item in the box.
The List.
Zeus, the anonymous head of Q Virtus, always provided club members with a discreet list of business interests who would be attending the caucuses. Narciso had chosen not to attend the last two because he’d already dealt with those lists’ major players.
His gaze skimmed the heavily embossed paper and his breath caught. Excitement of a different, dangerous kind sizzled through him as the fourth name jumped out at him.
Giacomo Valentino—Daddy dearest.
He perused the other names to see if anyone else on the list would make his attendance worthwhile.
His lips twisted. Who the hell was he kidding?
One name and one name only had become the deciding factor. There were one or two business interests worth cultivating during the two-day event, but Giacomo was who he intended to interact with.
Although perhaps interact was the wrong word.
Setting the list down, he fired up his computer. Entering the security codes, he pulled up the file he kept on his father.
The report his private investigator updated on a regular basis showed that the old man had rallied a little from the blow Narciso had dealt him three months ago.
Rallied but not fully recovered. Within minutes, Narciso was fully up to speed on his father’s latest business dealings.
He didn’t fool himself into thinking it gave him any sort of upper hand. He knew his father kept a similar file on him. But the game wouldn’t have been this interesting if advantages had been one-sided. Nevertheless Narciso gained a lot of satisfaction from knowing he’d won three of their last four skirmishes.
He was contemplating the latest approach to his annihilation campaign when his phone buzzed.
Allowing the distraction, he thumbed the interactive surface and read the message from Nicandro Carvalho, the closest thing he had to a best friend.
Still caught in premature midlife-crisis mode, or are you ready to shake off that clinging BOM image?
Boring old man. A corner of his mouth lifted as his gaze slid to the list and his father’s name. Suddenly energised, he whipped back a response.
BOM has left the building. Care to get your ass whopped at poker?
Nicandro’s response—Dream on but bring it on—made him laugh for the first time in weeks.
Powering down his laptop, he slammed it shut. His gaze once again fell on the mask. Picking it up, he stashed it in his safe and shrugged into his suit jacket.
Zeus would receive his RSVP in the morning, once he’d devised exactly how he was going to take his father down once and for all.
* * *
The internet was a scary place. But it was an invaluable tool if you wanted to hunt down a slippery son of a bitch.
Ruby Trevelli sat cross-legged on her sofa and stared at the blinking cursor awaiting her command. That she was reduced to online trawling for a solution to her problem spiked equal measures of irritation and frustration through her.
She’d made it a point to avoid anything to do with social media. The one time she’d foolishly typed her name into a search engine, the sheer volume of false information she’d discovered had scared her into never trying again.
Of course, she’d also found enough about her parents to have scarred her for life if she hadn’t already been scarred.
Tonight, she had no choice. Because despite thousands of pages featuring Narciso Media Corporation, every effort to speak to someone who could help her had been met with a solid stone wall. She’d already wasted a solid hour discovering that a thirty-year-old billionaire named Narciso Valentino owned NMC.
She snorted under her breath. Who on earth named their child Narciso anyway? That was like inviting bullies and snark-mongers to feast on the poor child. On the flip side, his unique name had eased her search.
Sucking in a breath, she typed in her next request: Narciso’s New York hangouts. There were over two million entries. Awesome.
Either there were millions of men out there named Narciso or the man she sought was indecently popular.
Offering up a Hail Mary, she clicked the first link. And nearly gagged at the graphic burlesque images that popped up.
Hell no!
She closed it and sat back, fighting the rising nausea.
Desperate was fast becoming her middle name but Ruby refused to accept that the answers to her woeful financial predicament would be found in a skin den.
Biting her inside lip, she exhaled and typed again: Where’s Narciso Valentino tonight?
Her breath caught as the search engine fired back a quick response. The first linked the domain of a popular tabloid newspaper—one she’d become rudely acquainted with when she’d received her first laptop at ten, logged on and seen her parents splashed over the home page. In the fourteen years since then, she’d avoided the tabloid, just as she avoided her parents nowadays.
Ignoring the ache in her chest, she clicked on the next link that connected to a location app.
For several seconds, she couldn’t believe how easily she’d found him. She read the extensive list of celebrities who’d announced their whereabouts freely, including one attending a movie premiere right now in Times Square.
Grabbing the remote, she flipped the TV channel to the entertainment news station, and, sure enough, the movie star was flashing a million-dollar smile at his adoring fans.
She glanced back at the location next to Narciso Valentino’s name.
Riga—a Cuban-Mexican nightclub in the Flatiron District in Manhattan.
Glancing at the clock above the TV, she made a quick calculation. If she hurried, she could be there in under an hour. Her heart hammered as she contemplated what she was about to do.
She despised confrontation almost as much as her parents thrived on it. But after weeks of trying to find a solution, she’d reached the end of her tether.
She’d won the NMC reality TV show and scraped together every last cent to come up with her half of the hundred-thousand-dollar capital needed to get her restaurant—Dolce Italia—up and running.
Any help she could’ve expected from Simon Whittaker, her ex-business partner and owner of twenty-five per cent of Dolce Italia, was now a thing of the past.
She clenched her fist as she recalled their last confrontation.
Finding out that the man she’d developed feelings for was married with a baby on the way had been shock enough. Simon trying to talk her into sleeping with him despite his marital status had killed any emotion she’d ever had for him.
He’d sneered at her wounded reaction to his intended infidelity. But having witnessed it up close with gut-wrenching frequency in her parents’ marriage, she was well versed in its consequences.
Cutting Simon out of her life once she’d seen his true colours had been a painful but necessary decision.
Of course, without his business acumen she’d had to take full financial responsibility of Dolce Italia. Hence her search for Narciso Valentino. She needed him to stand by his company’s promise. A contract was a contract....
* * *
A gleaming black limo was pulling up as she rounded the corner of the block that housed the nightclub. The journey had taken an extra half-hour because of a late-running train. Wincing at the pinch of her high heels on the uneven pavestones, she hurried towards Riga’s red-bricked façade.
She was navigating her way around puddles left by the recent April shower, when deep male laughter snagged her