Scandals Of The Powerful: Uncovering the Correttis / A Legacy of Secrets
‘So are her bodyguards,’ Anton said, and she saw in her peripheral vision that two men at another table had stood.
The credit card was back.
‘Don’t look,’ Anton warned. ‘Not once.’
He didn’t have to worry. The second his mouth touched hers, Emily forgot all about the Correttis. His lips were warm. His hands moved to the back of her head, pressing her into him, and she struggled to stop her lips from parting until, as if remembering where they were, he stood.
‘Come.’
They walked through the restaurant and down the steps that led to the entrance but he halted her on the bend midway, kissed her hard against the wall, and her mouth stopped fighting instinct then, simply opened up and let him in, his tongue repeating his thumb’s motions in her mouth—circling, pressing, probing. Emily was kissing him back for dear life, tasting him as if she recognised him, absolutely forgetting where she was as she gave in to the thunderbolt that had struck. He cupped her buttocks and kissed her senseless. Her hands moved to his chest, into his jacket, and suddenly the kiss halted, his hand catching hers, stopping hers, but not before she felt the cool metal of a gun.
‘Keep kissing.’ The doors were opening, people were coming out and she was in terror. He was kissing her thoroughly. She could hear the conversations from the Correttis as they walked down the stairs past them and out into the night. Only then did he release her lips, which were trembling in fear.
‘No wonder you didn’t want to give your name!’ What the hell had she been thinking? Maybe she did need to toughen up, as she had never been more terrified in her life. He was holding her and telling her to calm down.
‘It’s not what you think, Emily. I’m a detective.’ He took out his wallet and showed it to her and all the little things he had said made sense now. ‘Which is why the Correttis would prefer that I did not know them at times.’
Her breath was coming back but still her heart would not slow down.
‘I did not expect what just happened.’ He looked at her. ‘That things would get so out of hand.’
‘You should have told me.’
‘I tell few people,’ Anton said, ‘but I would have told you later tonight.’ Her eyes flashed at the inference. Her mind searched for a sharp retort to his presumption but they both knew it would be a lie. ‘I took a phone call when I was speaking with you earlier this evening. A colleague told me where the Correttis were dining. I eat there sometimes.’
Her eyebrows raised because she didn’t really imagine that the five-star restaurant would be frequented regularly on a detective’s wage, but she didn’t have time to properly process that as Anton continued.
‘To get a booking, given they were dining there tonight, I had to give a good reason.’ He looked down to the ring on her hand. ‘I went home and got this. There wasn’t time for anything else. Emily, had I told you I was a detective and this was my plan, we would never have pulled it off.’
Emily nodded. She could see that now.
‘Having seen them, perhaps now you understand better their world. It is almost impossible to get close to them at such a function.’
‘And we did.’ A pale smile stretched her lips, but just as she was starting to calm down, he spun her into confusion again.
‘Spend the weekend with me.’ He looked at her. Two nights with one woman was a big deal for his black heart, but two nights with Emily, he could do. Feelings were surfacing, ones that had been locked in a vault and entombed in cement. No-one got close. And yet she had. Though it unnerved him, the saving grace was that by Sunday she would be gone.
‘I can tell you everything you want to know about them.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I want to spread the word, not just about the Correttis but they would be a very good place to start.’ And then he looked at her and gave her the other reason, the words unfamiliar to his lips. ‘I would like to spend time with you, to get to know you some more,’ Anton said, safe in the knowledge that soon she’d be gone. He released her then and took her hand as they walked out into the dark street. It had been evening when they had entered, and it was night-time now. Just a space of a few hours and yet so much for Emily had changed.
His car had been brought around and they drove in silence to her hotel, Emily wrestling with indecision. Tonight she had glimpsed not just wealth and glamour but the dizzying presence of Anton, and the combination was undeniably heady. She wanted the information he would give her, but in truth it played no part in the decision she was coming to. A holiday romance, Emily thought. A working-holiday romance....
Although the word romance did not really equate with Anton.
She sneaked a look at him, scarcely able to believe what she was considering, but in thirty years on this earth she hadn’t even come close to tasting the passion she already had tonight, had never been more intrigued by another. This was a man she so badly wanted to get to know.
