The Italian's Final Redemption - Jackie Ashenden Page 0,19
fingers lax in his. She was staring down at her lap, all the defiance and mulishness leached out of her.
She looked defeated.
It should have satisfied him that he’d managed to break her, should have counted it as a win, and yet he didn’t feel satisfied. And this didn’t feel like winning.
This felt as if he’d destroyed something fragile and precious, and he didn’t understand why. In fact, none of this made any sense. She was a criminal, regardless of whether she’d been forced into it or not, and as far as he was concerned she was guilty. He should have no feeling about her whatsoever. So why he should feel something tight in his chest and an anger in his soul he had no idea.
Perhaps it was only that he was annoyed with himself at his own clumsiness with her. He wasn’t supposed to break her after all. He was supposed to be subtle. It wasn’t his usual way—he preferred the direct approach, always—but he was going to have to try it at least, that much was clear. He didn’t want her so terrified that she was useless to him, and if he carried on the way he was going that was exactly what she would be.
It was time for what the English called the ‘softly, softly’ approach.
‘Give me your other hand,’ he said quietly, and when she did so without protest he laid it over the top of the hand he was holding, keeping the napkin pressed to her skin.
Then he released her and straightened, looking down into her pale face. ‘I can give you a week. No, it will not be complete freedom, but I can give you a small taste of it none the less. The price, though, remains the same. All the information you have on your father and your expertise to take down anyone associated with him.’ He hesitated then said, ‘If you do this, I will put in a good word with the authorities. Perhaps it will help make your sentence lighter.’
Her forehead creased, her gaze still wary. But he could see something glowing in it, something that looked a little like hope.
Poor civetta. She shouldn’t hope. Hope was merely a drug to ease the pain and it only made everything worse when it ran out.
‘Okay,’ she said slowly. ‘How do I know that you’ll keep your word, though? That you won’t put me in a cell or hand me over to the authorities the moment I give you anything?’
‘You won’t know.’ He was not in the habit of sugar-coating anything and he didn’t now. ‘My word shall have to suffice.’
CHAPTER FOUR
LUCY TRIED NOT to be excited, but she couldn’t help it as the small private jet touched down in Naples. She’d never left England before, had barely even left Cornwall, and now here she was in an entirely different country. It was almost overwhelming.
De Santi had dealt with customs technicalities with astonishing ease. He’d somehow produced a passport for her, even though she’d never had one, and she’d barely had a chance to look around after disembarking the aircraft before she found herself bundled into a helicopter. Then they were in the air again, flying over the sprawling city of Naples and then over the deep blue water of the ocean.
She couldn’t drag her gaze from the sight of it. She didn’t know where they were going—de Santi hadn’t told her—and she didn’t care. All that mattered was the wide blue of the water below her.
Finally, the sea. She’d listened to the waves at night in her bedroom in her Cornwall prison, but the house had no views and so she’d never seen the source of the sounds. Never seen such an expanse of blue.
She didn’t know why it hypnotised her but it did.
Liar. You know exactly why you’re letting it hypnotise you.
Okay, so, yes, she did. Staring at the sea was infinitely better than being conscious of the man sitting so closely beside her. Tall and powerful and utterly silent. He hadn’t said a word the whole trip, at least not to her. He’d spent most of it on the phone talking to other people or looking intently at his laptop. A busy man, was Vincenzo de Santi, with a vast family business to run—since both his parents were now in prison and he had no other siblings, he had to run it alone—and a personal mission to take down as many of the European crime syndicates as he could.
Except somehow he’d