Billionaires: The Hero

CHAPTER FOUR

NATE SURVEYED MINA’S panicked expression, her fear as she curled her hands around the armrests, knuckles white, overriding the fury he felt at his now excessively complicated life. The fury he felt toward the abusive man who had just tried to come after her.

“I suspect so,” he said grimly. “I will find out for certain. But there’s no need to worry. He can’t touch you now.”

Her eyes flashed. “What if he sends his men after me? Pasquale could give him all our information.”

“Then he will know I am not a man to be messed with. That it’s fruitless to come after you.”

“You’re only one man. You saw the men he sent.”

“He won’t get past my security detail.”

“Security detail?”

“I’m a rich man, Mina. It’s a prerequisite.”

She sat back in her chair, looking so chalk white he feared she might pass out. When the attendant came around to offer them drinks he asked for two glasses of brandy and put one in front of Mina.

“I don’t drink liquor.”

“Today you do.” He nodded toward the glass. “Drink. It’ll help your nerves.”

She stared dubiously at the amber liquid. Took a little sip and wrinkled her nose. “I don’t like it.”

“Keep drinking.”

He leaned back against the seat, resting his brandy on his thigh. His temporary wife was now his wife for a year, a year, a state of being he had never once contemplated entering into nor wanted. That was if he chose to go through with the deal he and Mina had made, a vastly different one than he had signed on for.

He took in the stunning, innocent creature who was now his wife. Her disheveled hair, streaked makeup and worry lined face. His cynical side suggested she might have known about the year-long clause in the will, perhaps had seen an opportunity for escape in him that had been sweetened by the idea of a rich husband. But his gut told him that wasn’t the case. Mina hadn’t even blinked when he’d said the word prenup. She’d looked as frozen, as in shock, as he’d been when Pasquale Tomei had unveiled that condition. It could not have been manufactured.

With that stipulation, the key to her escape had been stripped from her, the ability to start a life away from her clearly uncaring mother and abusive ex-fiancé. He had been the one walking into the middle of things offering solutions. And now he had a much bigger one to find.

What was he going to do with a wife? With Mina? He couldn’t just dump her in Capri and tell her to contact him when she could sell him the ring. Marchetti was too likely to get to her there.

She needed his protection. He needed that ring to show Giovanni before he died. To give him a chance to reconnect with the past. Which meant his wife was now his responsibility. For a year.

“When you talked about obtaining your freedom,” he said, “what did you envision yourself doing?”

“I speak multiple languages. I thought I would follow in my father’s footsteps. Become a businesswoman.”

“Do you have a business degree?”

“No.” She pressed her lips together, her dark gaze dropping away from his. “I went to a finishing school in France.”

A finishing school. Did those still exist? “And your father. What business was he in?”

“He was the CEO of our family chocolate company—Felicia. It was one of the biggest in Europe before my mother sold it to an American conglomerate.”

He took a sip of his drink. “Most people who want to get into business today have studied it in school. It’s very difficult to find a position without a degree or a diploma.”

Her chin rose. “I expect to start out at the bottom. I’d thought maybe I could work as a chambermaid at the Giarruso, then find a higher position.”

Admirable if wishful thinking. Unless, of course, a superior was willing to give her a shot in the business as Giovanni had given him.

He thought back to Mina’s quick, well-thought-out answers that day at the Giarruso. She had the natural business instincts he himself had once had. A moldable brain. Was it time for him to pay it forward? To give her the same chance he had been given?

He had been eighteen, working the night shift at a food warehouse, when Alex had tracked him down to save Giovanni. Eighteen and angry. His mother had managed to straighten him out after his run-in with the dark side in his midteens, begging him to stop running errands for the neighborhood enforcer before he got himself shot or killed. But she hadn’t been able to convince him to go back to school. They needed the money and he couldn’t just stand by and watch her work herself into her grave while he studied in a useless English lit class.

He’d taken a job at the warehouse where he’d discovered what hell truly felt like. Eight-hour night shifts in the dank, cavernous space, the fluorescent lights beating into his temples as he broke his back hauling flat after flat of produce into place.

He remembered leaving work one morning a few months after he’d started, the faint light of dawn creeping across the sky. Back killing him, lungs tight, he’d stopped and leaned against the building, wondering if this miserable existence was life. Because if this was what it was, he didn’t want it. At least when he’d been working the streets he’d had money in his pocket. He’d had his self-respect. He’d been somebody.

For the first time in years, he’d allowed his hatred toward his father loose, driving his fist into the concrete facade of the warehouse, leaving him with two broken fingers and no less bitterness. He hadn’t wanted a life like his half siblings’ lives—but to be the result of his father’s slumming? To not even be worthy of acknowledgment? It festered in him like a slow-moving disease.

When Alex had sought him out weeks later, he had been teetering on the edge of darkness and light, his old life a seductive siren’s call. Giovanni had made him choose. Embrace the chance you’ve been offered, he’d said, or forever cling to your anger. There is no in between.

The darkness he’d sensed in his grandfather, the raw acknowledgment he knew the dark side because he hadn’t been able to pull his own son from it, had touched something inside Nate, perhaps the tiny sliver of hope he had left in him. He had chosen the light.

Blinking, he pulled himself out of the memory to focus on Mina’s big dark eyes, the expression in them as adrift, as fear-driven, as his had been. She had no money, nowhere to go. She was as lost a soul as he had been. He couldn’t let her fall through the cracks.

By the time they had landed in Capri a short while later, a plan had formed in his head. It would solve all his issues, except, of course, the ring on his finger. That, unfortunately, wasn’t going anywhere.