He pulled to a halt at the foyer. The car door was opened and she turned in her seat to step out.
‘Aren’t you coming?’ Emily frowned because the engine was still idling and he was making no indication of getting out.
‘I’m not staying here.’
‘Oh!’ She had assumed, given it was where they had met, that he was. Emily had hoped for a drink in the bar to see where that led, for some time to make up her mind.
He had, in effect, driven her home, Emily realised.
‘I think you’re the guy my mother spent years warning me about.’ She tried to make a small joke but he just stared back at her.
‘Was she wasting her breath?’ Anton asked.
It was a good question. The choice now was completely hers. She pushed a foot towards the ground, went to remove herself from the car, but already she could taste the regret that would surely plague her forever if she denied herself this time. And in that moment Emily followed not her head but her heart.
She turned to his waiting eyes and with one smouldering look he confirmed her decision was the right one. Emily wanted wild and irresponsible. She wanted her weekend with this beautiful, sexy man.
‘Completely,’ was her response.
Nervous, unsure, hopelessly aroused, she pulled in her legs and closed the door and, most unexpectedly, a moment later she found herself laughing. He told her to put her belt on as the car pulled off, and he turned on the hidden sirens and lights. She was pressed back in her seat as he sped her through the dark streets of Palermo.
‘Do we need the siren?’ she shouted.
‘Unless you want me to stop and take you over the car.’
He took her hand and placed it where nature surely intended.
There was a moment where she considered tapping him on the shoulder and telling him that she did not do this sort of thing.
‘Anton, I—’
‘Don’t.’ He felt a decade younger; he felt as if he was living. She did not need to offer excuses. This night was theirs. ‘There is no explaining it.’
There was no explaining it and so she did not try. It was the most reckless night of her life, but the best one.
He turned the lights and sirens off as they left the town centre, but he drove at breakneck speed through the rocky hills to his vast home. Huge security gates opened and closed behind them as a garage door opened and they slid inside.
The garage alone was twice the size of her house and about ten times more luxurious. She could barely stand as she climbed out of the car and he walked around to take her hand. She’d had two sips of champagne, yet she felt as if she’d drunk the bottle.
He started to kiss her but she moved her head back. One taste and they’d be doing as he had teasingly suggested, but her willpower was rather lacking when Anton was around.
Just one taste....
CHAPTER FIVE
IT WASN’T a kiss; it was sex with their mouths.
His tongue was everywhere, his teeth on hers, his hands the only sensible part of them because he took off his jacket and removed his holster. The holster, he lowered to the floor. The jacket, he pulled condoms from and then threw onto the car as he lowered his mouth again, his hands lifting her dress, and not just to her hips. Their lips parted a moment as he tugged it over her head and then tore at her panties.
She had never known nor imagined anything like it. He’d felt huge beneath the fabric but exposed now there should surely be some apprehension—but instead there was only want. She took him in her hands and heard his moan of approval as she ran her finger over the tip and he tore open the wrapper.
Taking it from him, Emily slid it on. She wanted to pause, she wanted to taste, she wanted so many things, but with her orgasm building, there was time only for need. She thought he would lower her onto the car, but sensing her arousal, he lifted her onto him and Emily wrapped her legs around his hips and clung on. The second he was inside her it hit, but then, he had been turning her on since the elevator.
She lost her head and he took her hair, claiming her mouth as he pulled her hard down onto him. He stilled for just a moment, suckling her tongue as he held himself back from joining her in release, luxuriating in the feel of her hot centre pulsing around him, of her mouth tensing in orgasm and then slowly kissing him back as it faded.
He lowered her onto the bonnet and moved the jacket beneath her. Soon he would let himself join her in abandon, but not yet.
‘Anton.’ She wanted a moment. She could feel the warmth from the engine beneath her and the heat between her legs. He was looking down not at the sensuous coupling of their sexes but straight into her eyes, and it was more breathtaking than the sensual thrusting as he moved deeply within.
