CHAPTER ONE
SERENA VALLI KNEWtwo things with full certainty.
First, and most importantly, she hated Luciano Ascione with the fire of at least four generations of fury behind her.
Second, and quite unfortunately, she needed him.
Luckily, he needed her as well. If he cared at all. Which was certainly up for debate.
They were both failing, drowning, and about to implode if they did not reach out and save each other.
She supposed it was the kind of poetic justice born of their fathers—sworn enemies from birth—dying in the same automobile crash. As if they’d both been racing toward something but, so focused on each other, they hadn’t been able to reach that end goal.
Serena was determined to learn this lesson her father hadn’t. If it meant proposing a deal with her sworn enemy, she would swallow that sword.
Because neither Serena Valli nor Valli Shipping would give in without a fight, no matter how brutal. How demoralizing. Howembarrassing. Her feelings didn’t matter—only the fate of her legacy did.
If there was any way to honor her father’s memory—and more importantly, her grandfather’s—it was this.
She’d grieved, she supposed. In her way. In the Valli way. There was, after all, no great affection between father and daughter. There had been respect—hers given out of duty, while she’d had to earn his with perfection, and so she had. Serena believed in duty.
And she would continue to do her duty for the Valli name and business, for her legacy. And with that as her mantra, she stepped into the lion’s den.
Luciano had never bothered himself with his father’s company, Ascione International—the biggest issue they both faced right there in the company’s name. Valli had Italian shipping under lock. Ascione fared better in global waters.
Both were being encroached on by an upstart American company, slithering through the cracks left in Valli since her father’s death last year. She knew Ascione also suffered cracks, though she doubted Luciano knew.
It was well known he was a thoughtless, careless, reprobate. The one and only thing he’deveraccomplished on his own was this club she ventured into now.
He’d inherited everything else and was likely to run that inheritance into the ground. She could let him, but she was afraid if she did, their new rival would win. But if she could manage this, Ascione and Valli working together, they would take down theirmutualenemy, instead of each other.
Serena would swoop in. She would save everything. And if there was the opportunity, she would do what her father had never been capable of.
Take Ascione down for good.
But for now, she needed them. Or Luciano anyway.
Serena did not spend her time inclubs. The dim lights, the pulsing music, the crowds of bodies appealed to her not at all. The only thing she could say in a positive nature about Luciano’s Cattiva Idea was that it did not smell of smoke and alcohol, and the bottom of her shoes did not stick to the floor as she’d expected from reading about places people went to at night to drink and frolic.
Instead, Cattiva Idea was…elegant—too loud, certainly, but with a sophistication underneath all the nonsense of gyrating heirs and heiresses trying to outshine each other.
Shesupposed.
Now she made her way through the tables full of the young and sparkling, wincing only a little at the noise level. She was only twenty-six, young yet, but she felt ancient to all their blatant posturing. Her grandfather had once told her she’d been born an old soul, and she could not deny that she felt like one in the audience of her peers.
She changed her focus from the revelers to the corner of the main floor, where on a raised kind of platform, Luciano sat, his arm draped over the bare shoulders of a beautiful woman Serena thought she recognized from one of her favorite television shows. There was a handful of other people at the table and his section seemed to be roped off.A VIP section, she supposed and rolled her eyes.
There was no doubt Luciano was a wealthy man. He was dressed in the best of the best, even if he left a few buttons of his shirt undone, as if the glimpse of olive skin was some kind of temptation, some kind of power move.
Serena did not allow herself delusion. He was a handsome man. All jet-black hair and dark eyes. High cheekbones and a Grecian nose. Full mouth, chiseled jaw. Then there was the height, the broad shoulders. There could be no argument. He was stunningly, classically attractive.
He knew it. He used it. She could disdain him for it, but she could not blame him for it.
She too used whatever tools were at her disposal. It was why she’d donned four-inch heels this evening—so she could be closer in height to him. It was why she hadn’t worn abusinesssuit, though as she didn’t lend herself to the frivolous, her dresswasblack. And probably a little more suited for a work cocktail hour than a youthful club. But she’d uncharacteristically left her hair down, allowed it to curl in all the ways it would instead of taming it into a braid or twist as she preferred. She’d worn makeup more in keeping with a night out than a corporate meeting, and added a few pieces of jewelry, on loan from her mother, a far more ostentatious creature than Serena herself.
Serena took after her father, as her mother so often liked to tell her. A deadly dull vulture in the presence of far more interesting peacocks. It was why after the divorce, Serena had spent more time in her father’s home than her mother’s.
But deadly dull vultures weresuccessful, her father had always liked to say. All peacocks did was strut about.
