Ten minutes later, with the loan agreement signed by her digitally, it was done. Hanging up, she felt as if a crushing weight had been lifted from her.
As if to prove the stars were smiling on her, her mobile pinged. It was Mia.
‘Ariana—darling Ariana! I couldn’t wait to tell you! Matt’s hired a recording studio! It’s all set up, and it’s all thanks to you! And we’ve got a date for the wedding! Please, please come—it will mean everything to us after all you’ve done!’ Her voice changed. ‘Are you quite sure you can afford all the money you’ve given us?’
‘Of course I can!’ Ariana lied immediately.
Gladness filled her as Mia chattered happily. Whether or not Matt ever found fame and fortune, he and Mia would be happy, for he was the man her cousin loved. And Mia was the woman Matt loved.
Her expression faltered a moment when Mia finally rang off. Mia, so sweet-natured, so angelic... Was it any surprise that Luca, too, had fallen for her?
The way he never fell for me.
Into her head stabbed Luca’s harsh, scathing accusation.‘Jealous—vindictive.’
Her face contorted. Was he right? Was she jealous of Mia and wanting to punish the man who had made it brutally clear that all Ariana had been was a meaningless one-night stand? Someone merely to slake a passing, momentary lust and nothing more than that? She pushed the thoughts from her head.
Luca’s callous rejection of her wasnotthe reason she had sought to stop him marrying her cousin! It wasn’t!
I did it for Mia! Only for her!
The sound of the showroom door opening as someone came in stopped her self-tormenting inquisition, silenced the memory of Luca’s condemnation. Getting up from her desk, she walked through from her office, putting a professional smile on her face for whoever had come in, whether it was just to browse or to make enquiries about her interior design services. Services she was now under desperate pressure to sell to as many clients as possible, if she were to have any chance of survival at all...
But as she walked in, without any premonition at all, she stopped dead.
The smile died on her face.
It was Luca Farnese standing there.
Luca saw the smile wiped from Ariana’s face, and his eyes glittered. Hers widened in shock. Horror.
‘You!’
The word shot like a bullet from her and a hand shot out to grab the door frame, as if to stop herself reeling back. Her other hand flew up in a gesture so automatically defensive he could have laughed. But his humour was tightly leashed—and so much else beside.
Calmly, he helped himself to the chair set in front of the elegant antique desk where clients could sit and discuss their requirements, crossing one long leg casually over the other and looking across at the woman standing framed in the doorway. He leashed his emotions tighter.
She’d gone pale as whey—the way she had when he’d confronted her by her car in thepiazzaoutside the church, trying to flee the scene of her crime. The knuckles of the hand gripping the door frame were as white as her face, the nails as scarlet as her lush lips, parting now in the expression of horror crossing her face.
‘I thought you might like to know the source of the loan you’ve just accepted,’ he opened, enjoying every moment of this meeting with a savage sense of pleasure at what he was about to inflict upon her.
Justice, meet and fitting, for what she had done, the lives she had ruined—his and her innocent victim’s...her own cousin! She’d had neither pity nor regard for her, callously and deliberately humiliating her in the worst possible way at her own wedding.
She seemed to sway, and in her distended eyes he saw realisation. The realisation that it was he, all along, sufficiently disguised through intermediaries, who had offered her the oh-so-convenient and timely lifeline of the loan that she had clutched at so eagerly. Given her binding signature to.
Giving herself into his power.
He smiled. She was not slow to understand—he’d give her that. Nor to cut to the chase.
‘Why?’
She whispered the single word, and he answered it succinctly.
‘You cost me my bride,’ he told her. ‘And you ruined your cousin’s future. A cousin who had donenothingto earn your spite and malice.’
His tone was impersonal. He might as well be making some comment about the weather. He smoothed the material of his trouser leg, looking up at her again.
‘But, unlike you, I’m not vindictive. I threatened to sue you for defamation precisely to get you to this point—borrowing money from me via a shell finance company I happen to own. You will pay the financial damages due to me. But,’ he added silkily, ‘there are other ways to pay damages that are not financial.’