Olivia Gates Bestseller Collection 2012 (26 page)

Then she was inside. Alone. As she should have remained, as she would from now on. She’d never let anyone close again, never…

All her nerves seemed to snap. She went down in a heap on the ground, her dress swirling around her like a suffocating vortex.

She tore at it. Couldn’t bear the oppression. Had to breathe.

It took forever. Then she was in her panties, staggering up and to her bedroom. She fell onto her bed, folded into a ball of anguish. Her body was still throbbing, demanding him…
Stop it.

Misery engulfed her, wrung her, first with dry heaves, then with tears so violent she thought she might dissolve, dissipate.

She’d thought she’d braced herself for the worst when she’d sought him out, preparing for anything from cold dismissal to ireful rejection. But how could she have predicted the events that had dominoed since she’d laid eyes on him, knocking sense and good intentions out of reach until she’d found herself wrapped around him, unaware and uncaring if the world was watching, begging for him to possess her, all but offering him carte blanche with her life?

She’d been certain of what he felt. She’d thought they’d
shared something that transcended time and explanations, something real on the most fundamental level.

It had all been an illusion. He’d lied when he’d said he didn’t care about labels. He must have been trying to stimulate his glutted senses by leading on yet another desperate female to see how far she’d go, how much of herself she’d offer.

She’d offered him everything. Her pain and shame and trust. She’d left herself wide open, and the blow had crushed her.

In her mind, the feverish moments played again, filled with the cherishment and pleasure his every word and touch had bestowed. Then he’d demanded her name and she’d given it, delighted to complete his knowledge of her, unable to wait to hear it on his lips in all the ways he’d promised.

More images and sensations rose until she felt she was drowning in black ink. Durante, his body losing its gentle ferocity, stiffening, withdrawing, pushing her away.

For one moment, panic had flashed, fear that he, too, got his kicks abusing women. Worse, that something was wrong with her, like Ed had told her, something that drove otherwise normal men to abuse her.

The fear had passed as soon as it had flared. Not Durante. She wouldn’t let Ed’s vicious psychological sabotage fester again, not for a second. The only one who had something wrong with him was Ed.

But then, something worse than physical abuse had filled Durante’s eyes, twisted his face. The rage and revulsion he’d transmitted would leave a deeper scar than anything Ed had done.

After all they’d shared, she hadn’t warranted the benefit of a moment’s hesitation before he believed the labels she’d been stuck with rather than the reality of her. His decision had been instantaneous, the change in him clearly irreversible. It was the final proof that there was no use. That Ed had won.

He’d been winning for years now, he and his lackeys painting her so black that no one would believe her even if she
broke her pact of silence and told the world what a sick bastard he was. And she hadn’t cared. She hadn’t cared for anyone enough to care what they thought of her. Until Durante…

Was this how despair took root in someone’s psyche? Would it now blossom into a monstrous growth that would suffocate everything in its path? Had an injury like this been the origin of her father’s suffering? His mother’s? Would she react the same way, follow in their footsteps down that bottomless spiral…?

She came to no conclusion before the blackness of exhaustion and heartache dragged her under.

D
urante was standing in the distance. His eyes were heavy with disparagement, accusation, his fists clenched at his sides.

She began to walk toward him, her steps gaining speed until she was running. She had to beg him to hear her out. She wasn’t what the rumors made her out to be. He of all people knew that. He was the only one she’d shown her real self.

But as she approached him, he turned around and strode away. And she went mad.

She felt her feet lifting off the ground as she caught up with him, sank her fingers in his arm, wrenched. He turned on her with a snarl. And she punched him. In the face. Felt the crunch of cartilage and bones in her hand and his nose, the pain explode through her joints.

She stared up at him in horror as his eyes brimmed with icy rage, and she knew he wouldn’t hit back. She almost wished he would, to show her some reaction besides that chilling disdain.

He gave her nothing, stared down at her as if at a maggot.

Her thoughts were swerving from insisting on paying for the reconstructive surgery that would repair the nose she’d pulverized, to deciding to give him a matching broken jaw to go with it
…when she lurched awake.

Her eyes wouldn’t open. She’d cried them shut.

Damn. Damn, damn, damn. Damn him and damn everyone else in this damn stupid world. But the biggest damns were reserved for herself and her stupidity.

She was done being stupid. She’d start by never again shedding a tear. Certainly not over Prince Durante D’Agostino.

She spilled from the bed, barely saw herself in the mirror through her turgid lids as she plodded to her bathroom.

She came out an hour later feeling as if the hot bath had homogenized the pain clamping her chest and melted it to seep through her. She now ached down to her toenails.

She called Megan, her PA, and told her she was taking a few days off. She was sick.

