The Italian's Final Redemption - Jackie Ashenden Page 0,5

that immediate action was the best kind of action.

Then again, she could be useful to him in all kinds of ways, especially if he wanted to eventually bring Armstrong down. Perhaps he wouldn’t be calling Alessio quite yet.

‘Seen enough?’ he asked, watching her.

She glanced at him, frowning ferociously. ‘How do you know that your security dealt with it? You didn’t look once.’

‘I don’t need to. My team is the best there is.’ He swivelled the screen back. ‘Your explanation, if you please.’

She took a little breath. ‘Okay. So, as I said, I’m here because I need your protection against my father. I managed to get away from him, but he’ll never let me go free. He’ll come for me whether I want to go back or not, and the only way to stay safe from him is to have someone to protect me. Which is where you come in.’

‘Lucky me,’ he said dryly. ‘Presumably you know who I am, Miss Armstrong? I mean, you didn’t wander into my office at random looking for a place to hide?’

The look she gave him was almost offended. ‘Of course I know who you are. I planned my escape meticulously, including coming to you. You’re my father’s enemy number one. You’re powerful and strong, and you have a great many resources. You don’t owe my father anything and apparently you can’t be bought.’ She pushed her glasses up her nose again in what was obviously a nervous gesture. ‘You’re incorruptible, which makes you perfect.’

She had done her homework, hadn’t she?

‘I’m not as perfect as I’m sure you’d like me to be,’ he said flatly. ‘What’s to stop me from taking you direct to the authorities right now, for example? You’re an accessory to a great many crimes, Miss Armstrong, and, as you’re no doubt aware, it is my stated aim to make sure people like you and your father are brought to justice swiftly.’

Her frown turned into a scowl. ‘I am not like my father.’

‘And yet you’re complicit in a number of illegal activities if my sources are correct, and they usually are.’

She went even whiter than she was already, making the dusting of freckles across her nose stand out, and highlighting the shadows beneath her eyes.

Now the little owl wasn’t just afraid, she was terrified.

Vincenzo had a reputation for ruthlessness, and some would have called him cruel. He supposed they could be correct about that. His world was a very black and white one, and it needed to be, since his personal mission in life didn’t allow time to debate moral quandaries or sort out grey areas. He turned everyone over to the authorities and let them sort the innocent from the guilty, which could be interpreted as cruelty by some people.

It didn’t bother him. He didn’t care how other people interpreted his actions.

And he wasn’t sure what the strange tightness was that whispered through him when he looked at the terrified young woman sitting across his desk. But it was there all the same. It was almost like...pity.

Her chin came up then, her narrow shoulders squaring slightly, as if she were facing down a firing squad.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘You’re right, I am complicit. But prisoners don’t get choices, especially when they’re being threatened, and I didn’t have the luxury of refusing. Believe me or don’t, it’s up to you. Just promise me that you will keep me safe from my father.’

She was wrong. Everyone had a choice, even if you didn’t like the choice you were given.

‘And why would I promise you a single thing?’ he enquired, keeping the question casual.

Her gaze turned ever more determined. ‘Because I can give you everything you need to take my father down.’

CHAPTER TWO

LUCY HAD KNOWN nothing but fear for most of her life and was used to it. But the fear that gripped her as she sat opposite Vincenzo de Santi was unlike any she’d ever known.

And she couldn’t work out why.

Her father’s men had been dealt with efficiently—she’d seen just how efficiently on that camera feed—and so there shouldn’t have been any reason for her to remain scared. Yet she was, and now it had less to do with her father than it did with the man sitting opposite her.

He was still lounging there in that casual pose, to all intents and purposes bored. But his eyes glittered like black jewels and they did not move from her face, not even once. He was all coiled menace and a ruthlessness that she could almost