The Italian's Final Redemption - Jackie Ashenden Page 0,15

on the promise she’d made to her mother after all.

She swallowed, and smoothed her dress again, keeping her gaze on the green fabric while listening to the fluid lilt of his voice.

Eventually, he stopped speaking and she looked up at him. He slipped his phone back into his pocket, his dark gaze impenetrable. ‘You can relax. There will be no cell for you.’

Relief swept through her and it was a good thing she was sitting down, otherwise she would have fallen. ‘Oh?’ she managed thickly. ‘Then where will you keep me?’

‘I have a house here in London. You will be going there.’ His gaze was as hard and sharp as obsidian. ‘It’s not a cell, Miss Armstrong, but believe me, it is still a prison.’

She didn’t doubt that, not for a second. Yet somehow the knot inside her had become a little less tight. It wasn’t freedom, no, but at least it wasn’t some dark hole where she would be left for hours on end.

‘I didn’t think you had any mercy left,’ she said, which in retrospect probably wasn’t the wisest of things to say to him.

He only looked at her, his expression as neutral as his tone. ‘As I said, I don’t like my tools broken. And you’re no use to me if you’re catatonic with fear.’

Lucy swallowed again. Perhaps she was wrong after all. Perhaps the way he’d held her and soothed her had purely been from self-interest.

Why do you care what his reasons are? You’re safe. That’s the only thing that matters.

It was true. And she didn’t care about his reasons. She only wanted to know so she had hope that she might be able to change his mind about handing her over to the police. That hope was still there, especially if he thought of her as useful.

In which case, she would make herself as useful as she possibly could for as long as she possibly could.

‘Thank you,’ she said.

‘Don’t thank me yet.’ His gaze was very intent. ‘You’re not going alone.’

Vincenzo took a dim view of people’s emotional...difficulties. He’d encountered them many times in his little crusade for justice and they always left him cold. Some people pleaded with him, weeping and going to pieces, while others got angry, throwing punches and shouting curses. Some even did what Miss Lucy Armstrong did, collapsing in fear as their lives unravelled before their eyes.

He was always impervious. He didn’t let any of those emotional storms touch him, refusing to be manipulated by tears or curses, or white-faced panic. Much of the time it was all for show anyway, people thinking they could get him to change his mind with a few moving emotional scenes. They were always wrong.

His mother had been the queen of emotional manipulation and he could see through such fakery very easily.

So he wasn’t sure what had made him gather Michael Armstrong’s daughter up in his arms as her eyes had rolled back into her head and she’d nearly fallen off her chair. It was just the kind of thing that some people tried to get his sympathy or his pity, and so he should have let her fall onto the ground. Or let his security drag her off to the small office bathroom he’d planned on locking her in.

Yet he hadn’t. No, he’d darted forward as her glasses had fallen off her nose and she’d started to list to the side, pulling her into his arms and going to sit on the sofa with her in his lap. Holding her tight as she’d shivered and trembled. She’d been so pale, and without her glasses guarding her face he was able to see clearly the scattering of freckles across her small, straight nose. A delicate, vulnerable face, with a decidedly stubborn, pointed chin and that luscious, full mouth. Not beautiful and yet not without charm. Her lashes were long and thick and dark, the same as the untidy mass of hair flowing over his arm. And he’d been surprised by the feel of decidedly feminine curves against him. He could have sworn she’d be very slight and skinny, but she definitely wasn’t. No, she was warm and soft. And then when she’d come to and had seen his guards, and had clutched at his shirt, trying to press herself closer against him, as if he could protect her...

His chest had gone oddly tight and he’d sent his security away before he’d even had a chance to think straight.

Why had he done that? Why had