The Prodigal Prince's Seduction / The Heir's Scandalous Affair: The Prodigal Prince's Seduction
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If that night had been her first approach, if he hadn’t researched her in advance, if he’d found out her truth after he’d tasted her for real, he wouldn’t have been able to walk away, would have blinded himself to wallow in the pleasures she offered. He would have signed that contract, and maybe, like her previous victims, would have ended up signing over half his fortune. Or all of it.
And the worst part? His condition seemed hopeless.
He’d known how hopeless it was when his cousin Eduardo had passed by to check on him with that outspoken bride of his, Jade.
Durante hadn’t exited his penthouse for five days, spending that time prowling the cage of his mind. He’d thought it might save his sanity to have a distraction, especially that of people whose show of caring wasn’t a setup. So he’d invited them in.
It hadn’t played out that way. He’d bristled at their alarm at the sight of him. But when their solicitude had taken the form of questions, prodding, advice, with Giancarlo joining in the chorus of concern, he’d gone off like a landmine.
They’d exchanged the same look that he’d seen on employees faces during the last and most aggressive of his uncharacteristic blowups at his offices. Eduardo and Jade had given Giancarlo—the keeper of the beast—sympathetic murmurs, before they’d left, telling Durante he needed to seek one of two things. A radical lifestyle change. Or psychiatric help. He’d faced it then.
The one thing he needed to seek was her. Gabrielle.
No matter how much he’d told himself to forget her, to move on, he couldn’t.
He still couldn’t bring himself to seek her out. He missed the persona she’d projected as much as he missed his mother, with the same hopelessness of ever seeing her again. To him, that persona had also disintegrated before it died. The night he’d shared with Gabrielle was entrenched in his memories and senses. He couldn’t bear to see her wear another face.
But he’d reached the point where he no longer cared. He had to see her, with any face, at any cost.
He grimaced at his reflection in the full-length mirror then exited his bedroom. At least he no longer looked like the missing link between primates and Neanderthals.
He’d go to her now. This time, he knew what he was getting into, who he was dealing with. He’d walk into the situation with all the brutal clarity of disenchantment, take from her what he needed to get her off his mind and out of his system before walking away…
“I hope this won’t get me tossed from the veranda.”
Durante rounded on Giancarlo. “If you’re worried, as you should be, wear a parachute first. We’re high up enough that there’s a fifty-fifty chance you’d land with only minor fractures.”
Giancarlo grinned. He was Durante’s deceased valet’s youngest son and was eight years Durante’s junior. But for the past seven years, since he’d taken over his father’s position, he’d become even more invaluable than his father had been. He was an irreplaceable assistant who observed their situations impeccably in public and in private became a friend as trusted as Durante’s younger cousin Eduardo and younger brother Paolo, if less intrusive than either. Not that that said much, because those two were incorrigible. Each had married the “love of his life,” and things had gone from bad to dismal.
But Durante wasn’t in any condition to humor even Giancarlo. Now that he’d decided to see Gabrielle, he felt as if there were burning coals beneath his feet.
“I know you forbade me to interrupt you unless there was a lot of blood involved—”
“And you’re not bleeding,” Durante growled. “Yet.”
Giancarlo went on as if he hadn’t spoken, unperturbed. “—but there’s a lady downstairs asking to speak with you. She’s—”
“Gabrielle.” Her name blared in his mind. He growled it, not wanting Giancarlo to utter it as if he had to be told she was here. When he knew. Knew. “Gabrielle Williamson.”
Giancarlo nodded. “That’s her name, yes. I took the liberty of admitting her to the foyer. I judged she warranted the courtesy, because she was the first woman you ever took to Angelica, and the first—and I trust, the last—creature you’ll ever sing to. But because you’ve been like a tiger with a half-ripped-out claw since you stormed down from her residence, I assume you don’t want to see her? Shall I tell her you’re busy having a breakdown?”
Durante’s hiss could have scraped steel. “Bring her up.”
Giancarlo gave him an opaque glance. “Molto bene, principe.”
Durante paced on those coals, feeling the burn spreading through his system. Gabrielle. Here. She’d sought him out. At the exact moment he’d been about to seek her. How did she know that he was ripe for another incursion? How could she be so attuned to thoughts and decisions that seemed random even to him?
Giancarlo returned within two minutes. He wasn’t doing a good job of hiding his smile. Durante would bet he wasn’t even trying.
The man cleared his throat as if he were going to sing. “Signora Williamson insisted I deliver her message word for word. She said, quote, ‘I’m not coming up. You’re the one who’s coming the hell down here and facing me like a man. If you are one, that is’…unquote.”
Durante came the hell down.
