Blackmailed by the Italian Billionaire

Chapter Sixteen



“Would you like to go to the races, Lia?”

They were lying in bed. Luc had made love to her, and her body felt languid and replete. She thought about the question.

“Where? When? Why?”

He laughed. “In Rome. Today. And because I have a horse running.”

“A horse? You have a horse?”

“I have several. I inherited them from my grandfather. Now I keep them because I like to go to the races.”

She pulled herself up, dragging the sheet over her breasts. “Is it okay for us to go out?”

“I would think so. And much as I would like to, we can’t stay in seclusion forever.”

They had been on the island for over a week. Lia experienced the occasional pang of guilt when she thought about her job, but she thrust it to the back of her mind. She was falling in love. She accepted it now. She didn’t know what the future held, but she was certain that Luc felt something for her, and for the moment that had to be enough.

They took a helicopter ride to the racetrack. Lia had dressed in another of the outfits Maggie had chosen for her and she knew she looked good. Luc had even told her so. He was dressed in a perfectly cut silver-gray suit with a white silk shirt open at the throat, and he looked so damn hot. He touched her all the time, his hand at her waist as they walked or his arm around her shoulder as if he couldn’t bear to have her away from him. The day was warm and sunny, and Lia couldn’t conceive of anything going wrong. Many people approached them, but Luc dismissed them all politely but efficiently.

Luc’s horse won its race and they celebrated with champagne and strawberries. Everything was perfect, until Lia heard Luc swear softly. She glanced across to see a man approaching them. He came to a halt in front of Luc, and Lia studied him curiously. He appeared to be somewhere in his fifties, and he would have been handsome but for the furious scowl marring his features.

He spoke to Luc in rapid Italian that Lia had no hope of following. Luc had been teaching her, but this was too fast. Luc snapped a curt answer, and the man replied with another torrent of Italian.

Luc’s eyes were blank, but she could sense that he was on the point of losing his own temper. He waited until the man had finished, then replied in clipped tones. He finally nodded, slipped his arm around Lia’s waist, and led her away.

“Who was that?” Lia peeked over her shoulder to see the man still watching them through narrowed eyes.

“My mother’s husband.”

“He’s your stepfather?”

“Yes.” He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “She married him after she returned to Italy, but we really don’t have that sort of relationship. He was the lawyer she hired to get me out of prison. He overturned the case, but he never approved of me.”

“He seemed angry. What was he saying?”

“Nothing.”

“It didn’t sound like nothing.”

“It was nothing important. Nothing that should bother you. Come on, we’re leaving.”

He smiled at her, but for Lia the day was spoiled. She didn’t understand what was going on, and the fact that Luc wouldn’t explain increased her misgivings. Why had Luc’s stepfather been so angry? She knew they had been talking about her.

She’d spent the week ignoring the difficult questions she knew still existed between them, pushing unpleasant thoughts to the back of her mind, but they were still there. And the realization made her feel uneasy, as though things were fragile and could fall apart at any moment. A wave of panic threatened to topple her perfect dream world. She didn’t want it to end. She didn’t want to go back to real life.





A life without Luc.

…



Luc was distracted, almost distant, and that night his lovemaking held a hint of desperation she had never noticed before. The next morning, she woke to the sound of a helicopter landing. Luc was fully dressed, sitting on the edge of the bed. He took her hand.

“I have to go to Rome,” he said.

“What?” She sat up, pulling the sheet against her naked breasts. Her brain was befuddled from sleep. “Why? Can I come?”

He shook his head. “I have some business I need to see to, and you would be bored. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

He kissed her, and Lia clung to him for a brief moment. She let him go and watched him walk away.

…



She spent the morning sunbathing. When she heard the helicopter landing, she pulled on a robe and went running, expecting Luc to step out from it. Instead, a tall, elegant woman strolled across the tarmac toward her. Two men in dark suits, who could only be bodyguards, flanked her.

Lia stopped abruptly. The woman was beautiful, obviously Italian, and she knew instantly that she must be Luc’s mother. She forced herself to move toward her. After all, Maggie had said she was nice, friendly. Lia told herself she had nothing to fear, but glancing into the other woman’s face, she realized she looked anything but friendly—her face was cold and closed as she inspected Lia as though she was something unpleasant.

