A Scandal in the Headlines(55)

She made it to the bottom step in one piece, and started to walk around the man who stood there, his back to the hall. Alessandro’s sleek black sports car was parked near the fountain in the center of the pretty village square, the convertible top pulled back, reminding her of how silly she’d been on the drive over—glancing at the way the ring sparkled on her hand, allowing herself to yearn for impossibilities.

“Excuse me,” she murmured absently as she navigated her way around the man, glancing at him to smile politely—

But it was Niccolo.

All of the blood drained out of her head. Her stomach contracted in a sickening lurch, and she was sure her heart dropped out of her body and lay at her feet on the pavement.

“Niccolo …” she whispered in disbelief.

Niccolo, like all of the nightmares that had kept her awake these past months. Niccolo, his arms folded over his chest and his black eyes burning mean and cold as he soaked in her reaction.

Niccolo, who she’d thought she loved until Alessandro had walked into her life and showed her how pale that love was, how small. Niccolo, who she’d trusted. Who she’d laughed with, thinking they were laughing together. Who she’d dreamed with, thinking they were planning a shared future. Niccolo, who had hunted her across all these months and the span of Italy, and was looking at her now as if that slap in his villa was only the very beginning of what he’d like to do to her.

She couldn’t believe this was happening. Today. Here. Now.

“Elena,” he said, his voice almost friendly, but she could see that nasty gleam in his eyes. She could see exactly who he was. “At last.”





CHAPTER TEN



ELENA NEEDED TO say something, do something.

Scream for help, at the very least. Kick off her shoes and run. She needed to get as far away from Niccolo as possible, to distance herself from that vicious retribution she saw shining in his black eyes and all across his boyishly handsome face.

But she couldn’t seem to move a single muscle.

His lip curled. “Did you really think you could outrun me forever?”

She threw a panicked glance back up the stairs. Alessandro was still there, on the far side of the glass door, but he had his back turned to the square. To what was happening. To her.

Elena didn’t know why she’d believed he could save her from this, even for an instant. Hadn’t she always known she would have to handle it herself?

Niccolo looked up at Alessandro, then back at her, and his expression grew uglier.

“You’ve never been anything but a useless little whore, Elena,” he said, his black eyes bright with malevolence. “I took you out of that fishing boat you grew up in. I made something out of you. And this is how you repay me?”

Elena straightened. Pulled in a breath. He was shorter than she remembered. Thicker and more florid. The observation gave her a burst of strength, because it meant things had changed—she had changed.

“You didn’t do any of that for my benefit,” she said, finding steel inside her, somewhere. “You did it because you wanted the land. And then you hit me.”

“You owed me that land,” he snarled at her. “I dressed you up, took the stink of fish out of your skin. And then you let a Corretti steal it.”

“He didn’t steal anything,” she told him, keeping her gaze steady on his. “And he hasn’t hit me, either.”

“Just how long were you sleeping with him?” Niccolo demanded. “I know you lied to me. There’s no way that night was the first time you met him. How long were you stringing me along?”

“You hit me, Niccolo,” she said fiercely. “You threatened me. You lied to my family. You—”

“I let you off easy,” he interrupted her, and the names he called her then, one after the next, were vile. They made her feel sick—and sicker still that she had ever loved this man, that she’d touched him, that she’d failed to see what he really was. “What I want to know is how Corretti feels every time he takes a piece of my leavings.”

His hand flashed out and he grabbed her arm in a painful grip, but she didn’t make a sound. She didn’t even flinch. She refused to give him the satisfaction of thinking he’d hurt her again.

“Does he know, Elena?” he snarled. “Does he know I’ve already been there?” He smirked, smug and mean. “He’s not the kind of man who likes to share.”