After a moment of being unable to believe anyone could not only talk to him that way, but have the temerity to deliver a slap through his right-hand man, to even win said man to her side so that Giancarlo had felt justified and satisfied to transmit it full force.
So he came the hell down. He hurtled, streaked, zoomed and tore his way the hell down. He forced himself to slow once he exited his private elevator. She might have thrown down the gauntlet, but damn if he would give her proof of how she had seeped into his blood, had taken hold of his reactions.
He came to a stop just outside the foyer, depleting reserves of control that he saved for navigating crises of global scope. He yelled inwardly at his instincts, wrestled some rhythm into his heartbeat and breathing. He should make her wait.
He couldn’t wait. Her challenge, his eagerness to see her again, was boiling in his blood.
He started walking again, his gait a study in subterfuge, radiating the opposite of what roiled inside him.
He turned the corner and…there she was. Standing at the reception desk, part of her profile visible to him.
She was wearing a skirt suit in another shade of blue, a cross between royal and navy, the richness and depth of the color setting off the clarity of her complexion, the vivid gloss of her hair. The getup was impossibly more flattering than that evening outfit he’d thought the best showcase of her lushness. It molded to her lithe frame, emphasizing her height, the perfection of her proportions, detailing each curve and dip, showing off the symmetry and sculpted creaminess of her legs. Those legs. Her flowing skirt had deprived him of seeing them before. He’d had them wrapped around him when he’d been stupid enough to walk away from the promise of fulfillment they’d been offering, almost dealing his potency an irreparable blow.
She was carrying a briefcase. Navy blue to go with her outfit. She looked all business today. And there was this…royal assurance to her bearing, a bring-it-on air to her stance, befitting the potent woman that she was and the mission that had brought her here. To conquer him? He’d bet that was it.
She turned, as if she’d sensed his entrance. She couldn’t have possibly seen him, not at the periphery of her vision, not in any reflection. He was still too far for his footsteps to be heard. She had sensed him.
And he sensed her. Her emanations were unchanged. How did she do that? How did she mess with his perception so that he felt only what she wanted him to feel?
He didn’t care. He had to get closer, get more.
He struggled to keep his stride tranquil, as if reaching her was low on his priorities.
When he was finally within arm’s reach, he stopped. Her face was a mask captured in blankness, her vibe transmitting nothing of her mood or intentions.
A crack exploded by his ear, on the side of his face, slashing the tranquility of the exclusive foyer’s silent occupants and sourceless music.
Seven
Durante blinked, gaped. Beyond stunned. Paralyzed.
He would later swear that she hadn’t even moved. But the evidence that she had would resound inside his head forever. Echoes ricocheted off every sound-reflecting surface in the allmarble, chrome and quartz massive space. He barely heard the gasps that went off in a chain reaction of incredulity around him, the quickening footsteps of the guards whose perpetual orders were to stay out of sight.
He made an adamant gesture, banishing them back where they came from. He couldn’t bear for others to exist in this moment. Only Gabrielle. Gabrielle, whose eyes were panning away from his with the same void filling them as if she didn’t even see him.
Then she brushed past him, walked away with all the grace and serenity of a fairy creature.
It was only when she exited the door the stunned bellman held open for her that Durante registered the burn spreading through his flesh. His hand went instinctively to the pain from the imprint of her fingers, as if to investigate the damage. He moved his mouth from side to side. His jaw felt almost loose.
It excited the hell out of him.
Which made him even more of a colossal fool than he’d realized.
She was pulling his strings. He knew it. But he could sooner resist the pull of a black hole. He rushed out after her.
He caught up with her in less than a minute, her head start and brisk stride no match for his longer legs and urgency.
She suddenly stopped. He overshot her by six strides and retraced them at once.
“Here’s the other cheek.” He presented her with it. “Go ahead, I know you want to.”
She gave no indication that she heard him or even felt him there. She put her briefcase on the ground, opened it, produced a dossier, took papers out, straightened, started reading.
“Prince Durante Benedetto D’Agostino. Eldest son of the King of Castaldini, and therefore, according to the ancient laws of succession, the only member of the extensive D’Agostino royal family ineligible for the crown.”
She was reading him a report? On him?
“To prove to the world that his inability to run for the crown meant nothing to him, Prince Durante decided to be king of his own kingdom, emperor of his own empire.”
Would there be a point to this somewhere? Knowing what he did about her, she was bound to have a whopper. But what could it be?
“During his meteoric ascent from age twenty, the prince masterminded takeovers that redefined the word hostile. Those he took an ax to say that they would have preferred it if he’d taken a contract on their lives and been done with it. Two of those he destroyed did end up taking their own lives. Then, at thirty-five, he engineered a market crash that sent thousands into bankruptcy while catapulting himself from mere billionaire status to that of financial god. Ever since, he’s been shearing his way through the pantheon, cutting down fellow deities in his climb to the absolute and solitary top.”
