Modern Romance April 2019 Books 1-4. Heidi Rice

      All was quiet within his family circle as well. His younger sister, Arianna, for a long time a source of concern, was finally settled and on the brink of marrying a suitable man, with whom she was currently sharing a home in Florence. He had neither worries nor any thorny problems to tackle.

      In London to speak at a banking conference, he had been surprised to be invited to a meeting with the notoriously reclusive Stamboulas Fotakis at his palatial and multi-storeyed London apartment. Fotakis was one of the richest men in the world but Raffaele had never met him and naturally he was curious to discover what had prompted such an invitation. He was also curious about the man himself, he acknowledged wryly. Over the years, reams had been written about Stam Fotakis and even if half of the stories could be discounted as nonsense, what remained was the stuff of legend.

      Raffaele raked impatient fingers through his cropped black hair and checked his designer watch. Being kept waiting was a new experience for him. Raised to believe that good manners were integral to good business practice, Raffaele frowned, dark-as-charcoal eyes flaring with irritation. Clearly, Fotakis was running late but Raffaele was keen to get back to his town house and unwind after a very long day spent answering stupid questions and being sociable. Raffaele had a very low tolerance threshold for fools. Labelled a genius at school, he was impatient, extremely organised and only happy when following a precise schedule.

      A PA, a beautiful blonde, entered the reception room and ushered him into a lift, where she tried to strike up a conversation and flirt with him. Stiffening in exasperation at her hair-tossing, fluttering eyelashes and lingering glances, Raffaele behaved much like a man swatting off a fly. Women came on to him all the time and it often irritated him. It got in the way of normal dialogue and tainted the professional atmosphere of an office environment. If she had been working for Raffaele, he would have instantly sacked her for such a display.

      Women had their place in his life, of course they did. Raffaele had a high sex drive, as with many other thirty-year-old men. But he was infinitely more discreet than most. He chose his lovers with care and none of his affairs lasted longer than a few weeks. There was even a good reason for that brief timescale. Raffaele had eventually worked out that the longer he spent with a woman, the more attached and ambitious and indiscreet she became. As he had no intention of getting married until he was in his forties and mature enough to make a wise choice, he enjoyed sex only as long as it came without strings.

      Raffaele was shown into a wood-panelled office of almost Victorian magnificence. Another door opened and a small white-haired, bearded man appeared. He immediately lifted the fat file on the desk and extended it to Raffaele. ‘Mr di Mancini,’ Stam Fotakis murmured flatly.

      ‘Mr Fotakis.’ Somewhat disconcerted by the lack of social chit-chat even though he had very little time for such time-wasting pursuits, Raffaele accepted the file and took the seat his host indicated.

      ‘Give me your thoughts on that,’ Stam invited smoothly.

      As Raffaele leafed ever more slowly through the incredibly detailed file with a rare sense of growing horror, he breathed in slow and deep to steady himself. Arianna’s every mistake seemed to be included in that file and there were one or two that not even Raffaele had known about. He swallowed hard on his shock at being presented with such a shady dossier on his little sister’s past activities.

      ‘What are you planning to do with this information?’ Raffaele enquired in as civil a tone as he could manage because he was angry, seriously angry, and that was an emotion he rarely experienced but instinctively knew had to be controlled.

      His host surveyed him steadily. ‘That very much depends on you. It will be released to the tabloid press only if you disappoint me,’ he revealed quietly.

      ‘That is an unthinkable threat,’ Raffaele breathed tautly. ‘I cannot believe that my sister has ever done you any harm.’

      ‘Let me explain the connection,’ Stam urged him stonily. ‘It’s the tale of two young women, one born into rank and privilege and great wealth...your sister.’

      ‘And the other?’ Raffaele prompted impatiently.

      ‘Born into poor circumstances and raised without any advantages but nonetheless a hard-working, educated and respectable young woman...and my granddaughter.’

      ‘Your granddaughter,’ Raffaele repeated blankly, still trying to fathom at top speed what Stam Fotakis could possibly want from him to warrant such a threat.

      ‘Vivien Mardas, better known as Vivi,’ Stam supplied. ‘For a little while she was a friend of your sister’s.’

      Raffaele went rigid, the link established and comprehension now possible. ‘I remember her,’ he said stiffly. ‘She is a member of your family?’

      ‘Yes,’ Stam said, equally stiffly. ‘And I am as protective of her as you are of your sister and determined to rectify any injustices she has suffered.’

      Raffaele remained diplomatically silent, for a slow, deep anger was burning like hellfire inside him as he joined the dots and hit pay dirt. When he had known her, Vivi had definitely been unaware that she had a very rich and powerful grandfather. Evidently, having discovered that no doubt welcome reality, she had lied about the less presentable parts of her past in an effort to cover them up.

      ‘Injustices?’ he prompted flatly.

      ‘You ruined her reputation by referring to her as a prostitute. As that ludicrous designation and the story is still available online to anyone who cares to look her up, Vivi found it impossible to find a job commensurate with her abilities,’ Stam revealed. ‘She suffered a great deal for someone who was innocent of fault. Her friends dropped her, her name was bandied about. She was laughed at, despised and she was obliged to leave jobs until she was finally forced to legally take another surname to hide that embarrassing past. She is now known as Vivien Fox.’

      Raffaele nodded, that little sob story of Vivi’s woes touching him not at all. Of course, he wasn’t an elderly man, keen to believe only the best of his grandchild, he reasoned without hesitation. He was cool, logical, innately critical and suspicious, particularly when it came to labelling a woman an innocent. He had yet to meet a genuinely innocent woman.

      He remembered Vivi very well. Hair that glittered like copper wire in the sunlight but which felt like spun silk. A tall, beautiful redhead, who could look impossibly elegant in anything she wore, even jeans. Skin like translucent porcelain and eyes as brilliant a blue as the Italian summer sky. He also remembered how very close he had come to succumbing to her wiles, even though she didn’t fit his preferred expectations of a woman in any field. He had had a narrow escape there and he was still grateful for it and not one bit regretful for anything he had said that could have offended Stam Fotakis.

      Unless his misfortune in offending Stam was to lead to his kid sister being harmed, he adjusted grudgingly. And harmed Arianna very definitely would be, if that dossier of her past foolishness was ever to be released to the press, because her fiancé’s family were very conventional, and he would come under a lot of pressure to ditch her. That would send Arianna reeling and straight back into the erratic behaviour she had left behind her after falling in love with Tomas.

      ‘I don’t know what you want from me,’ Raffaele intoned levelly. ‘But I cannot believe that you genuinely want to injure another naive young woman like my sister. Arianna was born with problems.’

      Stam lifted a silencing hand. ‘I know she was born addicted to drugs and suffers from poor impulse control. I know she’s not particularly bright and is far too trusting of strangers, but she’s not my responsibility, she’s yours,’ he pointed out calmly. ‘To make restitution, I want you to marry Vivi and give her your illustrious name.’

      ‘Marry her?’ Raffaele exclaimed in angry disbelief before he clenched his jaw shut and bit back any unwise comments as to the likelihood of Vivi’s much-vaunted innocence.

      ‘Only for the ceremony, suitably publicised to give her proper standing in society,’ Stam continued in the same mild tone, much as though he were discussing the