She claimed to have one, but…he did not for the life of him understand what she was attempting to do.
“If you give me the contact information of whoever handles Ascione business for you, I will e-mail them my spreadsheets immediately. I am prepared to give you forty-eight hours to consider my proposal once your staff have explained the situation to you.”
It was all so condescending.Shewas condescending. As if he neededstaffto explain his own legacy to him.
But that was the image he had created. While his father had been alive, Luciano had lived and embodied that role when it came to Ascione—having nothing to do with the company, making sure he lived down to every one of his father’s low expectations, while quietly and privately focusing his talents on his club.
But after the accident, Luciano had been forced to catch up. Though he did not allow anyone to know just how much work he’d done there, how much he knew and understood. He’d invented a character, instead, and this was the contact information he gave Serena now.
Alan Emidio was Luciano’s “man of business”. He answered e-mails, took phone calls, studied P&L statements and all the deadly dull business things Luciano’s father had long ago given up on Luciano understanding.
Alan did not attend meetings, take phone calls or interact with anyone but Luciano because he did not exist.
Because Luciano understood just fine, now that he did not have to contend with the weight of his father’s impossible moving standards.
“I will expect to hear from you soon,” Serena said, with a politeness onlyshewielded like an accusation and a weapon. As if every time she chose the high road, she was sneering at whatever lower road she considered him on.
It was infuriating. “I would not wait up, Serena,” he returned, smiling at her with as much charm as he could manage. Because it annoyed her. “I have many…companions lined up for my evening.”
He saw the annoyance he’d wanted and an added dose of disgust chase over her face, even as she smiled in return, offered a nod and then turned and left his office.
Marry me, she had said.
Not a question. Not a beg. Not ajoke. A statement of fact, as if that was the only possible answer to this problem they found themselves in.
Except they were not athey. They were enemies. Generations of Ascione and Vallis had fought to take over the shipping world in Genoa. And generation after generation, they had been more obsessed with hurting each other than changing with the times and building a sustainable business that would last.
Luciano had always considered that a waste, and pointless to try to talk his father out of. So he’d found something better to do with his time. He had convinced himself he did not care about his father, or Ascione or legacies.
It was funny what death could do to the things you convinced yourself of.
Still scowling at the door, he moved around his desk and then sat down at his computer. He booted up the profile for Alan Emidio.
She had, of course, already e-mailed him. So Luciano read the missive—businesslike, polite and to the point. There were a handful of attachments, and Luciano ignored everything—his guards, the club manager, his phone buzzing in his pocket—until he’d gone through every last one.
Then he sat back in his chair and cursed, scowling at the screen. She should not have known so much about Ascione. She must have implemented some spy—or more likely, her father had before he’d died.
When his father had been alive, Luciano had not been involved in the business. He had not been deemed worthy. He would notfighthis father’s low opinion of him.
But with the man gone, Luciano had not been able to let Ascione crumble into the sea. He had thought he would, but something ate at him. A surprising need to show a dead man he’d been dead wrong.
He’d been bailing water out of a sinking boat without a lifeline. And still he had not given up, even though Serena was right. Six months, unless he did something drastic, was the most he could eke out of Ascione before failing.
He didn’tneedAscione, but he wanted it. Alive and whole. Perhaps one lastI told you soto his father.
He could hardly marry Serena Valli,mergetheir companies. It was ludicrous on many a level. It was beyond drastic. It was insanity.
He could ignore it, but she had information and insights she shouldn’t.
And that could not stand.
CHAPTER TWO
SERENA HAD DRIVEN HERSELF, as she liked to do when she wanted to feel most in charge, and she took the long, scenic way home, enjoying the play of light and dark as she drove from Genoa up to her estate.
Serena loved her home. Her privacy. The one place she could go and not worry about being Serena Valli. Even before her father had died, the old Valli castle atop a hill looking out over the Ligurian Sea had been her safe place. Her hideaway and sanctuary.
She had moved there permanently in her early twenties to aid in caring for her ailing grandfather. He’d been ninety-one to her twenty-one, and still she thought he was the one person in the world who’d understood her, and vice versa.