She was shocked by the tenderness that held her gaze as the guarded, remote man faded and she glimpsed firsthand what being made love to by Anton felt like. His eyes adored her, his passion blatant, another thunderbolt to her heart.
As if regretting revealing so much, he started to move faster, his hands pulling down her bra and exposing her breasts, his rhythm building, but he wanted again that elusive pleasure. He wanted to care.
Anton just gave in then, lowered himself onto her, wrapped his arm beneath her, and she found out then what it was like to be truly adored by Anton. She was sobbing as he thrust within her and she shattered into an orgasm that came from no place she had ever been. Heat seared not just from her centre; every muscle in her body seemed to contract as she arched into him. He was kissing her eyes, her cheeks, her ears, stunned at what had been unleashed. She was in the arms of the devil, yet he devoured her as if she were a saint. She bathed in his moans, in his caress, and then in the rush of still silence that warred with the pulse of his release within. She lay there spent beneath him, grateful for the hand that a little while later lifted her up.
He helped her into his jacket and, she noted, did not meet her eyes.
She teetered on legs that were a little unsteady and he tapped in a code that opened a door.
‘There’s no-one home, I hope.’
‘Just us.’
She was perhaps the worst investigative journalist in the world around Anton, because until that moment she hadn’t really questioned why he drove such a luxurious sports car. She had been more focused on Anton than the outside appearance of his house, but as she stepped into opulence, as the lights came on and unveiled a home more stunning than any she had been in, she realised there were questions she should surely ask.
She stood as he opened huge glass doors and looked out beyond the pool and to the ocean behind.
Anton’s wealth far outreached that of any detective she had ever come in contact with.
Or rather, any honest one.
CHAPTER SIX
‘I AM not corrupt.’ It was as if he could read her mind. ‘It is my own money.’ He looked over to her. ‘I worked for ten years in my father’s business and turned it around. One of the nice things about making a fortune is you can then do whatever work you choose. My job now is to flush out certain people. Because of my wealth I get closer than any of them like.’
‘Like tonight?’
‘The restaurant do not want to say no to me either. They know I always am seated upstairs. It was good to observe them, to see the cousins seated at the same table and hating it.’
He left her alone for a moment and then returned with a large T-shirt for her. For a moment she considered asking where the bathroom was so she could put it on, but they were a bit past that. Still, he was back to the old Anton now. He turned his back and opened the fridge and pulled out some wine as Emily quickly took off his jacket and slipped the T-shirt on, then removed her shoes.
She sat on the sofa and tucked her legs under her, a part of her wanting only to find out about him, but she’d sworn no regrets and she did not want to be sitting at her desk on Monday without words for her work.
‘Why don’t the cousins get on?’ Emily asked as he handed her a drink.
‘Salvatore and Teresa had two sons, Benito and Carlo, brothers but rivals. Salvatore divided his empire up between them. They were killed a few years ago in a fire and the rivalry continued down the line to their children. The cousins are always trying to outdo each other. The only reason they were together tonight is for Teresa.’
‘Will they all be at the wedding tomorrow?’
‘Not all,’ Anton said. ‘There is Angelo—he is Carlo’s illegitimate son. They like to forget about him, but he has Corretti blood in his veins and he is slowly moving in on them. I doubt you will see Gio. He is one of Benito’s sons but tends to stay away from family things, though he might make an appearance. He is more interested in horses. There is the Corretti Cup in three weeks. He will be there for that.’
‘Will you be at that, too?’
‘Like a bad smell.’ Anton’s smile was black.
‘You hate them, don’t you?’
‘More than you could know.’ She could hear the loathing in his voice. ‘My family owned many properties all across Sicily, but we did not conform to the rules. We refused to bow to the Sicilian powers that be. There was a car bomb. My family was in it. I should have been in that vehicle. By chance I was not.’
‘The Correttis did that?’ She was horrified but he shook his head.
‘I do not know who. That is why I joined the polizia. My only interest now is working out who ordered the hit on my family.’
‘And then what?’
‘Justice.’
He was a police officer, Emily told herself. He just wanted the people responsible behind bars. Her imagination was working overtime from reading too much about the Correttis.
