‘And if I was really about to die, I would be dead already. But, no, you put something in my drink, dealt with my bodyguards, somehow managed to transport me to...’ he took a brief glance around the room which looked like a standard five-star hotel room ‘...wherever this is. Cuffed me to the bed. Waited until I woke up, then started talking to me instead of pulling that trigger.’ He allowed his voice to deepen and become lazier, more sensual. ‘And, darling, considering that little look you gave me just now, it’s not killing that you want to do to me. It’s something else entirely.’ He let his smile become hot, the smile that had charmed women the world over and had never failed him yet. ‘In which case, be my guest. You’ve already got me all tied up. I’m completely at your mercy.’
* * *
Stella Montefiore had never thought killing Dante Cardinali would be easy. He was rich, important and more or less constantly surrounded by people, which made getting an opportunity to take him down very, very difficult.
But since she’d taken on the mission she’d spent at least six months planning how to get access to him and, now she had, her family was counting on her to go through with it. Especially her father.
It was a just revenge for his son’s death and a chance to reclaim the lost honour of the Montefiores. It was also her chance at redemption for her brother’s death, a death for which her parents still hadn’t forgiven her, and she did not want to make any mistakes. There was no room for error.
In fact, everything had gone completely to plan, and here he was, at her mercy, just as he’d said.
So why couldn’t she pull that trigger?
He was lying on the bed in the hotel room she’d managed to get him into with the help of the hotel staff, having told them he was drunk, and he was cuffed hand and foot. He shouldn’t be dangerous in the slightest.
And yet...
There was something about the way he took up space on the bed, all long and lean and muscular, the fabric of his expensive black trousers and plain white shirt pulling across his powerful chest and thighs. Not to mention the lazy way he looked at her from underneath his long, thick, black lashes, the glints of gold in his dark eyes like coins on the bottom of a lake-bed. Completely unfazed. As if he dealt with guns in his face every day and it didn’t bother him in the slightest.
And it didn’t help that he was so ridiculously beautiful in an intensely masculine way. All aristocratic cheekbones, a hard jawline, straight nose and the most perfectly carved mouth she’d ever seen. A fallen angel’s face with a warrior’s body, and the kind of fierce sexual magnetism that drew people to him, whatever their gender.
She hadn’t anticipated that, though she should have, given she’d put a lot of work into researching him.
In fact, there was quite a lot about Dante Cardinali that she hadn’t anticipated, including her own response to him.
Her heartbeat was strangely fast, though that was probably due to the sheer adrenaline of the moment and the unexpected success of her mission, nothing at all to do with the seductive glint in Cardinali’s dark eyes.
Not that she should be thinking about how seductive he was when she was busy trying to work up the courage to pull that trigger.
‘In which case,’ she said, trying to maintain her cool, ‘Perhaps you should be begging for your life instead of making casual comments about me sleeping with you. Which, I may add, I would rather die than do.’
He laughed, a rich sound that rolled over her like velvet, all warm and soft with just a hint of roughness. ‘Oh, I’m sure you wouldn’t.’ That fascinating hint of gold gleamed from underneath his lashes. ‘In fact, give me five minutes and you’ll be the one who’s begging. And it won’t be for your life... Stella Montefiore.’
Shock trickled like ice water down her back, smothering the heat his sexy laugh somehow had built inside her, and distracting her totally from his outrageous statement.
He knew her name.
Kill him. Kill him now.
Her palm was sweaty, the metal of the gun cool against her skin. She’d practised this, shooting at tin cans in the makeshift gun range her father had set up in the barren hills behind the rundown house they’d had to move into after her brother had been arrested, working on her aim in between shifts as a waitress at a local restaurant—the only employment she could get, as no one wanted to hire a Montefiore. Not when they were such a political liability.
But shooting a can was very different from shooting an actual man. A man who would have his life snuffed out. By her.
She swallowed, her mouth dry.
Don’t think of him as a person. This is revenge. For Matteo. For yourself.
Yes, all she needed to do was pull that trigger. A muscle twitch, really, nothing more. And then all of this would be over—her father’s quest for blood done, Matteo’s death avenged and her role in it redeemed.
You asked for this, remember?
Her father had wanted to hire someone and she’d told him, no, that it was better for one of the family to undertake the mission, to minimise discovery, and that the person who did it should be her. He’d told her she was too weak for the job, too soft-hearted, but she’d insisted she wasn’t. That she could do it.
And she could. It should be easy.
But still her finger didn’t move.
‘You’re wrong,’ she said, not quite sure why she was arguing with him when a single movement would solve all her problems. ‘That’s not my name.’
‘Is it not?’ His eyes glinted, the curve of his beautiful mouth almost hypnotising in its perfection. ‘My mistake.’ His voice was as deep and rich as his laugh and the sound of it did things to her that she didn’t want.
The same things it had done to her all evening from the moment she’d seen him in the flesh and not as an image in a photo or an online video. She’d spent months studying him, reading up on his history, his lifestyle, his business practices and personality. Basically everything she could find on him, building up a picture of a dissolute yet charming playboy who seemed to spend more time in his string of clubs than he did in the offices of Cardinal Developments, the huge multi-national that he owned with his brother Enzo. He ruled the gossip columns and the beds of beautiful women everywhere, apparently.
‘The world won’t miss him,’ her father, Santo Montefiore, had said viciously. ‘He’s selfish, just like Luca was. Another useless piece of Cardinali trash.’
Yet when she’d stepped into that club in Monte Carlo, sick with nerves—unable to adopt the veneer of icy sophistication she’d perfected to get past the VIP bouncer—and Cardinali had appeared out of nowhere telling the bouncer that it was fine and she could come in, it wasn’t trash she’d been thinking of. Not when he’d smiled at her. Because it hadn’t been a practised seducer’s smile. It had been kind—reassuring, almost—and inexplicably comforting. In fact, he’d been kind all evening. He’d taken her under his wing, sitting her down in a quiet end of the club and getting her a drink. Then he’d sat opposite and talked easily to her about everything and absolutely nothing at all.
She’d