Lia had been holding out her hand to shake; now she dropped it to her side.

“Ms. Brent?”

Lia nodded.

“My name is Isabella Vittori. I am Luc’s mother.”

“Luc’s not here at the moment,” Lia said.

“I know. It is you I have come to speak to.”

“Do you want to come to the house?”

“No, this will not take long. Ms. Brent, I want you to leave my son alone.”

“What?” Lia asked, bewildered.

“It’s quite simple. I want you to pack your things and be gone before Luc returns.”

“I can’t do that.”

“Of course you can. I could not believe it when Stephano said he saw you yesterday. We read about you in the papers but did not believe for a moment that you would flaunt yourself in our faces in this way. Have you no shame?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Luc’s mother frowned. “You must know what your father was.”

“Yes, of course I know. But so does Luc. If it doesn’t bother him, why should you care? What can it possibly mean to you?”

Isabella was staring at Lia curiously. “You really don’t know, do you?”

Lia was engulfed in a horrible feeling of misgiving. She had an almost overwhelming urge to run and hide, anything to avoid what was coming next. There was a look of compassion in the other woman’s eyes. Somehow, it made Lia feel worse.

“No, you don’t know,” Isabella said softly. “But really, it makes no difference. What do you know?”

Lia gathered her thoughts together. “Just that Luc wants to find my father. He knew him before he went to prison, but then when Luc got out, he disappeared.”

“You know that Luc was innocent?”

“Yes, but what does that have to do with my father?”

“Your father set him up. Luc only acted in self-defense, but your father paid people or terrorized them into lying in court.”

“But why?”

“Because Luc was determined to find out what happened to his own father, and he was getting too close. Jimmy Brent was responsible for Luc’s father’s death, and Luc was determined to expose the truth.”

Lia wanted to shake her head, deny the words, but they all made horrible sense.

“Your father is an evil man,” Isabella said. “That scar on Luc’s face—Jimmy Brent is responsible for that. He wasn’t content with having Luc locked away—he paid people to have him killed in prison. Luckily, Luc had friends.”

Lia couldn’t take it in. Why hadn’t Luc told her? The questions went over and over in her brain. Why? Was he still planning revenge? Still using Lia as bait? She couldn’t bear it.

She swallowed. “I love him.”

Isabella studied her almost sadly. “It’s not enough. I don’t know what Luc is doing with you, using you somehow to get to your father perhaps. But whatever his reasons, it cannot end well. Luc hates your father. At one point, his whole life revolved around revenge. He got past that, but if he ever finds him, I’m not sure what he would do. Would you have Luc back in prison?” Her face hardened again. “Go away, Ms. Brent. Go away before that happens.”

“I can’t, I have to wait for Luc. I have no way to go.”

“There’s a boat waiting for you at the dock. It will take you to the mainland. A car will meet you there and take you to the airport. Here—” She thrust something into Lia’s hand. “It’s a plane ticket back to London for tonight.” She looked about to say more, then shook her head. “Do us all a favor and go home. Just leave Luc alone. Your family has done him enough harm.”

Lia watched as the helicopter rose slowly into the air amid a swirl of rose-colored dust. Luc’s mother’s face was at the window, staring back at Lia with what could only be pity on her patrician features. She raised a hand in farewell, but Lia didn’t return the gesture.

Her mind was numb; she walked slowly back to the villa and into their bedroom. The maid hadn’t yet been in, and the bed was still rumpled. Lia collapsed onto the mattress and buried her face in Luc’s pillow. She could still smell the sharp exotic cologne he wore, and she breathed in deeply. For long minutes, she lay there, not wanting to think.

She had been living in a fantasy world, totally suspending reality, a world where it was possible to fall in love and live happily ever after, but she had always known that such a world didn’t exist. All those years of watching her mother fall apart should have been proof enough of that.

She’d always known her father was not a good man, but that he had been responsible for Luc’s father’s death was unbelievable. Not only that, but he had nearly ruined Luc’s whole life. Set him up and then tried to finish the job. How could Luc not hate the man responsible for that? How could he not hate her?