She wasn’t lying. She was. Sick of the whole world. Heartache should be at the forefront of ailments one should take sick leave for. And she was taking it.

She needed time to rearrange her mental and emotional papers, invent some priorities, locate her vanished purpose. First on the agenda was purging her memory of Prince Durante D’Agostino.

To do that, she had to admit she owed him a debt of gratitude. He’d made all the slander she’d ever suffered come crashing down on her. She could now face her fury and bitterness, deal with it, put it in perspective and move on.

She should also thank him for curing her of a delusion she’d been suffering from without even realizing it—that miracles happened sometimes and Prince Charming existed somewhere.

Now that she knew for certain that was a load of crap, she could at last have her mind functioning at capacity, unhindered by the insidious virus of such self-sabotaging illusions.

Maybe now she could get rid of all the shackles that had been holding her back. Maybe now she would start to live for real.

Gabrielle looked at her cell phone.

Come on. Do it.

She’d put it off long enough. It had been ten days. She had to call him now. He wouldn’t be happy. But he, too, had to face facts. Like she had.

Facts said she’d back down if she waited another moment.

Do. It. Now.
She hit the speed dial button, flinching as if she’d hit a remote for a nearby bomb.

The ringing blared on speaker mode until the line disconnected. Relief that he hadn’t answered and reluctance to try again sent nausea bubbling in her stomach.
Coward. Do it. Get it over with.

She pressed the button just as the phone came alive.

She almost dropped it in fright. Then she remembered. She had it on vibration-mode. The caller ID blazed on the screen. The king.

She gulped and hit the answer button.

His voice flowed into her ear, sounding worse than she’d last heard it. “
Figlia mia,
apologies for the delay in answering.”

“I should have called much sooner. I-I…” The words congealed into a lump, choked her.
Just spit them out.
“I-it’s about your son. I-I tried and failed. He wouldn’t talk to me.”

That last bit wasn’t exactly the truth, but it was true. All the talking Durante had done had been with his
“bella misteriosa.”
He hadn’t given
her
the consideration of one word.

Not that the king who’d told her to do “anything” would take her failure lying down. She braced herself for his arguments, for the brunt of his desperation, the distress of having to disappoint it. Just as she thought she was ready for anything, his exhalation almost deflated her with its dejection.

“It was a desperate gamble, Gaby. I was deluded to hope that Durante would relent. Castaldini and I will have to face our fate
without his intervention. Forgive me if I caused you any discomfort by involving you in this.”

A long time later, she didn’t remember what she’d stammered in answer to King Benedetto’s apology and acceptance of defeat.

She knew only that her temperature was rising geometrically.

Durante.
That cruel, intractable, holier-than-thou bastard.

So he’d condemned her and walked away without a glance back. Fine. She was no one to him. But she was damned if she’d let him get away with doing the same to his father and live happily ever after with his sanctimonious “disconnection.”

She didn’t care that he thought his position validated. It was still indefensible. And besides, she’d bet he had as much proof of his father’s so-called crimes against his mother as he had of
her
alleged ones against male-kind.

She didn’t care about the level of demeaning disdain with which he’d no doubt smear her. She was not letting this end without stripping off a few layers of his rhino hide. Maybe she’d even find something beneath to shame into coming through for his father and his kingdom.

She unclasped her death grip on her phone, hit another speed dial button. Megan answered on the first ring.

She fired away. “Megan, I want you to get me every shred of info on Prince Durante D’Agostino of Castaldini. And I don’t mean financial and personal profiles. At least, nothing reported in ‘reliable’ or ‘respected’ sources. Dig me up all the dirt. Make it thick, and make it quick. I need it…ten days ago.”

Durante stared at the wall across his extensive bedroom.

It looked so…tempting. All walls did. He wanted to bang his head against each and every one.

It was the conviction that some explosive pain and serious self-abuse might dampen the volcano seething inside him that tempted him.

How? How had he found himself in this position?

He trusted his instincts, which had steered him through his meteoric rise. But he’d always deferred acting on them until he’d deliberated all ramifications. Instinct didn’t equate with impulse to him. He’d believed that he was without urges, did nothing with spontaneity. His closest people told him he took premeditation to uncharted and aggravating heights. That was, until Gabrielle Williamson.
Her.

His instincts hadn’t just totally misled him about her nature. He hadn’t thought
once
before accepting their verdict, hadn’t found ramifications to ponder as he let himself be swept away in the tide of what he’d thought mutual perfection. She’d satisfied his every demanding taste, his merciless critical eye finding only things to appreciate in her. Even the qualities that she’d put forward as her shortcomings, her hang-ups, had charmed him, secured his unquestioning empathy. And it had all been the practiced routine of a hardened seductress who got ahead in the world by seducing powerful fools like him.

