Love's Revenge

MICHELLE REID grew up on the southern edges of Manchester, the youngest in a family of five lively children. Now she lives in the beautiful county of Cheshire, with her busy executive husband and two grown-up daughters. She loves reading, the ballet and playing tennis when she gets the chance. She hates cooking, cleaning and despises ironing! Sleep she can do without and produces some of her best written work during the early hours of the morning.

Love’s Revenge

The Italian’s Revenge

A Passionate Marriage

The Brazilian’s Blackmailed Bride

Michelle Reid

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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The Italian’s Revenge

Michelle Reid

CHAPTER ONE

STEPPING out of her son’s bedroom, Catherine closed the door just as quietly as she could, then wilted wearily back against it. Santo had gone to sleep at last, but she could still hear the heart-wrenching little sniffles that were shaking his five-year-old frame.

It really could not go on, she decided heavily. The tears and tantrums had been getting worse each time they erupted. And the way she had been burying her head in the sand in the vague hopes that his problem would eventually sort itself out had only managed to exacerbate the situation.

It was time—more than time—that she did something about it, even if the prospect filled her with untold dread.

And if she was going to act, then it had to be now. Luisa was due to catch the early commuter flight out of Naples in the morning, and if she was to be stopped then it must be tonight, before it caused her mother-in-law too much inconvenience.

‘Damn,’ she breatIt took ten minutes for the hed as she levered herself away from her son’s bedroom door and made her way down the stairs. The mere prospect of putting through such a sensitive call was enough to set the tension singing inside her.

For what did she say? she asked herself as she stepped into the sitting room and quietly closed that door behind her.

The straightforward approach seemed the most logical answer, where she just picked up the phone and told Luisa bluntly that her grandson was refusing to go back to Naples with her tomorrow and why. But that kind of approach did not take into consideration the fragile sensibilities of the recipient. Or the backlash of hostility that was going to rebound on her, most of which would be labelling her the troublemaker.

She sighed fretfully, caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror as she did it, then just stood staring at her own reflection.

Good grief, but she looked a mess, though in truth it didn’t particularly surprise her. The battles with Santo had been getting worse by the day as this week had drawn to a close. Now her face was showing the results of too many emotion-draining tussles and too many restless nights while she lay awake worrying about them. Her eyes were bruised and her skin looked so pale that if it hadn’t been for the natural flashes of copper firing up her golden hair then she would probably resemble some hollow-eyed little ghost.

Not so much of the little, she then mocked herself on an unexpected burst of rueful humour. For there was nothing little about her five-feet-eight-inch frame. Slender—yes, she conceded. Too slender for some people’s tastes.

Vito’s tastes.

The humour died as suddenly as it had erupted, banished by the one person who could turn laughter into bitterness without even having to try.

Vittorio Adriano Lucio Giordani—to give him his full and impressive title. Man of means. Man of might. Man at the root of her son’s problems.

Once she had loved him; now she hated him. But then that was surely Vito. Man of dynamic contrasts. Stunning to look at. Arrogant to a fault. Exquisitely versed in the art of loving. Deadly to love.

She shuddered, her arms coming up to wrap around her as if in self-protection as she turned away from that face in the mirror rather than having to watch it alter from tired to bitter, which was what it usually did when she let herself think about Vito.

Because not only did she hate him but she hated even thinking about him. He was the skeleton in her past, linked to her present by an invisible thread that went directly from her heart, straight through the heart of their son and then into Vito’s heart.

In fact Vito’s only saving grace, in Catherine’s view, was his open adoration of their five-year-old son. Now it seemed that even that fragile connection was under threat—though Vito didn’t know it yet.

‘I hate you! And I hate Papà! I don’t want to love you any more!’

She winced painfully as the echo of that angrily emotive cry pierced her like a knife in the chest. Santo had meant those words; he had felt them deeply. Too deeply for a confused and vulnerable little boy to have to cope with.

Which brought her rather neatly back to where she had started when she walked into this room, she grimly concluded. Namely, doing something about Santo’s distress and anger.

A point that sent her eyes drifting over to where the telephone sat on the small table by the sofa, looking perfectly innocent when in actual fact it was a time bomb set to explode the moment she so much as touched it.

Because she never rang Naples—never. Had not done so once since she had left there three years ago. Any communicating went on via lawyers or by letters sent to and from Santo’s grandmother Luisa. So this phone call was so unique it was likely to cause major ructions in the Giordani household. And that was before she gave her reason for calling!

Therefore it was with reluctance that she went to sit down beside the telephone table. And with her bare toes curling tensely into the carpet, she gritted her teeth, took a couple of deep breaths, then reached out for the receiver.

By the time she had punched in the required set of digits she was sitting there with her eyes pressed tight shut, half praying that no one would be home.