Closing her eyes, she remembered his words that morning. She couldn’t believe Luc had done this all out of revenge as his mother had hinted. Oh, it may have been his motive at the start—in fact, she was sure it was, he had made no secret of it. But she was convinced that he felt something for her now.

But he had never actually told her he loved her, or even approached anything close to saying that. Then again, she had never said she loved Luc. Maybe he did care for her, but how could it ever be enough to overcome the betrayals of the past? And what would happen if her father did turn up? Could she stand by and see Luc destroy him? She had always hated him, but he was still her father. He was also Mike’s father. What would it do to her little brother? Luc had told her that anything he did would be legal, but that still wouldn’t prevent it from being splashed all over the newspapers. It was better for Mike that his father stay away from them all as he had done for the past ten years.

The thoughts kept going around and around in her head. Luc’s mother would never accept her, that was for sure, and even if Luc did care for her, Lia didn’t have the right to cause a rift between the two when her family was already responsible for so much.

Almost mechanically, she got to her feet. The envelope Luc’s mother had given her was still clutched in her hand, and she placed it carefully in her handbag. She opened the wardrobe and pulled out the suitcase, then pushed it back. The clothes weren’t hers. She would take nothing with her.

She scrawled a quick note; she had to say she was sorry. Leaving it on the dressing table, she pulled off the ring Luc had given her and laid it on top.

…



“Are you alright?”

Lia glanced up; a middle-aged woman was standing over her. “Sorry?” she asked not having heard the question.

“It’s just that my husband,” the woman nodded over in the direction of a man sitting across from them, “noticed you were crying.”

“What?” Lia reached up and wiped her hand across her face. Her cheeks were damp, and she realized she had been sitting quietly weeping and hadn’t noticed. She forced her lips into some semblance of a smile.

“I’m fine,” she murmured. “Really, just some bad news, but I’m okay. It was nice of you to ask. I’ll go clean up.”

She got up and hurried away, feeling their eyes watching her. In the ladies’ room, she splashed cold water on her face, dried it off with paper towels, and then slipped a pair of sunglasses on over her reddened eyes. When she came out, she wandered across to the other side of the lounge and took a seat at the end of a row. She still felt as though she was being watched, so she got up and bought a paper at one of the bookshops. She returned to her seat and burrowed her nose in it, not wanting to draw any more attention to herself. The words were a jumbled mass of unintelligible shapes in front of her, and it was in Italian anyway, but at least she felt camouflaged. Almost like a normal person, not one who felt as though she’d been ripped apart.

She allowed her mind to drift over the previous evening. How Luc had looked, how he had felt when he made love to her, the promise in his eyes.

“Lia?”

It was as though she had conjured him up. He stood over her, dressed as he had been that morning, his long, lean frame elegantly encased in a light gray silk suit, a white shirt open at the neck. For a moment, she couldn’t bring herself to face him, and she peered past. The woman who had spoken to her earlier was openly staring, as were many other women. Luc always had that effect. Finally, she gave in to temptation and peeked up. His dark hair was ruffled as though he had run his hands through it, his eyes were grim, and lines of strain were etched around his sensual mouth.

“Lia, why did you leave? Why didn’t you wait and talk to me?”

She blinked and shook her head as if coming out of a stupor. “Your mother came to see me.”

His eyes narrowed. “I know. I’ve just come from speaking with her. She had no right.”

“She bought me a ticket,” Lia said. “I didn’t want to miss my flight, and she arranged everything so well. A boat, a car, now an airplane. She really wants me gone. And who can blame her?”

Lia felt the tears starting again and blinked frantically behind her dark glasses.

Luc reached out a hand but then let it fall to his side. “We need to talk.”

“We’ve had plenty of time to talk. You should have told me before I...” She broke off, realizing with horror that she had been going to say before I fell in love with you.

He was silent for a moment. “There’s something I need to tell you.” When she didn’t move, he continued. “Lia, it’s important.”

She had been staring at his beautifully shod feet. Now she forced her eyes upward once more. “Then tell me.”

“We can’t talk here.”

