Was she that audacious? Or did she believe she was too ingenious to be exposed? If she
were
still secure in his obliviousness, she wouldn’t conceive of any other reason he’d stay away while his security team investigated how his research results kept being leaked in spite of their measures.
Good. He preferred to play it that way. It gave him the perfect opportunity to play the misdirection card.
“There haven’t been any breaches.” He pretended a calm that had to be his greatest acting effort. “Ever.”
Momentary relief was chased away with deepening confusion. “But you told me…” She stopped, at a loss for real this time.
Si,
that was a genuine reaction at last. For he
had
told her—every detail of the incidents and the upheavals he’d suffered as his life’s work was being systematically stolen. And she’d pretended such anguish at his losses, at her helplessness to help him.
“Nothing I told you was true. I let decoy results get leaked. I had great pleasure imagining the spies’ reactions when they realized
that,
not to mention imagining their punishment for delivering useless info. No one knows where or what my real results are. They’re safe until I’m ready to disclose them.”
Every word was a lie. But he hoped she’d relay those lies to her recruiters, hopefully making them discard it without testing it and finding out it
was
the real deal.
That chameleon hid her shock, seamlessly performing uncertainty with hurt hovering at its edges. “That’s fantastic…but…why didn’t you tell
me
that? You thought you were being monitored? Even…here?” She hugged herself, as if to ward off invasive eyes. “But a simple note would have saved me endless anguish, and I would have acted my part for the spies.”
He gritted his teeth. “Everyone got the version I needed them to believe, so my opponents would believe it along with them. Only my most trusted people got the truth.”
She stilled. As if afraid to let his words sink in. “And I’m not among those?”
Searing relief scalded through him, that she’d finally given him the opening to vent some antipathy. “How could you be? You were supposed to be a brief liaison, but you were too clingy and I had no time for the hassle of terminating things with you. Not before I found an as-convenient replacement, anyway.”
If he could believe anything from her anymore, he would have thought his words had stabbed her through the heart.
“R-replacement…?”
His lips twisted. “With my schedule, I can only afford sexual partners who jump at my commands. That’s why you were so convenient, being so…compliant. But such accommodating lovers are hard to come by. I let one go when I find another. As I have.”
Hurt blossomed in her eyes like ink through turquoise waters. “It wasn’t like that between us…”
“What did you think it was? Some grand love affair? Whatever gave you that impression?”
Her lips shook, her voice now a choking tremolo. “You did… You said you loved me….”
“I loved your…performance. You did learn to please me exceptionally well. But even such a…malleable sex partner only…keeps up my interest for a short while.”
“Was that all I am…was…to you? A sex partner?”
His heart quivered with the effort to superimpose the truth over her overwhelming act. “No. You’re right. A partner indicates a somewhat significant liaison. Ours certainly wasn’t that. Don’t tell me that wasn’t clear from day one.”
He could have sworn his words hacked her like a dull blade. If he didn’t have proof of her perfidy, the agony she simulated would have torn down his defenses. Its perfection only numbed him now, turning his heart to stone.
He wanted her to rant and rave and shed fake tears, giving him the pretext to tear harder into her. She only stared at him, tears a precarious ripple in her eclipsed eyes.
Then she whispered, “If—if this is a joke, please, stop…”
“Whoa. Did you actually believe you were more to me than a convenient lay?”
She jerked as if he’d backhanded her. His trembling hold on restraint slipped another notch. He had to get this over with before
he
started to rant, exposing the truth.
“I should have known you wouldn’t take the abundant hints. From the way you believed my every word it was clear you lack any astuteness. You sure didn’t become my executive projects manager through merit. But you’re starting to anger me, acting as if I owe you anything. I already paid for your time and services with far more than either was worth.”
Her tears finally overflowed.
They streaked her hectic cheeks in pale tracks, melting the last of his sanity, making him snarl, “Next time a man walks away, let him. If you’d rather not hear the truth about how worthless you were to him….”