He’d heard all that before. Not that articulate or concentrated, and certainly not to his face.
She wasn’t finished. “On a personal level, it is said that Prince Durante is as cold-blooded and unrepentant a lady-killer as he is a rival-slayer. He is known to pick beauties from those who crowd around his feet, use them and discard them. On one notable occasion, one of his fleeting indulgences tried to commit suicide and is still undergoing intensive psychiatric treatment. Her family reports that Prince Durante systematically destroyed her self-esteem, and she ended up despising herself. A second woman—a married one—said that Prince Durante’s influence rivals that of the Prince of Darkness himself. After her husband divorced her and gained custody of their two toddlers, denying her even visitation rights, the spellbound and discarded woman still said that, even knowing where it would lead, she’d do it again. She only wished Prince Durante would take her back.”
And he got her point. Right through the heart.
Something else skewered him there. Shame.
He of all people, who suffered slander, shouldn’t have been party to perpetuating it, to judging her and carrying out his judgment based on secondhand information.
But beyond shame, which was self-indulgent and worthless, something harsher tore at him. The hurt he felt emanating from her.
He could no longer deny it. His instincts hadn’t been tampered with. They’d told him the truth all along. Everything else had lied. Everything he’d heard about her had been as false as the reports propagated against him by his enemies.
The fair reports were also out there, as abundant, but they weren’t as interesting as the defamatory ones, weren’t sensational enough to be bandied around. His friends didn’t feel the need to defend him and he’d never wanted them to, leaving the field wide open to the foes who spoke loudest, were most persistent.
She stopped sifting through the pages. “All reports of Prince Durante’s atrocities remain unsubstantiated allegations, because he manages to remain beyond reproach, faultlessly covering his amoral and immoral tracks. As such, he is considered to be our era’s only Machiavellian prince. Some even claim that he used Machiavelli’s most famous work, Il Principe—The Prince—the immortal guide to acquiring and maintaining power, as the template from which he forged his persona and kingdom. What he added of his own heartlessness and intelligence has created a modern hybrid even the philosopher couldn’t have imagined being spawned.”
He raised his hands, surrendering. “Abbastanza, Gabrielle. Enough. You can stop now. I get it.”
Without a glance at him, she rearranged the papers back into the dossier, bent to pick up her briefcase. He caught her arm.
“We need to talk.” Her blank stare deepened his desperation. He gritted his teeth. “I need to talk.”
“That you do, now, is of no consequence. I am not here to talk. I am here to tell you something. You’re a paranoid bastard who’s so full of your own convictions and hang-ups, you can’t see how your actions injure and maim people around you. If you have one shred of humanity—and according to your lofty opinion of yourself, you’re full of…it—I’m giving you an assignment to find out how much you do possess. Write down a list of all the people in your life. Be honest about their condition today, emotionally, psychologically, financially, and calculate the role your condemning, unforgiving nature has played in it.”
Her accusation slid right off him. Not because it didn’t shame him that it might be true, but because his only concern was for undoing the injury he’d caused her.
Pedestrians and even drivers were slowing down to watch the scene unfolding between their city’s most famous resident royal and the stunning woman who was clearly telling him off. Some were openly gawking. Some were clicking away on their cell phones.
Not that he cared. But he was beginning to realize the role speculation and the media must have played in smearing her reputation.
He had to take her away from prying eyes and wagging tongues. “Come up with me, Gabrielle. Please.”
“No.” She extricated her arm from his urgent grip. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned from my…vast experience, it’s what to avoid in the interest of self-preservation. I thought being punched black and blue was the worst thing that had happened to me, but now I know how hard you hit, I’d be crazy if I came near you again. Goodbye, Prince Durante.”
He blocked her path. “Per favore, Gabrielle, you must listen to me.”
Her disdain would have annihilated a lesser man. At least a less determined one. “As you listened to me? Oh, wait, you didn’t give me the chance to say anything to listen to. You heard my name, recalled the report some bored assistant collated on me and disregarded everything you learned about me during that night you kept calling magical and unprecedented—the line you handed me when you wanted to score another one-night stand. Funny part is, although your criteria for one-nighters are reportedly pretty flexible, it seems you draw the line somewhere. At my level.”
He surged forward as if to stem the flow of her bitterness. She took two steps back to his every step forward in a wretched parody of a waltz.
He stopped, clenched his fists so he wouldn’t haul her over his shoulder and take her someplace where he could make her listen. “You think I leave functions I sponsor, dedicate whole nights and ignore work—for days on end—for anything, let alone what you make sound like scratching an itch? It was
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