‘I’ll pay off the debt,’ she said.
She couldn’t offer to pay Sandro back because it would take her years to save up that kind of money on a waitress’s meagre pay. Which was why she was offering him a divorce as compensation.
‘And you’ll stop working for him?’
‘Of course,’ she declared, as if that should be obvious. ‘I never want to set eyes on him or his nightclub again, if I can help it.’
‘And the gambling,’ he persisted, despite that statement. ‘Does that stop also?’
‘Of course,’ she repeated, almost affrontedly this time. She was not going to fall into the same trap again in this lifetime; did he think she was a complete fool?
‘There is no “of course” about it,’ he sighed. ‘Gambling is a disease, and you know it. If you can use it as an excuse to get you out of financial difficulties once, you are likely to use it again if the situation ever presents itself. Then what comes next?’ He turned to fully face her, his expression so stone-cold serious that she shivered. ‘Do you have to force yourself to come to me again, and will I be expected to pay up again, and keep on paying until you do what you are really trying to do to yourself, Joanna? Tip yourself head-long into the deep, dark pit you struggle so hard to stay out of?’
He knew about the pit? Her whole body jolted with horrified shock. Sandro knew about the big black hole she spent most of her waking hours staring into, watching it open wider and wider with each passing day...
‘You are refusing to help me?’ she breathed in a frail little voice that seemed to absolutely infuriate him.
‘Damn it, Joanna! I am not refusing you!’ he exploded in frustration. ‘But I would be a fool if I did not insist on some assurance from you that this will not happen again!’
‘It will never happen again,’ she promised instantly.
But it wasn’t enough. She could see it wasn’t enough. The way his lips clamped together and his hand raked through his hair told her he was not content with just her verbal promise.
Fear struck a direct line down her trembling spine, the sudden thick silence that fell between them locking up her throat as she stood there staring at him in an open plea, while he frowned darkly down at his feet.
Then he gave a sigh, sounding like a man who was surrendering to something he had no wish to surrender to. ‘Give me the name of the club and the name of the man,’ he clipped out.
‘Why?’ she questioned warily. ‘W-what are you going to do?’
He didn’t reply, but his eyes, when they lifted up to clash with hers, sent a fresh wave of dread running through her. He didn’t trust her to deal with this problem properly, so he was going to deal with it himself! He was going to go to the nightclub, would see the kind of place she worked in, see the kind of man she had stupidly got herself embroiled with. And his opinion of her was going to hit rock bottom—if it wasn’t already floundering near there already.
‘Come on, Joanna,’ he prompted very grimly. ‘You say you have no wish to see this—person or his place of business again. So, prove it,’ he challenged. ‘Give me all the relevant information and I will deal with it for you.’ And when she still stood there, saying nothing, he added very softly. ‘Or you don’t get a single penny from me.’
Her heart split open, surrender spilling out from the jagged crack—along with the hapless knowledge that she had nowhere else to turn if she refused his wretched offer. And she gave him the information in a breathless rush of words that turned his face to granite as he recognised names and places where the lowest of the low lurked.
Weak-kneed by it all, she dropped back into the nearest chair as Sandro strode grimly by her, eyes hard, mouth tight, his whole demeanour one of utter boneclenching dista
ste.
And why not? she asked herself miserably. She felt the exact same way about it all herself!
A shaky hand fluttered up to touch her brow. She really should not have drunk all that gin, she realised, because now, on top of everything else, her head was beginning to throb.
‘Luca?’ Sandro’s hard voice cracked like a whip over the top of her bowed head. She looked up to find him holding the telephone to his ear again. ‘Get five thousand pounds out of the safe and meet me in the foyer with it,’ he commanded. ‘And I want two of our security men standing by with the company limo. What?’ he snapped, his frown as black as thunder. ‘No, not for protection! For damned intimidation!’
Joanna winced. Tight-lipped, Sandro turned abruptly and walked over to a door which, she presumed, led through to the rest of the apartment. He disappeared through it without so much as glancing her way; that was a further condemnation, just another thing she had been judged on and found utterly wanting.
He came back looking so different from the man who had left the room five minutes before that Joanna shot to her feet, and then just stood there staring, trapped into a sense-sizzling silence by the whole incredible transformation.
He had changed his clothes. Gone were the dove-grey trousers and the pale blue shirt with its casually open neck and rolled up sleeves. In their place he was wearing a very dark pin-striped three-piece suit made of the kind of fine fabric that shrieked money at her from every superbly-stitched invisible seam. A pristine white shirt sat neatly around his brown throat, knotted with a slender red silk tie.
But none of that—devastatingly effective power-dressing as it was—caused her breath to catch and her eyes to widen in horrified appreciation of what he was out to achieve by dressing himself like this.
It was the full-length black cashmere overcoat he had slung about his elegant shoulders that made the real statement, along with the fine black wool scarf hanging negligently along his lapels and the stretch-tight black leather gloves he was tugging over his long fingers.
Sandro was a man on a mission. A man aiming to make an immediate impact before he even opened his tight-lipped mouth. Every inch of him screamed Italian, from the arrogant way he had slicked back his jet-black hair to the unblemished shine on his black leather shoes.
He also screamed power. He screamed danger.