The Italian's Final Redemption - Jackie Ashenden Page 0,27

friends? No family?’

‘No. I had some online friends he didn’t know about, but no one in real life. The only people I could speak with were him and my guards. But I didn’t like speaking to the guards because they were...’ She stopped.

But he could fill in the blanks. ‘They frightened you?’

She lifted a shoulder, clearly not wanting to admit it.

‘How long have you been a prisoner?’ he asked, even though he shouldn’t want to know, that it didn’t matter. That being a prisoner was no less than what she deserved.

‘Since I was seven.’ Her hands rested beside her plate, still and tense.

‘And how old are you now?’

‘Twenty-two.’

Fifteen years she’d been her father’s prisoner. Fifteen years.

He was aware that another sensation had joined the tightness in his chest, something hot that felt like anger, though it couldn’t have been. Because she was a criminal and needed to face justice, and it seemed that she’d served fifteen years of equivalent jail time already. A just sentence. Especially when she would have been committing even more crimes in that time.

She has been alone all her life. Like you have been alone.

No, it was not the same. And he wasn’t alone. He had his staff and business colleagues, and anyway, he didn’t need anyone. The path he’d chosen for himself was one he could only walk himself. No one else could walk beside him and he’d known that when he’d chosen it.

You are serving a sentence just like her.

He ignored that thought. His own guilt had nothing to do with this and he didn’t need that contributing to the already tangled knot of emotions inside him. Emotions that he would have told himself even a day ago he no longer felt.

He was a fool. He shouldn’t be sitting here talking to her about her life. He had better things to be doing with his time.

Vincenzo put his glass down on the table with a click. ‘None of that matters, of course. You are guilty, Miss Armstrong. And at the end of the week you will pay for your crimes.’

CHAPTER FIVE

LUCY COULD HEAR the certainty in his deep, cool voice and it sent yet more chills through her. Clearly he’d finished making conversation. And he had been making conversation, that was obvious.

She shouldn’t have asked him all those questions. She’d only been...curious about him and why this justice crusade he was on was so important, and she shouldn’t have been. Curiosity had always got her into trouble and she shouldn’t indulge it.

Sadly, he hadn’t given her reasons for his crusade, though that was understandable. As he’d said, a prisoner didn’t interrogate her captor.

And he’s right that you should pay. You are guilty.

A shiver chased over her skin. If she was guilty of anything, it was of not standing up to her father. Of cowardice. Except cowardice didn’t deserve a jail term.

However, he certainly seemed to think it did. She had to change his mind somehow, convince him to let her go.

Incorruptible, they said of him, but, as her father liked to remind her, every man had his price.

What was Vincenzo de Santi’s?

Slowly she raised her head and looked at him, her heart thudding strangely in her chest as she met his inky gaze.

He was leaning back in his chair, the casual arrogance he carried around with him everywhere he went even more palpable. The menace that gathered like a cloak at his back even stronger. He was dark and he was dangerous and yes, she was frightened.

But she was always frightened. Of everything. She’d been frightened since she’d been seven years old and her mother had died right in front of her eyes.

Yet Kathy hadn’t let fear of her husband stop her from protecting her daughter. She’d been brave; why couldn’t Lucy follow her example?

You have other weapons at your disposal, remember?

She frowned, trying to puzzle the thought out, because what other weapon could there be?

He is a man and you are a woman...

A flash of heat seared her skin, passing over her so fast she barely had time to draw a breath before she could feel burning in her cheeks. Burning everywhere.

Because he was a man and the way he’d looked at her earlier, unable to tear his gaze from her bare shoulder, had been very much the way a man a looked at a woman. He’d been...hungry...

The heat deepened. She’d never thought of having a lover, had never liked the idea of getting that close to a man, not after what her