Coward, she mocked herself.

And why not? she then countered. With their track record it paid to be cowardly around Vito. She just hoped that Luisa would answer. At least with Luisa she could relax some of the tension out of her body and try to sound normal before she attempted to break the news to her.

No chance. ‘Si?’ a deeply smooth and seductively accented voice suddenly drawled into her ear.

Catherine jumped, her eyes flicking open as instant recognition turned her grey eyes green.

Vito.

Damn, it was Vito. A sudden hot flush went chasing through her. A thick lump formed across her throat. She tried to speak but found she couldn’t. Instead her eyes drifted shut again and suddenly she was seeing him as clearly as if he was standing here directly in front of her. Seeing the blackness of his hair, the darkness of his skin, and the long, lean, tightly muscled posture of his supremely arrogant stance.

He was wearing a dinner suit, she saw, because it was Sunday and coming up to dinnertime there in Naples, and the Giordani family always dressed formally for the evening meal on a Sunday. So the suit would be black and the shirt white, with an accompanying black bow tie.

And she could see the disturbing honeyed-gold colour of his eyes, with their long, thick, curling lashes, which could so polarise attention that it was impossible to think of anything else when you let yourself look into them. So she didn’t. Instead she moved on to his mouth and let her mind’s eye drift across its smooth, firm, sensual contours, knowing exactly what to expect when another telling little shudder hit her system.

For this was the mouth of a born lover. A beautiful mouth, a seductive mouth, a disturbingly expressive mouth that could grin and mock and snarl and kiss like no other mouth, and lie like no other, and hate like no—

‘Who is there, please?’ his deep voice demanded in terse Italian.

Catherine jumped again, then tensely sat forward, her fingers tightly gripping the telephone receiver as she forced her locked up vocal cords to relax enough to allow her to speak.

‘Hello, Vito,’ she murmured huskily. ‘It’s me—Catherine …’

The bomb went off—in the form of a stunning silence. The kind that ate away at her insides and made nerves twitch all over her. Her mouth was dry, her heart having to force blood through valves that had simply stopped working. She felt light-headed but heavy-limbed, and wanted to start crying suddenly—which was so very pathetic that at least the feeling managed to jolt her into attempting to speak again.

But Vito beat her to it. ‘What is wrong with my son?’ he lashed out, grating English replacing terse Italian. The sheer violence in his tone was enough to warn Catherine that he had instantly jumped to all the wrong conclusions.

‘It’s all right,’ she said quickly. ‘Santo isn’t ill.’

There was another short, tense, pulsing moment while Vito took time to absorb that assurance. ‘Then why do you break your own court order and ring me here?’ he demanded coldly.

Grimacing at his right to ask that question, Catherine still had to bite down on her lip to stop herself from replying with something nasty. The break-up of their marriage had not been pleasant, and the hostility between them still ran strong three years on.

Three years ago Vito had been so incensed when she’d left him, taking Santo with her, that he had made the kind of threatening noises which at the time had made her blood run cold with fear.

She had responded by making Santo a ward of court and serving an order on Vito prohibiting him any contact with her unless it was through a third party. Catherine didn’t think Vito would ever forgive her for putting him through the indignity of having to swear before a judge that he would neither contact Catherine personally nor attempt to take Santo out of the country, before he was allowed access to his own son.

They had not exchanged a single word between them since.

It had taken him a whole year to win the legal right to have Santo visit him in Italy. Before that it had been up to him to come to London if he wanted to spend time with his son. And even to this day Santo was collected from and returned to Catherine by his grandmother, so that his parents would not come into contact with each other.

In fact the only area where they remained staunchly amicable was where their son’s opinion of the other was concerned. Santo had the right to love them both equally, without feeling the pressure of having one parent’s dislike of the other to corrupt his view—a point brought home to them both by a stern grandmother, who had found herself flung into the role of referee between them at a time when their mutual hostility had been running at its highest.

So Catherine had grown used to listening smilingly for hours and hours at a time while Santo extolled all his adored papà’s many virtues, and she presumed that Vito had grown used to hearing the same in reverse.

But that didn’t mean the animosity between them had mellowed any through the ensuing years—only that they both hid it well for Santo’s benefit.

‘Actually, I was hoping to speak to Luisa,’ she explained as coolly and briefly as she could. ‘If you would get her for me, Vito, I would appreciate it.’

‘And I repeat,’ he responded, tight-lipped and incisive. ‘What is so wrong that you dare to ring here?’

In other words, he wasn’t going to play the game and allow Luisa to stand buffer between them, Catherine made wry note.

‘I would prefer to explain to Luisa,’ she insisted stubbornly.

