at once willowy and womanly, unconscious femininity screaming in its every line and curve. A face that embodied all his tastes and demands.
But it had been her eyes—which really had turned out to be violet, when he thought he’d imagined the color from that distance—and what he’d seen in them, that had snared him.
To think he’d thought they’d shown a reflection of his awareness, his discovery. He thought he’d seen more, too, a quality that had snapped the trap shut: Vulnerability.
Right. Clarissa D’Agostino was as vulnerable as an iceberg to the Titanic.
He still seethed to remember how he’d sought her, bared his need to have more of her, revealed his moronic belief in the existence of a connection between them that had transcended time and logic. He still burned at the memory of the moment he’d gotten what he deserved for such idiocy, when she’d stared at him as if he’d lost his mind, then told him to go find someone in a lesser…situation—who’d deem him good enough to…be with.
She’d told him that dozens of times since then. With every rejection of the invitations he’d never ceased to issue. Making them had become the masochistic lash he used every time he found his will to go on flagging, using the anger and frustration to keep on rising, keep on acquiring everything in his path. As he couldn’t acquire her.
But now he finally would. One way or another.
He’d teach her a lesson. Many lessons. He’d take her down a few dozen pegs, and he’d revel in every one.
He braced his arms against the balustrade, cast his gaze into the distance. The sun’s gold was starting to deepen as the star quickened its descent toward the endless expanse of liquid turquoise and emerald that was the southern Castaldinian Sea.
Another rush of bitter anticipation tumbled and sprayed through his system like the waves did on the shore. He wasn’t here only for the spectacular vista the tower of his mansion afforded him. This was also the best vantage point from which to view the winding road over which she’d be brought to him…
Everything seemed to dim as the last three words replayed in his mind like a distorted old recording.
Brought to him. Not coming to him of her free will, unable to wait to see him, as she had in too many dreams to count.
What would he have felt if she’d been rushing here with hunger in her eyes, with longing on her lips?
If only…
His lips compressed as he tore his eyes away from the road and blindly roamed the view he could no longer see.
No. No if onlys. She’d made her choice that first night. Had reinforced it countless times throughout six interminable years.
Even if she changed her mind now, for whatever reason, it would be too late. Now only one thing mattered. That she had no choice. That there was no way she could reject him again. And he intended to savor every second of her downfall, starting—he snapped another look at his Rolex—ten minutes from now.
He pushed away from the balustrade, swung around.
Time to put the finishing touches to his plan.
“Until then.”
The words, spoken like a pledge, a prophecy, in the lethal tone of a dangerous man, reverberated inside Clarissa’s head. They had done so for six years now.
Twenty-four hours ago, she’d found out that “then” had arrived. Ferruccio Selvaggio had her cornered.
She exhaled and gazed through sunglasses and rioting hair at the vista rushing by as the limo zoomed over the road that snaked parallel to the shore.
She knew the sun was turning flame orange and speeding on an intercept course with the sea, that the horizon would be changing into a thousand hues and the waters would be starting their transformation from aquamarine to royal blue.
She saw none of it. Her vision was turned inward, where there was nothing but gray chaos.
Calm down. Breathe.
She carefully drew in a stream of the fresh sea air that buffeted her face. Then again. And again.
And nothing. Taking one breath at a time wouldn’t restore any measure of calm. It hadn’t since yesterday. Since her father had made her cut short her first official mission to the States to give her the news. The shock of her life.
She thought she’d known the limit of her father’s desperation to find himself a crown prince after his stroke. He’d proven her wrong.
The crown of Castaldini was by law not passed from father to son, but rather earned by merit. With the approval of the royal council, the current king would choose his successor from the royal D’Agonstino family—a man of impeccable reputation, sturdy health and no vices, solid lineage, a leader with character and charisma, and above all, a self-made success of the highest order.
She’d been the only one who hadn’t been stunned when he’d announced his first candidate. Leandro, the prince whom eight years ago her father had declared renegade, stripped of his nationality and exiled. She’d thought Leandro the wisest choice of any candidate for the crown. It had been time to forget grievances and think of Castaldini’s best interests. But when her father had wrestled the Council into making the offer, Leandro had done the unthinkable. He’d turned the power and responsibility down.
And her father had dropped another bomb. He had another even more impossible candidate. Her oldest brother, Durante. And in an undreamed of precedent in Castaldinian history, he’d gotten the Council to amend the most fundamental part of the kingdom’s constitution to make his son eligible for the crown.
She’d never been so excited. She’d always thought how unfairly absolute the laws of succession were, that while they protected Castaldini from unsuitable heirs, in Durante’s case they were depriving it from having its best king ever. But the Council had voted, and the impossible had become possible.
Then Durante had come back with his bride-to-be, and Clarissa had even dared to hope that he and her father would work out their rift. Everything had looked like it would have a perfect happy ending for her family and for Castaldini.
Again the impossible had happened. They had sorted out their rift, but Durante had turned down the succession.
She’d tried to speak to him, but he hadn’t been available for discussion as he’d prepared for his wedding and disappeared with his bride on an extended honeymoon. Clarissa had gone to the States, her father assuring her that he was working on securing the next candidate, the one he believed most suited to the job despite there being an even more insurmountable barrier to overcome to make the Council agree.
She hadn’t been able to imagine who could possibly be better than Leandro or Durante. Then the king made her cut her mission short to drop the biggest bomb of all.
He’d gotten the Council to make an even more incredible amendment, allowing the king to extend another offer of the crown of Castaldini.
To Ferruccio Selvaggio.
She still didn’t know how she hadn’t collapsed in a heap of shock and confusion upon hearing that.
From what she’d heard in the media about Ferruccio, he was a man with no origins. All that was known about his parentage was that he’d been given up for adoption in Napoli when he was born.
But he’d never been adopted. By the time he was a difficult six-year-old, he’d been placed in a foster home, the first of a dozen, until he ran away from the last one at age thirteen. He’d chosen to live the harshest of lives on the streets of Italian coastal cities and in Sicily and Sardinia rather than return to the system. Over the next two decades, he educated himself extensively and worked his way up to the highest echelons imaginable.
When his status had solidified, he’d come to Castaldini. Since then, he’d been a recurring figure in her father’s court, and a constant one in her dreams and nightmares.