The Italian's Final Redemption - Jackie Ashenden

CHAPTER ONE

LUCY ARMSTRONG HAD planned her own kidnapping meticulously.

Something simple, that wouldn’t cause a fuss, and that would ultimately allow her to get away from her controlling father once and for all.

It wouldn’t be easy. She was a valuable commodity to Michael Armstrong, and not for being his daughter, no, that was the very least of it. A tutor her father had hired for her had discovered she was a genius with numbers and had understood money from an early age, and had passed that discovery on to her father. He’d soon found a use for her, making sure she laundered all that ill-gotten money, and he would definitely not let her go without a fight. He guarded her assiduously and jealously, the same way he’d guarded her mother.

However, Lucy only needed an hour’s physical freedom, long enough for her to implement stage two of her three-stage plan.

Stage two being to throw herself on the mercy of her father’s enemy.

Stage three to request that he kidnap her and hide her for the short amount of time it would take to ensure that she disappeared without a trace so Michael would never find her again.

It wasn’t the best plan she could come up with—she didn’t like relying on other people—but her mother’s death could not be in vain. Lucy had made a promise to her mother before she’d died, that she wouldn’t let herself be kept a prisoner the way her mother had been. That she would get away from Michael, no matter what the cost. And of the few other scenarios she’d run, this one was most likely to keep her out of her father’s clutches for ever.

Or so she hoped. She’d allowed for all kinds of variables, and could predict most things with surety, but she couldn’t account for everything.

The main variable being him.

Vincenzo de Santi. Her father’s enemy number one.

She’d done her research. The de Santis were an old and infamous Italian crime family for whom her father had once worked—at least until the matriarch had been imprisoned and her son, Vincenzo, took over. Then his crusade against the big crime families of Europe began.

One by one Vincenzo had taken them down and turned them in, including his own mother, it was reputed. The de Santi business empire—once a hotbed of white-collar crime—had been cleaned out, all sources of corruption and illegal activity removed. Now it was the very model of a business that excelled. Legally.

Vincenzo de Santi had been ruthless in his quest to drag his family back over to the right side of the law, and with other families in his sights he’d made a lot of enemies. Including her father, who hated him and had sworn to take him down.

Which made him both the perfect target and the perfect refuge.

Lucy peered up at the old, graceful ivy-covered building opposite the bus stop she was currently sitting in.

She’d managed to get hold of de Santi’s schedule, and his visit to London to check on several of his family’s businesses was timely, not to mention useful—for her plan to work she had to talk to him directly and not be dismissed by flunkeys. Right now he was checking on one of his family’s auction houses and she’d decided this was the perfect place to throw herself on his mercy. Far less security than the big skyscraper near the river and it was in a quieter area of the city.

Still, she didn’t have a lot of time. The security detail that followed her wherever she went had no doubt already figured out that she hadn’t gone to powder her nose after all and were tearing up the cafe she’d insisted they stop at trying to find her.

And find her they would, she had no illusions about that.

Which meant she needed to get to stage two of her plan, and quickly.

Keeping her head down, Lucy hurried across the road to the de Santi auction house and pushed through the ornate double doors.

It was cool inside, her footsteps echoing on the marble floor as she walked towards the reception desk. A nearby waiting area was furnished with richly upholstered couches, but there was no one currently waiting. There were pictures on the walls, sculptures on the tables and various other precious items displayed in cases. Silence permeated the place. The kind of silence that only the astonishingly rich and important could buy.

Lucy ignored the art the way she ignored most things, keeping her attention on what was in front of her,