She sensed more than heard his teeth snapping together. ‘Then of course you may do so,’ he smoothly replied. ‘When she arrives to collect my son from you in the morning …’

‘No, Vito—wait!’ she cried out, her long, slender legs launching her to her feet as panic went rampaging through her when she realised he was actually going to put the phone down on her! And suddenly she was trembling all over as she stood there waiting to find out what he would do, while a taut silence began to buzz like static against her eardrum.

The line was not severed.

As Catherine’s stress-muddied brain began to take that fact in, she also realised that Vito was not going to say another word until she said something worth him keeping the line open.

‘I’m having problems with Santo,’ she disclosed on a reluctant rush.

‘What kind of problems?’

‘The kind I prefer to discuss with Luisa,’ she replied. ‘Get her advice on w-what to do be-before she arrives here tomorrow …’

No wonder she was stammering, Catherine acknowledged grimly, because that last bit had been an outright lie. She was hoping to stop Luisa from coming here altogether. But the coward in her didn’t dare to tell that to Vito. Past experience warned her that he would just go totally ballistic.

‘You will hold the line, please,’ his cold voice clipped, ‘while I transfer this call to another telephone.’

Just like that, he was going to accede to her wishes and connect her with Luisa? Catherine could hardly believe her luck, and only just managed to disguise her sigh of relief as she murmured a polite, ‘Thank you.’

Then the line went dead. Some of the tension began seeping out of her muscles and she sank weakly back down onto the sofa, her insides still playing havoc at the shock contact with their worst enemy. But other than that she congratulated herself. The first words they had spoken to each other in years had not been that dreadful.

They hadn’t torn each other to shreds, at least.

Now she had to get her mind into gear and decide what she was going to tell Luisa. The truth seemed the most logical road to take. But the truth had always been such a sensitive issue between them all that she wasn’t sure it was wise to use it now.

So, what do you say? she asked herself once again. Blame Santo’s distress on something at school? Or on the dual life he is forced to lead where one parent lives in London and the other in Naples?

Then there were the two different lifestyles the little boy had to deal with. The first being where average normality was stamped into everything, from the neat suburban London street they lived in, with its rows of neat middle-class houses, to the neat, normal kind of families that resided in each. While several thousand miles away, in a different country and most certainly in a different world, was the other kind of life. One that was about as far away from normal and average as life could get for most people, never mind a confused little boy. For instead of suburban Naples, Vito lived out in the country. His home was a palace compared to this house, his standard of living steeped in the kind of luxury that would fill most ordinary people with awe.

When Santo visited Naples, his papà took time off from his busy job as head of the internationally renowned Giordani Investments to give his son his full attention. And if it wasn’t his papà, his beloved grandmother was more than ready to pour the same amount of love and attention upon him.

Catherine had no other family. And she worked full time all the time, whether Santo was away or not. He had to accept that he was collected from school by a child-minder and taken home with her to wait until Catherine could collect him.

But all of that—or none of that—was what the child found upsetting. Santo was not really old enough yet to understand just what it was that was disturbing him so much. It had taken several skirmishes and a lot of patience for Catherine to begin to read between the lines of his angry outbursts.

Then, tonight, the final truth had come out, in the shape of a name. A name that had sent icy chills sweeping down her spine when she’d heard it falling from her own child’s lips. And not just the name but the way Santo had said it—with pain and anguish.

She knew those emotions, had first-hand experience of what they could do to your belief in yourself, in your sense of self-worth. She also knew that if what Santo had told her was the truth then she didn’t blame him for refusing to have anything to do with his Italian family. For hadn’t she responded in the same way once herself?

‘Right. Talk,’ a grim voice commanded.

Catherine blinked, her mind taking a moment to realise what was going on. ‘Where’s Luisa?’ she demanded, beginning to stiffen up all over again at the sound of Vito’s voice.

‘I do not recall saying I was going to bring my mother to the phone,’ he responded coolly. ‘Santo is my son, I will remind you. If you are having problems with my son, then you will discuss those problems with me.’

‘He is our son,’ Catherine corrected—while busily trying to reassess a situation that had promised to be complicated and touchy enough discussing it with Luisa. The very idea of having to say what she did have to say to Vito, of all people, was probably going to be impossible.

‘So at last you acknowledge that.’

The barb hit right on its chosen mark and Catherine’s lips snapped together in an effort to stop herself from responding to it.

It was no use. The words slipped out of their own volition. ‘Try for sarcasm, Vito,’ she drawled deridingly. ‘It really helps the situation more than I can say.’

A sound caught her attention. Not a sigh, exactly, more a controlled release of air from his lungs, and then she heard the subtle creak of leather that was so familiar to her that she knew instantly which room he was now in.

His father’s old study—now Vito’s study, since Lucio Giordani had passed away eighteen months after Santo had been born.