He reached out a hand and took her arm. She allowed herself to be pulled almost gently to her feet. Not wanting to make a scene, she let him steer her through the airport.

They weren’t even questioned as he led her through a door and into the first-class lounge. It was blissfully quiet after the bustle of the main area, and Luc pushed her down into a seat in the corner.

“I’ll be back,” he said.

Everything seemed at a distance; she knew she was in shock and tried to pull herself together. Whatever it was Luc wanted to speak to her about, she needed her wits about her. Why hadn’t he told her before? If she had known the truth from the start, she would have known there could never be a future for them.

“Here,” Luc said, sinking into the seat beside her, “drink this.”

He placed two glasses on the table. Whiskey, she could smell the spirit, and she lifted one to her lips, grateful for something to do. The drink burned down her throat.

“I was going to tell you,” Luc said when she remained silent.

“When?”

“Soon.” He sighed and took a swallow of his own drink. Lia studied him closely and realized in amazement that he was actually as shaken as she was. “I didn’t want to spoil our time on the island. I was going to tell you as soon as we returned to London. But Lia, what your father did, it doesn’t matter.”

Lia stared at him in amazement. “He was responsible for your father’s death.”

“The life my father led, he was always going to come to a bad end eventually.”

Lia shook her head. “How can you say that now? Can you deny that the sole reason you took me from The Crazy Frog that night was for revenge?”

Luc smiled slightly. “Yes, I can deny it. Lia, I wanted you from the moment I saw you.”

“But admit it. That was just a bonus. You saw me as a way to get to my father. A way of finally getting your revenge. Revenge, which according to your mother was the one driving force in your life.”

He ran a hand through his already ruffled hair. “Maybe at one point. I was very young when my father died—impressionable—but by the time I met you, I’d put it behind me. Lia, it’s beside the point. You are not your father. What he did is in no way down to you; how could it be?”

“And what happens if he turns up?”

Luc took a deep breath. For the first time he seemed reluctant to speak. “He won’t turn up.”

“How can you be so sure?”

He reached out and took her hand. “Lia, your father is dead.”

Lia stared at him. “What did you say?”

“Your father is dead. He’s been dead for nearly nine years.”

She shook her head. “I don’t understand.”

“We followed up on those letters you gave me. He was living in Marbella under a different name, but it was easy once we knew where to search. He was killed in a car crash about a year after he left you and your mother. You were right—he had always intended to send for you.”

“How long have you known this?”

“A couple of days after you gave me the letters.”

“And you didn’t think I’d be interested?”

He stood up and she watched as he paced the room for a few minutes.

“I thought you would go. You told me you would stay and help me find your father. I believed that if you knew he was dead you would leave, go home.”

“Would that have been so bad?”

He sank back down onto the chair beside her. “I didn’t want you to go.”

She didn’t speak and he took a deep breath.

“Lia, I love you.”

God, how she would have loved to have heard those words that morning. Would she have given credence to anything Luc’s mother had told her if she had been certain of Luc’s feelings?

Now, she couldn’t be sure he wasn’t using the declaration to manipulate her. As her father had done so often with her mother. Just say the magic words and everything else could be forgotten. She shook her head again. It was too late.

She knew there was truth in what he was saying, but she had been hit by too many surprises today, and her poor battered brain couldn’t take much more. All she knew for certain was that Luc had withheld something so important from her, purely to get his own way. How could she trust him, and how could there be any hope for them without trust?

She was also battling an unexpected sense of grief. Why would she grieve for a father she had always despised?

Her mother waiting, hoping, believing he would come back to her all those years, and all that time he had been dead. Would her mother’s life have been different if she’d known?

“Lia?”

Luc was waiting for some response to his declaration, but she really didn’t think she could give him one, certainly not the one he wanted or probably expected. She knew she loved him, but she wasn’t sure that was enough.

Love hadn’t made her mother happy.

She looked at him carefully. He was beautiful; she wanted him with a pain that was almost physical, and she forced it down. She needed to get away, get some distance between them.

“I’m leaving.”

“Lia, don’t go. We’ll work through this.”

“Just give me some time,” she whispered.

For a second, his fists clenched at his side, then the tension drained from him. “I’ll give you two weeks.”