“Stop…please…” Her hands rose, as if to block blows. “I know what I felt from you…it was real and intense. If—if you no longer feel this way, just leave me my memories….”
“Is that obliviousness or just obnoxiousness? Seems you’ve forgotten who I am, and don’t know the caliber of women I’m used to. But it’s not too late to give you a reality check. Your replacement is arriving in minutes. Care to hang around and get a sobering, humbling look at her?”
Her disbelief finally disintegrated and resignation seeped in to fill the vacuum it left behind.
She was giving up the act. At last. It was over.
He turned away, feeling like he’d just kicked down the last pillar in his world.
But she wouldn’t let it be over, her tear-soaked words lodging in his back like knives. “I…loved you, Vincenzo. I
believed
in you…thought you an exceptional human being. Turns out you’re just a sleazy user. And no one will ever know, since you’re also a flawless liar. I wish I’d never seen you…hope one of my ‘replacements’ pays you back…for what you’ve done to me.”
When his last nerve snapped, he rounded on her. “You want to get ugly, you got it. Get out or I won’t only make you wish you’d never seen me, but that you’d never been born.”
His threat had no effect on her; her eyes remained dead. Then, as if fearing she’d fall apart, she turned and exited the room.
He waited until a muted thud told him she’d left. Then he allowed the pain to overwhelm him.
One
The present
V
incenzo Arsenio D’Agostino stared at his king and reached the only logical conclusion.
The man had lost his mind.
He must have buckled under the pressure of ruling Castaldini while steering his multibillion-dollar business empire.
And
being the most adoring and attentive husband and father who walked the planet. No man could possibly weather all that with his mental faculties intact.
That must be the explanation for what he’d just said.
Ferruccio Selvaggio-D’Agostino—the bastard king, as his opponents called him, relishing it being a literal slur, since Ferruccio
was
an illegitimate D’Agostino—twisted his lips. “Do pick your jaw off the floor, Vincenzo. And no, I’m
not
insane. Get. A. Wife. ASAP.”
Dio.
He’d said it again.
This time Vincenzo found himself echoing it. “Get a wife.”
Ferruccio nodded.
“ASAP.”
“Stop
saying
that.”
Mockery gleamed in Ferruccio’s steel eyes. “You’ve got only yourself to blame for the rush. I’ve needed you on this job for
years,
but every time I bring you up to the council they go apoplectic. Even Leandro and Durante wince when your name is mentioned. That playboy image you’ve been diligently cultivating is now so notorious, even gossip columns are beginning to play it down. And that image won’t cut it in the leagues I need you to play in now.”
“That image never hurt
you.
Just look where you are today. The king of one of the most conservative kingdoms in the world, with the purest woman on earth as your queen.”
Ferruccio shrugged amusedly at his summation. “I was only known as the ‘Savage Ironman’ in reference to my name and business reputation, and my reported…hazard to women was beyond wildly exaggerated. I had no time for women as I clawed my way up from the gutter to the top, then I was in love with Clarissa for six years before she became mine. But your notoriety as one of the world’s premier womanizers won’t do when you’re Castaldini’s emissary to the United Nations. You’ve got to clean up your act and spray on some respectability to clear away the stench of the scandals that hang around you.”
Vincenzo scowled up at him. “If it’s depriving you of sleep, I’ll tone things down. But I certainly won’t ‘get a wife’ to appease some political fossils, aka your council. And I won’t join your, Leandro’s and Durante’s trio of henpecked husbands. You’re all just jealous you can’t have my lifestyle.”
Ferruccio gave him that look. The one that made Vincenzo feel hollow inside, made him feel like putting his fist through his king’s too-well-arranged face. It was the pitying glance of a man who knew bone-deep contentment and found nothing more pathetic than Vincenzo’s said lifestyle.
“When you’re representing Castaldini, Vincenzo, I want the media only to cover your achievements on behalf of the kingdom, not your conquests’ surgical enhancements or tell-alls after you exchange them for different models. I don’t want the sensitive diplomatic and economic agendas you’ll be negotiating to be overshadowed or even derailed by the media circus your lifestyle generates. A wife will show the world that you’ve changed your ways and will keep the news on the relevant work you’ll be doing.”