She looked down at the ring still on her finger.
‘Is this really your mother’s?’
He nodded. ‘Tonight it was worn for a very worthy cause.’
‘Anton...’ She was more confused than she had ever been. She understood now the guardedness to him, but the loathing in his voice unnerved her. She started pulling at the ring, but an olive-skinned hand halted her.
‘You’ll be needing that tomorrow. Why would my guest, my new fiancée, not be wearing her ring?’
‘You mean the wedding.’ Emily’s mouth gaped. ‘You’re invited?’
‘Of course. They hate me because they cannot buy me, yet they try to keep me on their side, too. So, would you care to join me?’
And not for the first time tonight, and certainly not for the last, as his mouth moved towards her, Emily found herself saying yes to Anton.
CHAPTER SEVEN
EMILY WOKE in an unfamiliar bed with a thumping headache and a body that was so sore and tender she wondered for a moment if she’d been in an accident, which wouldn’t account for the ache between her legs, the luxurious sheets beneath her or the aroma of coffee and the sound of gushing water from the pool.
Maybe she’d died and gone to heaven, Emily thought for a blissful moment, and stretched and then looked up into the navy eyes of Anton.
Maybe she had.
Yes, it all came back in delicious stages.
Emily drank her coffee and then figured she ought to ring Gina, but she didn’t pick up, so Emily fired off a text to say she would meet her there.
‘I hope she’s there,’ Emily said, but Anton was talking on his own phone.
‘What size are you?’ He saw her frown. ‘Dress size.’
‘I’m not sure.’
He smirked and told whomever it was he was talking to his estimate. Unfortunately he guessed right.
‘Shoe size,’ Anton said, and she wished for daintier feet but, for blisters’ sake, she told him the truth.
He must be seriously loaded, because an hour later when surely anyone who was anyone was, this morning, getting their hair done, she was sitting in one of his shirts on a bar stool having her hair curled and put up as Anton showered.
She couldn’t wait till he came out of the bathroom for a proper look at herself and, modesty long since discarded, she walked in to where he was shaving at the sink, a towel wrapped low on his hips.
‘Bella,’ he said when he saw her hair. ‘Has the dress not arrived?’
‘Not yet,’ Emily said, moving to wash her panties, but his hand halted her.
‘I asked for a selection of underwear.’
‘And a toothbrush?’
He smiled and nodded to the drawer.
It was strange for Anton. Usually he loathed getting ready with another. He liked sex but not too much conversation. He did not do the dating thing. ‘Am I taking someone’s spot?’ Emily checked, sure he must have had a date lined up.
He had naturally RSVP’d plus-one for the wedding but was reluctant to take one of his usual companions.
‘I could have gone with someone, but I chose not to. Women tend to think you are serious about them if you ask them to such things.’
‘Have you ever been serious about anyone?’
‘My wife,’ he said, not looking at her horrified expression. Instead he carried on shaving. ‘She was in the explosion.’
‘When you said family, I thought you meant just your parents.’ She was truly lost for words. ‘I don’t mean just....’
‘I did,’ Anton said. ‘They were all in the car at the time. Unfortunately I had gone back to the house to get my wallet.’
‘Unfortunately?’
‘They went to heaven. I went to hell.’
She could not fathom such pain, just stared for a moment.
‘Did you...?’ She was nearly crying. ‘Did you have children?’
He closed his eyes.
Fattispecie, Anton thought. ‘No.’
‘How could you stand to sit in the same restaurant?’ Emily asked.
‘Because I do not yet know if it was the Correttis that were responsible.’ He rinsed his face and forgot to dry it because, yes, he was dreading today. ‘But there will be other family heads there today. Almost certainly the one who ordered the hit will be...’ Anton stopped speaking then. She was right—he almost could not stand to be in the church today, had been dreading it since the wedding was announced. The only reprieve was Emily, and he pulled her in for a fierce kiss. His breath was shallow and ragged. He felt her soft lips and it did not match his mood. He loathed sharing and he wasn’t about to. He pulled his mouth away.
‘Get ready.’
‘I can’t till my dress arrives.’