* * *

Mina stood on the terrace of the penthouse suite of the Grand Hotel Emelia, the Bay of Marina Piccola sparkling in the distance. She had been to the glamorous island of Capri once with her family when she had been very young, six or seven. She only remembered bits and pieces of the holiday, but it was one of her best memories.

The beautiful beaches and the lovely walks along the coast had been her favorite activities, made extra special by the time she’d gotten to spend with her busy father, who’d taken a real holiday for once. They’d spent hours playing in the sand, digging sand castles and moats while her mother shopped and lunched with the jet-set crowd.

Her father had indulged her mother’s every whim on the trip, including generous amounts of both his time and money. Her mother had, in turn, sparkled, and everything had been perfect for once. No arguments between her fiery parents that seemed to come all too frequently at home. Just sunshine and laughter.

She remembered playing with her favorite doll, Eva, on the beach with her father. Ankle-deep in the surf, she’d turned her back on the doll, only to find Eva gone when she turned around seconds later. Her father had spent the better part of an hour trying to retrieve the doll, understanding this was life or death for Mina. When he’d finally found her, laying a soaked, bedraggled Eva in her eager hands, he’d given her one of his stern lectures. “Take care of precious things, Mina. When they’re gone, they’re gone. I won’t always be able to bring them back for you.”

Her eyes burned as the glittering water of the bay she’d misplaced Eva in sparkled in the early-evening sun. How apropos her father’s words had been. She’d lost him soon after that—her one grounding force.

Her lashes came down to shield her eyes from the hot glow of the sun, a pang of longing rippling through her. How she wished he was here right now to make sense of everything. If he was, she would never have left her life to venture into the complete unknown. She wouldn’t be married to a stranger, “Bastien Nathaniel Brunswick,” her marriage certificate had elaborated, who was apparently so wealthy he owned this five-star hotel the glitterati called home. She wouldn’t be feeling so wholly, all-encompassingly lost.

She wrapped her arms around herself as a chill nipped at her skin, the heavenly scent of bougainvillea and campanula floating on the breeze. She didn’t even own the clothes on her back. The expensive dress she was wearing was one Nate had sent down to the boutique for so she could get out of her wedding dress, a good thing because every time she looked at it she thought about Silvio and how furious he must be. How furious her mother must be.

Something Nate was apparently ascertaining as he made a litany of phone calls to Dio knew who to find out. Her pulse picked up, her blood thrumming through her veins. What could he possibly say to smooth things over? To fix the mess she’d created? To warn Silvio off?

Was he finishing off his role as hero by ensuring Silvio left her alone before he threw her out and said thank you, but no thank you? I had only intended a twenty-four-hour marriage and a ring as compensation and this is way, way beyond that...

A whiff of citrus filled her head just before a delicate silk wrap landed around her shoulders. She jumped as Nate reached around her to tie the silk into a loose knot.

“You’re still jumpy.” He leaned against the railing beside her, his gaze on her face.

“You caught me off guard.” She looked down at the expensive-looking wrap he’d secured around her rather than stare at his smoldering good looks in a white T-shirt and a pair of dark jeans that molded themselves to his muscular thighs and long legs. “Another thing I can’t pay you for.”

A wry smile crossed his face. “I’m good for it, Mina. That much I know.”

What didn’t he know? What he was going to do with her? She pressed her lips together as her severely stressed imagination ran away with her. Get a hold of yourself, Mina.

“This is a magnificent property.” She looked out at the yachts bobbing on the cerulean blue sea as the sun made its descent into the horizon. “You said you named it for your mother?”

He nodded.

“She is special, then?”

His lips curved, a genuine warmth filling his eyes. “Extraordinary.”

She tilted her head to one side. “What makes her so extraordinary?”

“She was a single mother. She put me first every day of her life and kept me on the right path.”

The bittersweet ache inside of her swelled larger. “You are very lucky to have a mother who cares so much for you.”

“Yes.”

“And your father?”

“He was never a part of our lives.”

She studied the hard set of his jaw. The cold cast that had replaced the warmth in his eyes. Perhaps that was where some of the toughness surrounding this man came from.

She forced herself to ask the question she couldn’t avoid. “Was it Silvio who came after us?”

“Yes. But you don’t need to worry about him. I’ve taken care of it.”

“How?” She turned to face him, panic clawing at her throat. “He must be beyond furious. To be humiliated like that in front of half the city... He will want to punish me.”

“He is furious.”

Her heart leaped into her mouth. “You talked to him?”

“Pasquale gave him my name. I stole his bride.” He lifted a shoulder. “It was a necessary conversation.”

“What did he say?”

“Nothing you need to know. Suffice it to say, he won’t be bothering you again.”

“Nate—”

“Stop.” His gaze hardened. “He isn’t a nice man, Mina, you knew that. He didn’t have nice things to say. All you need to know is that I communicated the point that you are mine. You are safe from him. End of story.”

She took a deep breath. Absorbed the deadly glimmer in his eyes. Who was he that he could so cavalierly tell Silvio Marchetti to call off the dogs and expect that he would? Had she jumped from the frying pan into the fire with him? Or did she trust Nate like she instinctively felt she could?

“What about my mother?” She’d been avoiding her calls to her mobile all day, with no idea what she’d even say if she did pick it up.

“She called me after I spoke with Silvio. Was worried about you, wanted to reassure herself you were okay.” His smile was grim. “I told her you’d like a few days of privacy to enjoy our honeymoon and then you would call her.”

Her mouth dropped open. “What else did you say?”

“That we are in love. That today was a mad, passionate impulse on our part.” He lifted a broad shoulder. “It seemed as good a story as any to get Silvio off your back. I mentioned your cold feet were a product of our short but intense courtship.”