“ARE WE REALLY supposed to think he’s given up his twisted revenge scheme?”
Leonardo Brunetti, CEO of Brunetti Finances Inc., asked the question of his younger brother, Massimo, about the man who had done too much damage over the last few months to both BFI and Massimo’s brainchild, Brunetti Cyber Securities.
Contracts had fallen through at the last minute, their father Silvio Brunetti’s embezzlement from BFI and his corruption—everything Leonardo had cleaned up in the last decade since he’d taken over as CEO of BFI—was being recycled in the news again and again, and even worse, Vincenzo Cavalli had hired a consortium of hackers from the dark net to hit Massimo and his wife Natalie’s multilayered security design for a billion-dollar contract for BCS.
They had almost lost that contract, too, except Natalie’s genius had saved it at the last minute. And now, Vincenzo had disappeared. They both knew better than to think the man was done, not after his brutal tactics to bring everything related to the Brunettis down.
“What happened to the financial trail that Natalie gave us?”
“The investigator found only one small nugget of information. That account has ties to Mario Fenelli.”
Mario Fenelli was one of the oldest members on the board of BFI, one of the old guard, a relic left over from when their father, Silvio, had ruled the board, and the staunchest, most vocal opponent of Leo.
While Leo, with his grandmother Greta’s and Massimo’s help, had cleaned up Silvio’s corruption and ousted him from the board, BFI’s founding board were members of Milan’s upper echelons of society. Old money, old power—men who didn’t want to give up what they had in the name of Leo’s financial reform and ethics that he’d brought to the firm.
Vincenzo’s actions had already had far-reaching consequences.
Contracts falling through, the cyber-attack on financial information of BFI’s clients, leaving BFI’s and BCS’s cybersecurity vulnerable, and then leaking the information to the board—Mario had been one step behind with his accusations that Leonardo was following in Silvio’s footsteps, creating an atmosphere of doubt and confusion among their clients, breathing rumors that Leo was just as corrupted.
It was because of the unprecedented growth and revenue BFI had seen under his leadership and the fact that the Brunettis—Greta, Leo, Massimo and their father, Silvio—still held the majority of stock in BFI that Leo hadn’t been forced to step down.
With the financial connection between Mario and Vincenzo, it was clear that Mario had been bought.
“Mario Fenelli is a greedy bastard,” said Massimo with a bite to his words.
“There has to be something in the old man’s history that we can use against him,” Leo said. “And if we can find Vincenzo through him, we can finally put an end to this.”
“Ms. Fernandez is here,” came his assistant’s voice through the intercom.
“Neha is here to see you?” said Massimo, his brow tied. Neha Fernandez, Leo’s oldest friend, was Mario’s stepdaughter. “You’re not involving her in this thing with Mario, are you?”
Leo wasn’t insulted by Massimo’s accusation. If he’d turned into the man that Silvio had brainwashed him to be, he wouldn’t have hesitated to use Neha.
Massimo and he had made a pact to run BFI with ethical and clean practices—basically, to be the opposite of what their father had been.
But Massimo had had the influence of a mother who had tried her hardest to fight their father’s corrosive and toxic influence on her weak son. A mother who’d strived to make sure that Massimo understood what was right and what was wrong. A mother who’d put up with an abusive husband because to leave would’ve been to give up on her son. Massimo’s ill health, while making him the subject of Silvio’s vicious rants, had also kept his father away.
Leo, on the other hand, had worshipped his father until he’d learned what Silvio was capable of. His mind had been filled with bitter poison against the woman who had walked out on her young son in the middle of the night by an infuriated Silvio.
“No, I’m not,” he finally said.
Neha was the one woman with whom Leo’s association spanned the longest. The one woman he respected and admired. The one woman he’d always been intensely attracted to but hadn’t pursued because he wasn’t a relationship kind of man.
The tentative friendship had built the first day when Mario, a new board member of BFI, had brought Neha with him on his trip to Milan, and Silvio had brought Leo.
While her mother and stepfather had postured about their wealth and connections, Neha—even then a quiet, sharp, pretty girl—had arrested his attention. She’d already been running her late father’s bakery single-handed, and had been full of ideas for new branches. Leo, meanwhile, had been roiling with anger and rage—he’d discovered that week that not only was BFI in ruins, but that Silvio had been abusing Massimo emotionally for years, and that the man he’d worshipped for all his life was nothing but a bully all around.
Neha had listened to him rage about his father, the devastation he’d felt. She’d clasped his hand shyly and said, “But all you have to do is tell your brother that you’re sorry. That you do care about him. That... You love him.” He’d vowed that when he returned home with Silvio, he’d do just that.
In the meantime, he’d distracted himself by offering Neha ideas about how to raise seed money to expand her business.
And through the meteoric rise of her fame, from winning a local English village baking show contest at sixteen to transforming a chain of baking goods she’d created into a multi-million-pound business, Neha had come to him for advice and Leo had given it to the best of his ability.
Mario had spotted the extraordinary talent and work ethic his stepdaughter had possessed even at that young age and monetized it so fast that within just a few years of Neha winning the contest and creating the first line of confectionary goods, Mario had launched her as a child prodigy that created delicious confections. He’d made her into an international brand, franchised her talents so far and so wide that So Sweet Inc. had become a world-renowned business.
“Why is she here, then?” Massimo asked, pulling Leo from the past to the present.
“She asked to see me. As soon as possible.”
Massimo waggled his brows, doing quite a good imitation of a schoolgirl. “Is it really business, though? I’ve always sensed something more between you two.”
Leo kept his expression implacable. Neha was forbidden to him, would always be. “It’s pathetic to see you act like a matchmaker just because you are blissfully in love.” He strode to the door and opened it. “Now, go back to Nat and leave me to my business.”
Mouth twitching mischievously, Massimo walked over to where Neha waited, and hugged her with all the easy energy of a man who didn’t have the complication of wanting her and keeping her at a distance, as Leo had done all these years.
Through the open doorway, Leo could only see the clean lines of Neha’s profile: her long neck, her brown hair tied back in a braid that highlighted those cheekbones, the elegant white sheath dress draped over her curvaceous body and the yellow pop of her pumps. It was her public