His little finger throbbed. The missing finger. They called it phantom pain. Pain even though it wasn’t there any more. A cruel irony.
He found most women boringly predictable, but Lara Templeton had never been predictable. Not even now, when she was penniless and homeless. A woman that resourceful and beautiful? He had no doubt that she could slip out of his grasp and then he would encounter her at some future event, with another man old enough to be her father.
So why had he given her the opportunity to run if she so wanted? Because a perverse part of him wanted to prove to himself how mercenary she was. She wouldn’t get a better deal than the one he was offering: a marriage of convenience for a year, maximum. Minimum six months. And when they divorced she would be set for life.
He’d laid it out for her and she’d taken the bait. It was perverse to be feeling...disappointed. Especially when he had lived the last two years in some kind of limbo. Unable to move on. To settle.
He’d worked himself to a lather, tripling his fortune. Earning respect. But not the respect he craved. The respect of polite society. The respect of the upper echelons of Europe, who still saw him as little more than a Sicilian hustler with a dubious background. Especially after the kidnapping, which remained a mystery to this day.
His best friend, an ex–French Foreign Legionnaire who worked in security, and who had courageously rescued Ciro with a highly skilled team of mercenaries, had told Ciro that they might never find out who had orchestrated it. But one day Ciro would find out, and whoever was responsible would pay dearly.
At that moment he saw his car pull up in front of the house again. There was a bright blonde head in the back. Ciro’s blood grew hot. Lara Templeton would be his. Finally. And when he’d had his fill of her, and had achieved what he wanted, he would walk out and leave her behind—exactly as she’d done to him in his weakest moment.
* * *
Within hours Lara was sitting on Ciro’s private jet, being flown across Europe to Rome. She’d just declined a glass of champagne and now Ciro asked from across the aisle, ‘Don’t you feel like celebrating, darling?’
She looked at him suspiciously. He was taking a sip of his own champagne and he tipped the glass towards her in a salute. He’d changed into dark grey trousers and a black polo shirt. He looked vital and breathtakingly handsome. From this angle Lara couldn’t see the scar on the right-hand side of his face—he looked perfect. But she knew that even the scar didn’t mar that perfection; it only made him more compelling.
‘Surprisingly enough, not really.’
She’d wanted to sound sharp but she just sounded weary. It had been a long day. She couldn’t believe the funeral had been that morning; it felt like a month ago. She’d changed out of her funeral clothes into a pair of long culottes and a silk shirt which now felt ridiculously flimsy.
Ciro responded. ‘Your marriage to Winterborne might have left you destitute, but fortunately you still have some currency for me. You must have displeased him very much.’
Lara had a sudden flashback to the suffocating weight of the drunken Henry Winterborne on top of her and the sheer panic that had galvanised her into heaving him off.
She swallowed down the nausea and avoided Ciro’s eye. ‘Something like that. Maybe I will have that champagne after all...’ she said, suddenly craving anything that might soothe the ragged edges of her memory.
Ciro must have made a gesture, because the pristine-looking flight attendant was back immediately with a glass of sparkling wine for Lara. She took a sip, letting it fizz down her throat. She took another sip, and instantly felt slightly less ragged.
‘Here’s to us, Lara.’
Reluctantly she looked at Ciro again. He was facing her fully now, and she could see the scar. And his missing finger. And the mocking glint in his eye. He thought he was unnerving her with his scars, and he was—but not because she found them repulsive.
He was holding out his glass towards her. Lara reached out, tipping her glass against his, causing a melodic chiming sound which was incongruously happy amidst the tension.
It was a cruelly ironic echo of another time and place. A tiny bustling restaurant in Florence where they’d toasted their engagement. Lara could recall the incredible sense of love she’d felt, and the feeling of security. For the first time in her life since her parents and her brother had died she’d felt some measure of peace again.
A sense of coming home.
The sparkle of the beautiful ring Ciro had presented her with had kept catching her eye. She’d left that ring in his hospital room when she’d walked out two years ago.
As if privy to her thoughts, Ciro reached for something in his pocket and pulled out a small velvet box. Lara’s heart thudded to a stop and her hand gripped the glass of wine too tight.
Ciro shrugged. ‘Seems an awful waste to buy a new ring when we can use the old one.’
A million questions collided in Lara’s head at once, chief of which was, How did he still have the ring? She would have thought he’d thrown it away in disgust after she’d walked out.
He started to open the box, and Lara wanted to tell him to stop, but the words stuck in her throat. And there it was—revealed. The most beautiful ring in the world. A pear-shaped sapphire with two diamonds on either side in a gold setting. Classic, yet unusual.
Lara looked at Ciro. ‘I don’t want this ring.’ She sounded too shrill.
Ciro looked at her. ‘I suppose you hate the idea of recycling? Perhaps it’s too small?’
‘No, it’s not that... It’s...’ She trailed off ineffectually.
It’s perfect.
Lara had a flashback to Ciro telling her that the sapphire had reminded him of the colour her eyes went when he kissed her... That was why she didn’t want it. It brought back too many bittersweet memories that she’d imbued with a romanticism that hadn’t been there.
She managed to get out, ‘Is this absolutely necessary?’
Oblivious to Lara’s turmoil, Ciro plucked the ring out of the box and took her left hand in his, long fingers wrapping around hers as he slid the ring onto her finger, where it sat as snugly as if it had never been taken off.
‘Absolutely. I’ve already issued a press release with the news of our re-engagement and upcoming marriage.’
There was a sharp cracking sound and Lara only realised what had happened when she felt the sting in her finger. She looked down stupidly to see blood dripping onto the cream leather seat, just as Ciro issued a curt order and the flight attendant took the broken glass carefully out of Lara’s grip.
She was up on her feet and being propelled to the back of the plane and into a bathroom before she’d even registered that she’d broken her champagne glass. Ciro was crowding into the small space behind her, turning on the cold tap and holding her hand underneath.
The pain of the water hitting the place where she’d sliced herself on the glass finally made her break out of her shocked stasis. She hissed through her teeth.