If that night had been her first approach, if he hadn’t researched her in advance, if he’d found out her truth after he’d tasted her for real, he wouldn’t have been able to walk away, would have blinded himself to wallow in the pleasures she offered. He would have signed that contract, and maybe, like her previous victims, would have ended up signing over half his fortune. Or all of it.

And the worst part? His condition seemed hopeless.

He’d known how hopeless it was when his cousin Eduardo had passed by to check on him with that outspoken bride of his, Jade.

Durante hadn’t exited his penthouse for five days, spending that time prowling the cage of his mind. He’d thought it might save his sanity to have a distraction, especially that of people whose show of caring wasn’t a setup. So he’d invited them in.

It hadn’t played out that way. He’d bristled at their alarm at the sight of him. But when their solicitude had taken the form of questions, prodding, advice, with Giancarlo joining in the chorus of concern, he’d gone off like a landmine.

They’d exchanged the same look that he’d seen on employees faces during the last and most aggressive of his uncharacteristic blowups at his offices. Eduardo and Jade had given Giancarlo—the keeper of the beast—sympathetic murmurs, before they’d left, telling Durante he needed to seek one of two things. A radical lifestyle change. Or psychiatric help. He’d faced it then.

The one thing he needed to seek was her. Gabrielle.

No matter how much he’d told himself to forget her, to move on, he couldn’t.

He still couldn’t bring himself to seek her out. He missed the persona she’d projected as much as he missed his mother, with the same hopelessness of ever seeing her again. To him, that persona had also disintegrated before it died. The night he’d shared with Gabrielle was entrenched in his memories and senses. He couldn’t bear to see her wear another face.

But he’d reached the point where he no longer cared. He had to see her, with any face, at any cost.

He grimaced at his reflection in the full-length mirror then exited his bedroom. At least he no longer looked like the missing link between primates and Neanderthals.

He’d go to her now. This time, he knew what he was getting into, who he was dealing with. He’d walk into the situation with all the brutal clarity of disenchantment, take from her what he needed to get her off his mind and out of his system before walking away…

“I hope this won’t get me tossed from the veranda.”

Durante rounded on Giancarlo. “If you’re worried, as you should be, wear a parachute first. We’re high up enough that there’s a fifty-fifty chance you’d land with only minor fractures.”

Giancarlo grinned. He was Durante’s deceased valet’s youngest son and was eight years Durante’s junior. But for the past seven years, since he’d taken over his father’s position, he’d become even more invaluable than his father had been. He was
an irreplaceable assistant who observed their situations impeccably in public and in private became a friend as trusted as Durante’s younger cousin Eduardo and younger brother Paolo, if less intrusive than either. Not that that said much, because those two were incorrigible. Each had married the “love of his life,” and things had gone from bad to dismal.

But Durante wasn’t in any condition to humor even Giancarlo. Now that he’d decided to see Gabrielle, he felt as if there were burning coals beneath his feet.

“I know you forbade me to interrupt you unless there was a lot of blood involved—”

“And you’re not bleeding,” Durante growled. “Yet.”

Giancarlo went on as if he hadn’t spoken, unperturbed. “—but there’s a lady downstairs asking to speak with you. She’s—”

“Gabrielle.” Her name blared in his mind. He growled it, not wanting Giancarlo to utter it as if he had to be told she was here. When he knew.
Knew.
“Gabrielle Williamson.”

Giancarlo nodded. “That’s her name, yes. I took the liberty of admitting her to the foyer. I judged she warranted the courtesy, because she was the first woman you ever took to
Angelica,
and the first—and I trust, the last—creature you’ll ever sing to. But because you’ve been like a tiger with a half-ripped-out claw since you stormed down from her residence, I assume you don’t want to see her? Shall I tell her you’re busy having a breakdown?”

Durante’s hiss could have scraped steel. “Bring her up.”

Giancarlo gave him an opaque glance.
“Molto bene, principe.”

Durante paced on those coals, feeling the burn spreading through his system. Gabrielle. Here. She’d sought him out. At the exact moment he’d been about to seek her. How did she know that he was ripe for another incursion? How could she be so attuned to thoughts and decisions that seemed random even to him?

Giancarlo returned within two minutes. He wasn’t doing a
good job of hiding his smile. Durante would bet he wasn’t even trying.

The man cleared his throat as if he were going to sing. “
Signora
Williamson insisted I deliver her message word for word. She said, quote, ‘I’m not coming up. You’re the one who’s coming the hell down here and facing me like a man. If you are one, that is’…unquote.”