Vincenzo shook his head in disbelief. “
Dio!
When did you become such a stick in the mud, Ferruccio?”
“If you mean when did I become an advocate for marriage and family life, where have you been the last four years? I’m the living, breathing ad for both. And it’s time I did you the favor of shoving you onto that path.”
“What path? The one to happily ever after? Don’t you know that’s a mirage most men pursue to no avail? Don’t you realize you’ve beaten impossible odds in finding Clarissa? That not a man in a million will find a fraction of the perfection you share with her?”
Ferruccio pursed his lips. “I don’t know about those odds, Vincenzo. Durante found Gabrielle. Leandro found Phoebe.”
“Only two more flukes. You all had such terrible things happen during your childhoods and youths, unbelievably good stuff has been happening later in life in compensation. Having lived a blessed life early on, I seem to be destined to have nothing good from now on, to even out the cosmic balance. I will never find anything like the love you all have.”
“You’re doing everything in your power
not
to find love, or to let it find you—”
Vincenzo interrupted him. “I’ve only accepted my fate. Love is not in the cards for me.”
“And that’s
exactly
why I want you to get a wife,” Ferruccio interrupted back. “I don’t want you to spend your life without the warmth and intimacy, the allegiance and certainty only a good marriage can bring.”
“Thanks for the sentiment. But I can’t have any of that.”
“Because you haven’t found love? Love
is
a plus, but not a must. Just look at your parents’ example. They started out suitable in theory and turned out right for each other in practice. Pick someone cerebrally and once she’s your wife, the qualities that logically appealed to you will weave a bond between you that will strengthen the longer you are together.”
“Isn’t that an inverted way of doing things? You loved Clarissa first.”
“I thought I did, with everything in me. But what I felt for her was a fraction of what I feel for her now. Going by my example, if you start out barely liking your wife, after a year of marriage you’ll be ready to die for her.”
“Why don’t you just acknowledge that you’re the luckiest bastard alive, Ferruccio? You may be my king and I may have sworn allegiance to you, but it’s not good for your health to keep shoving your happiness in my face when I already told you there’s no chance I’ll find anything like it.”
“I, too, once believed I had no chance at happiness, either, that emotionally, spiritually, I’d remain vacant, with the one woman I wanted forever out of reach while I was incapable of settling for another.”
Was Ferruccio just counterarguing with his own example? Or was he putting two and two together and realizing why Vincenzo was so adamant that he’d never find love?
Suddenly, bitterness and dejection ambushed him as if they’d never subsided.
Ferruccio went on, “But you’re pushing forty…”
“I’m thirty-eight!”
“…
and
you’ve been alone since your parents died two
decades
ago…”
“I’m not alone. I have friends.”
“
Whom
you don’t have time for and who don’t have time for you.” Ferruccio raised his hand, aborting Vincenzo’s interjection. “Make a new family, Vincenzo. It’s the best thing you can do for yourself, and incidentally, for the kingdom.”
“Next you’ll dictate the wife I should ‘get.’”
“If you don’t decide on one on your own,
ASAP,
I will.”
Vincenzo snorted. “Is that crown you’ve been wearing for the last four years too tight? Or is your head getting bigger? Or is it the mind-scrambling domestic bliss?”
Ferruccio just smiled that inexorable smile of his.
Knowing the kind of laserlike determination Ferruccio had, Vincenzo knew there was no refusing him.
Might as well give in. To an extent he found acceptable.
He sighed. “If I take the position…”
“
If
implies this is a negotiation, Vincenzo. It isn’t.”
“…
it
will be only for a year…”
“It will be until I say.”
“A
year.
This isn’t up for negotiation, either. There will be no more ‘scandals’ in the rags, so this wife thing…”
Ferruccio gave him his signature discussion-ending smile. “Is also nonnegotiable. ‘Get a wife’ wasn’t a suggestion or a request. It’s a royal decree.”