And suddenly she was seeing that room as clearly as she had seen Vito himself only minutes before. Seeing its size and its shape and its old-fashioned elegance. The neutral-coloured walls, the richly polished floor, the carefully selected pieces of fine Renaissance furniture—including the desk Vito was sitting behind.

‘Are you still there?’

‘Yes,’ she replied, having to blink her mind back into focus again.

‘Then will you please tell me what problems Santino has before I lose my patience?’

This time she managed to control the urge to retaliate to his frankly provoking tone. ‘He’s been having problems at school.’ She decided that was as good a place to start as any. ‘It began weeks ago, just after his last visit with you over there.’

‘Which in your eyes makes it my fault, I presume?’

‘I didn’t say that,’ she denied, though she knew she was thinking it. ‘I was merely attempting to fill you in with what has been happening.’

‘Then I apologise,’ he said.

Liar, she thought, heaving in a deep breath in an attempt to iron out any hint of accusation from her tone—though that wasn’t easy, given the circumstances. ‘He’s been disruptive in class,’ she made herself go on. ‘Angry all the time, and insolent.’ She didn’t add that Santo had been the same with her because that wasn’t important and would only confuse the issue. ‘After one such skirmish his teacher threatened to bring his parents in to school to speak to them about his behaviour. He responded by informing the teacher that his father lived in Italy and wouldn’t come, because he was rich and too important to bother with a nuisance like him.’

Catherine heard Vito’s indrawn gasp in response, and knew he had understood the import of what she was trying to tell him here. ‘Why would he say something like that, Vito?’ she questioned curtly. ‘Unless he has been led to believe it is true? He’s too young to have come up with a mouthful like that all on his own, so someone has to have said it to him first for him to repeat it.’

‘And you think it was me?’ he exclaimed, making Catherine sigh in annoyance.

‘I don’t know who it was!’ she snapped. ‘Because he isn’t telling!’ But I can damn well guess, she tagged on silently. ‘Now, to cut a long story short,’ she concluded, ‘he is refusing to go to Naples with Luisa tomorrow. He tells me that you don’t really want him there, so why should he bother with you?’

‘So you called here tonight to tell my mother not to come and collect him,’ he assumed from all of that. ‘Great way to deal with the problem, Catherine,’ he gritted. ‘After all, Santo is only saying exactly what you have been wishing he would say for years now, so you can get me right out of your life!’

‘You are out of my life,’ she responded. ‘Our divorce becomes final at the end of this month.’

‘A divorce you instigated,’ he pointed out. ‘Have you considered whether it is that little event that is causing Santo’s problems?’ he suggested. ‘Or maybe there is more to it than that,’ he then added tightly, ‘and I need to look no further than the other end of this telephone line to discover the one who has been feeding my son lies about me!’

‘Are you suggesting that I have been telling him that you think he’s a nuisance?’ she gasped, so affronted by the implication that she shot back to her feet. ‘If so, think again, Vito,’ she sliced at him furiously. ‘Because it isn’t me who is planning to remarry as soon as I’m free of you! And it isn’t me who is about to undermine our son’s position in my life by sticking him with the archetypal step-mamma from hell!’

Oh, she hadn’t meant to say that! Catherine cursed her own unruly tongue as once again the silence came thundering down all around her.

Yet, even having said it, her body was pumping with the kind of adrenaline that started wars. She was even breathing heavily, her green eyes bright with a bitter antagonism, her mouth stretched back from even white teeth that desperately wanted to bite!

‘Who the hell told you that?’ Vito rasped, and Catherine had the insane idea that he too was on his feet, and breathing metaphorical fire all over the telephone.

And this—this she reminded herself forcefully, is why Vito and I are best having no contact whatsoever! We fire each other up like two volcanoes.

‘Is it true?’ she countered.

‘That is none of your business,’ he sliced.

Her flashing eyes narrowed into two threatening slits. ‘Watch me make it my business, Vito,’ she warned, very seriously. ‘I’ll put a block on our divorce if I find that it’s true and you are planning to give Marietta any power over Santo.’

‘You don’t have that much authority over my actions any more,’ he derided her threat.

‘No?’ she challenged. ‘Then just watch this space,’ she said, and grimly cut the connection.

It took ten minutes for the phone to start ringing. Ten long minutes in which Catherine seethed and paced, and wondered how the heck she had allowed the situation to get so out of control. Half of what she had said she hadn’t meant to say at all!

On a heavy sigh she tried to calm down a bit before deciding what she should do next. Ring back and apologise? Start the whole darn thing again from the beginning and hope to God that she could keep a leash on her temper?

The chance of that happening was so remote that she even allowed herself to smile at it. Her marriage to Vito had never been anything but volatile. They were both hot-tempered, both stubborn, both passionately defensive of their own egos.