CHAPTER ONE
‘YOUDON’TKNOWwhat you’re talking about, Moretti.’
The man on the other end of the phone sounded full of bravado, but it was all an act. Stefano was conscious of every nuance in the voice. The heightened tone, the subtle tremor. And it was right that this worthless member of Lasserno’s upper echelons should worry. Yet another thief of the country’s treasures Stefano was intent on rooting out.
He settled back into the antique leather chair, which creaked underneath him. They all started out like this—with denial. And so far they’d all told the truth in the end. Liars. Every one of them. All about to fall from grace with a thud unless they gave him what he wanted.
He knew all about falls from grace. The landing was an uncompromising one. Stefano Moretti, Count of Varno, former private secretary to Lasserno’s Prince Alessio Arcuri, had died on a hill of good intentions months ago. What had risen from those ashes was a man with a coal-dark heart, harder than black diamonds.
‘My proper title isYour Excellency, but I’ll ignore the slight.’
It reminded Stefano that word of his fall was now more than a speculative whisper. Those who’d sought to cut him down were emboldened.
He let out a long, steadying breath. There was no time for this introspection. He had a job to do. Self-appointed, but an important role nonetheless. One that would protect his siblings, even though he might never be forgiven and would certainly never forgive himself for what he’d done.
Betrayal had no sweetener. Secretly reporting your monarch’s private movements to the press tended to be a deal-breaker—particularly when you were said monarch’s private secretary, most trusted confidant and best friend.
It didn’t matter that his motives had been altruistic. The press had been grossly unfair to Alessio when he’d taken the throne after his father’s abdication. It had caused fear and instability in Lasserno, which had already been suffering from the former Prince’s excesses. All Stefano had suggested was using the press for good as successfully as Alessio’s father had done for nefarious means. When Alessio had shunned the idea Stefano had taken matters into his own hands. Leaks about Alessio’s private visit to Lasserno’s Children’s Hospital had been carefully dropped.
But what Stefano hadn’t figured on was losing control of the beast. The press hadn’t been satisfied with the scant crumbs he’d scattered for them and had scrabbled for more.
As good as his motives had been, he’d faced up to the consequences. Alessio had almost lost Hannah, his one-time portrait artist and now beloved Princess, because of Stefano’s actions. It had ended well, with a marriage during Stefano’s exile and a little prince or princess on the way soon. But, whilst there didn’t appear to be any long-term harm, he accepted the need to pay a penance, possibly for as long as he lived...
‘Let me refresh your memory on what I’m after.’ Stefano stopped trying for a conciliatory tone and injected every shred of contempt he could find into each word. ‘A diamond. Ten carats. Formerly from the Arcuri parure. Does that sound familiar? I’ve no doubt you’ll remember, since Signor Giannotti reports that someone of yourexactdescription tried selling it to him a week ago. As questionable as that man’s honesty might be, he knows his gems. When he realised the stone came from the Crown Jewels, he called me immediately.’
Silence.
They all fell silent when they realised how far his reach still went. He had eyes everywhere and he wouldn’t fail in this mission. His brother and sister relied on his success.
The Moretti family was inextricably linked to the Crown—a centuries-old obligation. One he’d blighted by his actions. He didn’t want his siblings shackled to that now poisoned chalice. They should be able to leave Lasserno and find their own future. He’d promised them that freedom and he wouldn’t deviate. Because his fall from grace could not stay secret indefinitely, and the country would see them as guilty by association. Already the rumours had reached their ears, impacting on their prospects. They’d reported being snubbed by some. Now he’d completed his degree in horticulture, Gino’s employer was taking too long to provide a letter of endorsement to assure an introduction at Kew, where his brother dreamed of a role. Emilia’s final months in teaching and early childhood seemed to be mired in an inordinate amount of paperwork, with no-one having the inclination to finalise it so she could take up a hoped-for placement overseas.
When his job was complete, he’d ask for his siblings to be released from the link to the royal family which would always hold him. Then they could do as they wished—he wouldn’t allow his taint to spread over them like a slick of oil. He’d redeem the Moretti family name for their sakes. Stefano considered himself irredeemable.
‘You think you’re so clever,’ rasped the disembodied voice on the other end of the line, ‘but no one believes the palace’s fairy-tale that you’re on a sabbatical to restore your family castle.’
This was the official version. An innocuous press release to explain why Stefano was no longer seen in his role as Alessio’s private secretary, when once he had always been at the Prince’s side. A final act of grace from his former best friend and employer.
It was more than Stefano deserved for his betrayal.
‘I don’t care what people believe,’ he said with disdain, when all he wanted to do was rage.
Stefano quelled that desire, doused the burn threatening to ignite and roar into life inside him.Patience. This was only the first part of his plan to free his siblings. He wouldn’t be distracted from the task of recovering the precious gems Alessio’s father had given away like meaningless trinkets in the months before his abdication.
His second task, however, was proving far more difficult. Some might say unachievable...
‘The many artisans clamouring to work on Castello Varno’s restoration would say otherwise.’
Often the biggest lies were hidden behind small truths.
His work for Alessio had kept him in the capital, and his siblings hadn’t paid much attention to the state of the castle. Gino and Emilia were tangled up in their own dreams of the future he’d promised them when he’d taken on the role of their protector as a teenager, since his parents had had little interest in the younger children.
Even though they knew he would always take their calls, his brother had thought him far too busy to worry about some stones crumbling from the ramparts in the unused reaches of their home. Likewise, his sister hadn’t thought about the maintenance of the central heating, which seemed irrelevant in a mild summer, but critical when winter arrived in force.
Perhaps he should have shared with them what it truly took to run the castle. Being head of the family since his father’s death four years earlier, he viewed their ancestral home as his personal responsibility. And, whilst he might have disgraced the Moretti name, he would not let the castle which had dominated the mountains of this northern province of Lasserno for five hundred years fall into ruin. He was still the Count, even if he no longer deserved the title.
‘A pretty little bird tells me you have your own problems,’ the other man said, as if trying to regain some of the ground rapidly sliding away from him.
The words found their mark, straight and true.