time since he’d left Liliana Accardi gaping at him as if he’d grown a spiked tail and leather wings and taken flight, he again wondered what the hell had happened in that parking lot. Actually, what the hell had happened since she’d blasted him in that meeting room.
This wasn’t what he’d envisioned at all. Not after everything had gone according to plan. At first.
He’d made the bid on the lab, knowing he’d find no resistance. He’d finalized everything in record time before moving to the next phase—conquering his new subordinates. He’d done that, too, with more acceptance than his best projections, thanks to his long-perfected methods of making people do his bidding.
He’d started practicing his influence from childhood when he’d been in the clutches of The Organization, which had taken him and hundreds of children to turn them into lethal mercenaries. Even among his brotherhood, as unyielding as they were, he’d enjoyed a unique position of power. While Phantom—Numair now—had been the leader everyone deferred to, it had been Antonio everyone trusted to have the most levelheaded opinion. When he’d become their medical expert, they’d trusted him with their very lives.
He’d taken that skill into the outside world after they’d escaped The Organization. Normal people had been no match for the sway he’d honed with some of the world’s most shrewd and lethal people. He’d plowed through the worlds of medicine and business like a laser, being described by rivals and allies alike as irresistible and unstoppable. Not that he reached his goals through aggression or intimidation. He relied on persuasion and manipulation, so no one had a reason to fight him and every reason to succumb to him.
Among his brothers, he was the one who had an equally close and friction-free relationship with all. Yet he’d allowed not even them beyond the serene facade he’d refined.
They believed it was Wildcard—or Ivan Konstantinov as he now called himself—who knew Antonio fully, as he’d been closest to him since childhood. But Antonio hadn’t even let Ivan in on everything he’d been through or everything he was. He hadn’t told Ivan anything he was doing or planning now.
While the others had searched for their families, sought reunion with them and/or revenge on those who’d stolen them away, Ivan, who’d come to The Organization old enough to know his family, had elected not to contact his family once he’d been out. Antonio had elected not to bother with either finding his origins or seeking revenge. Or so he’d told his brothers. In reality, he’d found out everything about his family.
What he’d learned had made him think The Organization had done him a favor by abducting him. His Italian aristocracy family put its members through hell for appearances’ sake, which they enforced at any expense, even abandoning or destroying any of them who threatened their traditions and standing.
As they had him.
His mother’s pregnancy when she was seventeen had threatened their image. Her inappropriate lover had been dealt with, while she’d been taken away to avoid the scandal. The same day she’d given birth to him, he’d been given to an orphanage, from which he’d been culled by The Organization less than four years later. Up until that day he’d lived hoping his “real family” would find him.
It turned out he’d been better off with The Organization than in the Accardis’ sterile, cold-blooded environment where relationships were warped and members turned into shells of human beings. At least The Organization had let him pursue his true inclinations, what had made him who he was. It had been there he’d forged stronger-than-blood ties with his brothers, nothing like the pathological ones his family shared.
He’d at first decided to ignore the existence of the family that had wronged him so irretrievably. But after three of his brothers had found their roots and reunited with their own families, he’d begun to feel restless until he’d realized that he was being eaten alive with the need to even the score.
And to do that, he had to destroy the Accardis. Starting with his mother.
Agreeing to or at least accepting her family’s crime, she hadn’t attempted to search for him, had moved on instead and gotten married three times. She’d had legitimate offspring with each of her husbands as well as adopted children. The oldest was a man five years younger than him, the youngest a girl of twelve,
