His Wedding Ring Of Revenge. Julia James

it did, in my naïve stupidity. I thought that at least my body existed.

      But it hadn’t. Only one thing had mattered to him about her.

      Over the wastes of eleven long years his words echoed in her mind.

      ‘I know exactly who you are—you’re the bastard daughter of my father’s whore…’

      That was who she was to Vito Farneste. It was all she ever had been. All she ever would be.

      And then, into the welling seepage of old, old bitterness, a new thought came. One that made her vicious with sudden satisfaction.

      She would be more to Vito Farneste.

      If he wanted to do business with her.

      Her shoulders pulled back with a minute, almost invisible straightening. Her gaze rested on his blank, impassive face, no trace of emotion, none whatsoever, in her eyes.

      And she pitched.

      ‘There are conditions,’ she began.

      Vito held himself still. Every fibre, every muscle in his body was under total control.

      It was essential.

      If he had not imposed such ruthless control over his body it would have hurled itself from his chair, thrust past his desk and his hands would have curved around the shoulders of the woman who dared, dared to stand there offering him conditions, and he would have shaken her, and shaken her and shaken—

      His mind slammed down. Even allowing himself the image was lethal. It might take over and become reality.

      Instead, he merely continued sitting there, quite motionless.

      Surveying her.

      Rachel Vaile.

      Crawling out of the woodwork after seven years.

      Although in an outfit like that she wouldn’t be soiling her knees or laddering her stockings by crawling anywhere.

      His eyes took in every detail.

      The hair, the suit, the nails, the accessories.

      He ran up a price tag for the total look.

      Five hundred pounds? Easily—another few hundred if you added the shoes and the handbag.

      Where was she getting the money from?

      The answer knifed through his head, making the question obsolete.

      Other men.

      Well… He eased the sudden, inexplicable tensing of his shoulders as the answer formed in his mind. She certainly had the right genes for it.

      A family profession…

      He went on surveying her.

      Not that she needed the family link to trade on. Her looks had matured at last. She was, he thought dispassionately, at the very peak of her physical appeal now. And she certainly knew how to package herself.

      The knifeblade went through him again, but he ignored it. It was as incomprehensible as it was irrelevant.

      He went back to studying her physical appeal.

      She didn’t flaunt that racehorse leanness, that ash-blonde fall of hair, those wide, haunting eyes and the tender mouth…

      No!

      A blade sliced down over his mind.

      Fine. She looked superb. Resplendent. Fantastic.

      So what? Now move on. Her looks had nothing to do with him.

      Nothing about Rachel Vaile had anything to do with him.

      They never had and they never would.

      Only one thing about Rachel Vaile was of any concern to him.

      The price she was intending to exact.

      Sitting back calmly in his chair, he merely allowed the sweep of his lashes to lower minutely over his eyes.

      ‘And your price is—?’

      There was contempt in his voice. He didn’t even bother to hide it.

      Did something move in her face? He couldn’t tell. But she answered in the same voice as she had first spoken. ‘I didn’t say “price”. I said “conditions”.’

      That spurt of rage iced through him again. She had the insolence to come here, forcing his hand like this—

      Because she was forcing it, all right! For three years—three years—he had tried by every means he could to get back what was his—his! His lawyers had been useless. Imbeciles! A gift, they had told him, was a gift. It conferred legal title on the recipient. And his father had, after all, given his mistress many gifts. Valuable ones. Expensive ones. Including jewellery…

      Vito had cut off their prating with an oath.

      ‘Dio mio, do you seriously mean to compare the trashy baubles he gave his whore with the piece she stole from him?’

      His lawyers had looked even more spineless and useless.

      ‘It would be difficult to assert that she did so in a court of law, Signor Farneste,’ one of them had ventured uneasily.

      Vito had rounded on him mercilessly. ‘Cretino! Of course she stole it! My father was no fool! He didn’t even give her the villa! Why the hell would he have given her something worth even more?’

      ‘Perhaps as a token of…ah…appreciation…er…instead of the…ah…villa?’

      Vito had stilled. A closed, deadly look had come over his face. In a soft, lethal voice that had made the lawyer step back automatically, he had said. ‘You think so, do you? Tell me, what man gives his mistress his wife’s wedding present? What man gives his whore the Farneste emeralds?’

      The Farneste emeralds.

      Rachel could still see them now. It had been nine months ago. Her mother had insisted on Rachel accompanying her to the bank. Demanded she go into a little room, set aside, where a bank official had brought a sealed parcel to them and placed it on a table, together with a form. They had been left alone, and her mother had pulled off the restraining string around the boxlike parcel, unwrapping the brown paper to reveal a jewel box. Not a very grand one, just one that opened up, revealing a shallow upper layer and a deeper one beneath. Her mother had only glanced at the top layer, lifting it up out of the way to expose the lower one.

      And Rachel had gasped. She hadn’t been able to help it.

      A river of green fire had flashed in the light. Her mother had lifted it out and sat back. A look had settled on her face. An expression of extreme satisfaction. She’d let the jewels flow through her hands and given a deep, contented sigh.

      ‘It’s incredible!’ Rachel breathed.

      Her mother smiled.

      ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘And it’s mine.’

      There was a strange note in her voice. Not just pleasure at owning such a treasure. More than that. And Rachel recognised what it was.

      Triumph.

      A sense of foreboding started to sound in her.

      ‘The Farneste emeralds,’ said her mother. ‘And they’re mine.’

      Then a strange, haunted expression came into her eyes.

      She looked at Rachel.

      ‘They’ll be yours. Your inheritance.’

      Vito leant back in his chair behind the vast desk that befitted the chairman and chief executive of Farneste Industriale. The company was only three generations old, but the Farneste family went back a lot further than that. The Farnestes had been merchant princes at the time of the Renaissance, and though the family’s fortunes had fluctuated wildly over the intervening centuries, now, thanks to Enrico’s