‘Your make-up.’
He went to leave, to release her, yet at the last moment hauled her back to him, a mire of confusion, for he wanted her but he did not. He could not share pain.
Emily could.
She felt the push and then the pull of his hands and the agony in his lips. She kissed down his neck and he held her close. She continued down his chest and he did not halt her as she went to her knees. She kissed his stomach and then down his thighs, heard his moan as she coaxed him from hell with her mouth.
His hands bunched at his sides as he stopped hating and loathing and thought of nothing but Emily on a morning he had dreaded for so long. He felt soft lips become firm, felt the comfort of her tongue and mouth and gave in.
She swallowed his tension—there was no other word for it—but she relished it a moment on her tongue and then, a bit shocked at her own boldness, she just knelt there until he pulled her up to him and held her fiercely. They clung on to each other for a long moment, Emily scared of her own feelings toward this very dark man, Anton basking in the calm she had just allowed, both holding each other till a bell rung out.
‘That will be your wardrobe.’
‘I hope you’ve got good taste.’
He thought of his wife for a moment and then he looked at Emily, and his answer, even if she did not fully understand it, was completely true. ‘I do.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
‘WHERE ON earth have you been?’ Gina asked when she saw Emily. She had been snapping away as they approached, and only when they had drawn near had Gina realised it was her colleague. ‘You look stunning.’
Emily was dressed in lilac with pale grey stilettos, but it was not the designer wardrobe or the rather hastily applied make-up that had Emily glowing, nor was it the answer she gave to Gina.
‘I’ve managed to get into the wedding.’
‘How?’ Gina wailed. ‘There’s security everywhere. They’re not letting in press.’
‘She’s coming with me.’ Anton stepped forward then and Gina’s mouth literally gaped, and Emily didn’t blame her. He looked amazing in a dark suit. The dark glasses were back on and he looked groomed yet brooding and slightly menacing.
‘Lucky, lucky you,’ Gina said, and she wasn’t talking about the wedding. ‘Are you going to the reception?’
‘No,’ Anton said when it was clear that Emily didn’t know. ‘They would not be so foolish to ask me there.’
He headed off and Emily stood for a moment with Gina. ‘Meet up after?’ Emily asked, while secretly hoping not, but thankfully Gina shook her head.
‘I’m flying back to Rome. I’ll get a few shots of guests going into the reception and then I’m out of here.’ She gave a naughty smile. ‘Don’t tell Adam.’
‘Of course not. I’ll see you back at work on Monday, then.’
‘Emily?’ Gina picked up her hand and looked at the yellow diamonds and seed pearls. ‘How the hell did you swing this?’
‘That’s for me to know,’ Emily said, smiling.
She caught up with Anton, but instead of taking her hand, he seemed distracted. From behind his glasses he was scanning the crowds, his expression unreadable as he observed the guests all mingling outside the church, but then he seemed to remember she was beside him.
‘That is Rosa Corretti.’ He nodded in the direction of a very beautiful woman who wore a flower in her hair that didn’t match her strained expression. ‘She was the apple of Benito’s eye and her brothers keep her on a very short leash.’ As they entered the church and took their places, he pointed out a few others. ‘Over there is Zach Scott. His father is a U.S. senator. Zach was shot down in the war....’ His voice trailed off and he looked around.
It almost killed him to be here.
To watch the groom standing where he once had, though unlike Anton all those years ago Alessandro showed no nerves. This was surely not a love match. Unlike his own wedding.
Emily didn’t notice his sudden pensiveness. Instead she was trying to keep her eyes from popping as they landed on Taylor Carmichael, an American actress who had been off the radar for ages and was making a return. She looked stunning, of course, breathtakingly so. She was wearing a dress so tight she must surely have been sewn into it.
It wasn’t just the guests who were stunning. Her eyes lifted to the stained windows, taking in the architecture as the anticipation built for the bride’s arrival.
‘It’s a beautiful church.’ Emily said it more to herself but her heart stilled for a moment when Anton responded.
‘I was married here.’
There was nothing she could say. Just like earlier, there were no words, so Emily slipped her hand into his.