to a lower class family, he’d sailed to New York to make his fortune. The fact he’d come from nothing, was a self-made man, had gained her deepest respect from the start. Pia had first-hand experience of being hungry, feeling worthless, powerless, and she never wanted to revisit that hellhole ever again. The amount of determination it would have taken Carvalho to rise from the ashes with no help had fascinated and charmed her in equal measure.
‘If there was something amiss about him I would know.’ Yet suddenly she wasn’t so sure. Her instincts screamed that this man was far more than he’d initially appeared.
‘People don’t tend to put “serial killer” and “rapist” on their résumé, Pia.’
Valid point.
She tapped at the pounding spot between her brows, feeling as if she’d been given a complex puzzle with half the pieces left out.
‘I’m missing something vital. I must be. First he breaks in, then he has a snoop at the files on my desk. Eros longer than most—I’d know that red file anywhere—and then...’ She ran her tongue over her top front teeth. ‘Now, isn’t that a coincidence? That Eros International should catch his eye.’
The company had taken a suspiciously abrupt beating on the stockmarket of late. Though in all honesty Eros’s share decline had been the least of her concerns. Ugly rumours were abounding, hitting her where it hurt. Her reputation.
Could he be the thorn in her side? The man who’d been making discreet enquiries about Zeus, about the club, about her businesses—the very man who’d been spreading filth and lies?
Maybe. After all, in her world anything was possible. But why?
Stuff it. She had no intention of waiting around while some property magnate ruined her life. If he was to blame.
‘Turn off the screens. I’m going in there.’
She wanted answers and there was only one way to get them. She just hoped she was wrong and there was some perfectly good explanation for his breaking and entering. Yeah, right. Call her foolish, but she didn’t want Nicandro Carvalho to be at the centre of her current storm.
‘What?’
‘You heard me.’
While Jovan dismissed his men with a quiet word her gaze sought out Nicandro Carvalho once again. Obscenely grateful that her dinner stayed put and she remained apathetic and unflappable. As if the sight of a six-foot-plus Brazilian hunk with a bloodied lip was an everyday occurrence. She was good at that. Projecting absolute calm composure while her stomach revolted at the sight of her Lobisomem in a snare.
She rubbed her own upper arms, sore with the faint echoes of pain. She wanted to scream and rail at Jovan for trussing him so tightly. Perhaps she’d tie him up until control was lost, handed to another. See how he liked it.
‘Did you have to cut off his blood supply?’ she asked, cringeing inwardly at her snippy tone. Not for Jovan’s sake. He was more like the bothersome older brother she’d never had, so she didn’t bother to pull her punches with him. But the last thing she needed was to come over unhinged to her staff. ‘Women are emotional liabilities,’ her father would say. Not her. Not since he’d made her into a living, breathing machine.
‘Who cares if I did?’ Jovan asked.
Pia cared—for some bizarre reason. But she wasn’t about to tell him that. Just as she wasn’t about to admit that at times she’d secretly watched Nicandro Carvalho over the past year. There was something darkly arresting about him. One look at his brooding beauty, at that dark skin that looked as if exotic blood ran through his veins, and she felt giddy with it all.
Pia was tall for a woman, and yet his towering height, wide shoulders and the thick biceps bulging from where his arms strained made her feel like a porcelain doll. Though he was snared, anyone could see his bearing was straight, confident, almost regal—like titan warriors and powerful gods. Not an image she would expect from a boy born in the Rio slums. The fact that he took pride in that fact, felt no shame for his poor origins and preferred to acknowledge the truth and stand tall with dignity, had lent him a kind of reverence in her eyes. She’d never been able to shake the stigma of it all.
Hung loosely about his face, his hair was the deepest shade of brown. She suspected it would curl when wet, drying into untamed flicks that twisted to his shoulders and fell wantonly about his face. Sharp brooding eyes almost black in their depths were framed lavishly with thick dark lashes: luscious, evocative and dominating.
And there was that word again—regal—rolling through her mind as she frantically tried to piece together the how and why he had broken into her suite and was now trussed to a chair. None of it made sense.
Jovan’s hard voice ripped her attention from the seriously ripped Carvalho and she spun to see him leaning his six-foot-five frame against a bank of security screens.
‘He did this to himself, Pia. Let me deal with him—please?’ His chiselled features twisted, playing out a complex series of emotional shifts.
‘No. He wants something.’ Right then she flashed back to their brief conversation. ‘And I suspect it is something only Zeus can give—otherwise why lie about having a meeting prearranged? So before he destroys my club with his ugly rumours, or costs me another twenty-five million on the stockmarket, I want to know why.’
Jovan grumbled in the way Pia had learned to ignore. ‘So what do you intend to do with him?’
Stress and worry lined his brow, reminding her of the day they’d met. When he’d swept her into his arms as she’d lain knocking on death’s door outside her father’s palatial entryway. Sixteen years old and before then she hadn’t even known her father existed. Without Jovan, Pia doubted she would have survived in her father’s frigid Siberian world.
‘I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I have no idea.’
Commodities? A cinch. Juggling multi-million-dollar investments every day? A breeze. Dealing with people? Excruciating torture.
‘I’ll just have to play it by ear. Question him. Find out what he wants and why.’
Jovan snorted. ‘Good luck with that one. He is arrogant. Overly cocky and dangerously determined.’
‘Then we are equally matched. I don’t believe in coincidences, Jovan. My gut tells me he’s responsible for the rumours and the mayhem at Eros, and if so he wants something and won’t disappear until he gets it. It would be foolish of me to take my eyes off him for one second.’
‘So we put him on watch. Twenty-four-seven.’
‘Or I go in there. Deal with him. Quickly. Quietly.’
‘Pia, please. It is too risky.’
‘Since when have I been afraid of a little risk?’ Never. Fear would never touch her heart again. ‘He’s sure to tell me far more than he would ever tell you, and I’ll hazard a guess he’ll remain obstinate until he meets the man behind Q Virtus anyway.’
‘He’ll be waiting a long time.’
‘Quite. So I’ll put him off. Persuade him to deal with me and figure out what he’s looking for. Why he’d chance his membership, his reputation,
