lazily above them in a fragrant canopy, and understood with a painful surge of clarity that this was an opportunity. This woman had been like a dark, grim shadow stretching over his life, but that was over now. And he was so different from the man he’d been when she’d sunk her claws in him that he might as well have been a stranger.
She had never been the woman she’d convinced him she was. Because that woman, he had loved. That woman had been like a missing piece to his own soul that he’d never known he lacked and yet had recognized instantly the moment he’d seen her.
But that was nothing but a performance, a stern voice whispered in his head.
And this was the second act.
“Does my mother know that you are the woman who starred in all those photos a decade ago?” he asked, sounding almost idle, though he felt anything but. He slid his hands into his pockets and regarded her closely, noting how pale she went, and how her lips pressed hard together.
“Of course not,” she whispered, and there was a part of him that wondered why she wanted so badly to maintain his mother’s good opinion. Why should that matter? But he reminded himself this was the way she played her games. She was good—so good—at pretending to care. It was just another lie and this time, he’d be damned if he believed any part of it.
“Then this is what will happen.” He said it calmly. Quietly. Because the shock of seeing her had finally faded and now there was only this. His revenge, served nice and cold all these years later. “I wouldn’t want to trouble my mother with the truth about her favorite assistant yet. I don’t think she’d like it.”
“She would hate it, and me,” Nicola—Paige threw at him. “But it would also break her heart. If that’s your goal here, it’s certainly an easy way to achieve it.”
“Am I the villain in this scenario?” He laughed again, but this time, he really was amused, and he saw a complex wash of emotion move over her face. He didn’t want to know why. He knew exactly what he did want, he reminded himself. His own back, in a way best suited to please him, for a change. This was merely the dance necessary to get it. “You must have become even more delusional than your presence here already suggests.”
“Giancarlo—”
“You will resign and leave of your own volition. Today. Now.”
She lifted her hands, which he saw were in tight fists, then dropped them back to her sides, and he admired the act. It almost looked real. “I can’t do that.”
“You will.” He decided he was enjoying himself. He couldn’t remember the last time that had happened. “This isn’t a debate, Paige.”
Her pretty face twisted into a convincing rendition of misery. “I can’t.”
“Because you haven’t managed to rewrite her will to leave it all to you yet?” he asked drily. “Or are you swapping out all the art on the walls for fakes? I thought the Rembrandt looked a bit odd in the front hall, but I imagined it was the light.”
“Because whatever you might think about me, and I’m not saying I don’t understand why you think it,” she rasped, “I care about her. And I don’t mean this to be insulting, Giancarlo, but I’m all she has.” Her eyes widened at the dark look he leveled at her, and she hurried on. “You haven’t visited her in years. She’s surrounded by acolytes and users the moment she steps off this property. I’m the only person she trusts.”
“Again, the irony is nearly edible.” He shrugged. “And you are wasting your breath. You should thank me for my mercy in letting you call this a resignation. If I were less benevolent, I’d have you arrested.”
She held his gaze for a moment too long. “Don’t make me call your bluff,” she said quietly. “I doubt very much you want the scandal.”
“Don’t make me call your bluff,” he hurled back at her. “Do you think I haven’t looked for the woman who ruined my life over the years? Hoping against hope she’d be locked up in prison where she belongs?” He smiled thinly when she stiffened. “Nicola Fielding fell off the face of the planet after those pictures went viral. That suggests to me that you aren’t any more keen to have history reveal itself in the tabloids than I am.” He lifted his brows. “Stalemate, cara. If I were you, I’d start packing.”
She took a deep breath and then let it out, long and slow, and there was no reason that should have bothered him the way it did, sneaking under his skin and making him feel edgy and annoyed, as if it was tangling up his intentions or bending the present into the past.
“I genuinely love Violet,” she said, her eyes big and pleading on his, and he ignored the tangling because he knew he had her. He could all but taste it. “This might have started as a misguided attempt to reach you after you disappeared, I’ll admit, but it stopped being that a long time ago. I don’t want to hurt her. Please. There must be a way we can work this out.”
He let himself enjoy the moment. Savor it.
This wasn’t temper, hot and wild, making him act out his passions in different ways, the line between it and grief too finely drawn to tell the difference. Too much time had passed. There was too much water under that particular bridge.
And she should never have come here. She should never have involved his mother. She should never have risked this.
“Giancarlo,” she said, the way she’d said it that bright and terrible morning a decade ago when he’d finally understood the truth about her—and had seen it in full color pictures splashed across the entirety of the goddamned planet. When he’d showed up at the apartment she’d never let him enter and had that short, awful, final conversation on her doorstep. Before he’d walked away from her and Los Angeles and all the rest of these Hollywood machinations he hated so deeply. Five painful minutes to end an entire phase of his life and so many of his dreams. “Please.”
He closed the distance between them with a single step, then reached over to pull on the end of that dark, glossy hair of hers, watching the auburn sheen in it glow and shift in the light. He felt more than heard her quick intake of breath and he wanted her in a thousand ways. That hadn’t dimmed.
It was time to indulge himself. He was certain that whatever her angle was, her self-interest would win out over self-preservation. Which meant he could work out what remained of his issues in the best way imaginable. Whatever else she was, she was supple. He had her.
“Oh, we can work it out,” he murmured, shifting so he could smell the lotion she used on her soft skin, a hint of eucalyptus and something far darker. Victory, he thought. His, this time. “It requires only that you get beneath me. And stay there until I’m done with you.”
She went still for a hot, searing moment.
“What did you say?”
“You heard me.”
Her changeable eyes were blue with distress then, and he might have loathed himself for that if he hadn’t known what a liar she was. And what an actress she could be when it suited her. So he only tugged on her plait again and watched her tipped-up face closely as comprehension moved across it, that same electric heat he felt inside him on its heels.
That, Giancarlo told himself, was why he would win this game this time. Because she couldn’t control the heat between them any more than he could. And he was no longer fool enough to imagine that meant a damned thing. He knew it was a game, this time.
“I want to make sure I’m understanding you.” She swallowed, hard, and he was certain she’d understood him just fine. “You want me to sleep with you to keep my job.”
He smiled, and watched goose bumps rise on her smooth skin. “I do. Often and enthusiastically. Wherever and however I choose.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“I assure you, I am. But by all means, test me. See what happens.”
Her