Their Boardroom Baby
Pippa Roscoe
PROLOGUE
He had tofind Maria. He… Micha could barely pull his thoughts together. They’d scattered like the marbles he’d seen other children play with on the streets. He couldn’t… He didn’t…
Gio Gallo, the man he’d had the temerity—and desperation—to try and steal from, the man who had plucked Micha and his mother from the streets, given him a job, an education, a place to live, a future, the man to whom he owedeverything, had just broken his heart.
Ask her. Ask her and see what she says.
Micha was a few days from his eighteenth birthday. And he’d been happy. He’d been pinch-me-hard-because-this-didn’t-happen-to-people-like-me happy. Gio had been his fairy godfather far beyond the time when Micha had believed in fairytales—if he ever had.
He’d grown up hard and quick, forced to do and see things most adults never did. Not that he’d ever lay the blame at his mother’s feet. She’d done the best she could. She’d donewhatevershe could and he forced his thoughts away from the darkness that filled his mind when memories of the past came calling. His father had run off before he was born, leaving his mother saddled with debts she had no hope of paying, and debtors who had plenty of ideas. He’d been on edge, hovering between desperation and hopelessness when he’d run across Gio.
Gio, who had given him everything.
Gio, who wanted to send him away.
Gio had brought him into his business, his family and his sprawling family estate in Tuscany, and Micha had thrived. As for the rest of his family? They were not all like Gio, who had seen in him what no money could have bought—an intelligence that matched his own and a determination that would achieve great things, given half the chance. No, instead, most of the Gallos simply saw a half Italian and half Russian illegitimate street urchin who would never amount to anything.
Maria hadn’t thought that though. She and Antonio had never treated him as anything but an equal. They had befriended him, and they became inseparable. The Three Musketeers, that’s what they had been called. He hadn’t understood the reference at first and had to look it up, but he liked it. Three friends who would do anything for each other.
Ask her and see what she says.
Micha had genuinely thought he and Maria had been careful enough that no one had known about their relationship. He stumbled over the wordlove. He felt it, but could still hardly believe that someone like Maria could feel that way for him. But headoredher. She filled his every thought. She made his heart ache just at the sight of her.
But Gio wanted to send him away.
Micha had always wanted to work for Gio. He’d wanted to repay the man who had changed his and his mother’s entire lives. He was going to work for Gio and so was Maria. Because Maria wanted to run Gallo Group—the international conglomerate that Gio ruled with an iron fist.
But the only way that Gio would allow that to happen was if she married Antonio—her adopted cousin. Gio Gallo wasfixatedon the union of his two grandchildren, having given up fully on his own, useless children.
Micha had thought that if he could just prove himself, if he could show the old man just how good he was, Gio might eventually change his mind. He’d thought he would have time.
‘I’m sending you to Paris,’ Gio had announced that morning.
‘That’s…kind of you, Mr Gallo, but I’d rather stay here. To be near—’Maria‘—my mother.’ The guilt at the lie twisted in his soul.
‘This is no problem. I will be providing you both with accommodation.’
‘I have—’friends‘—colleagues here. And I was just beginning to grow—’
From behind his desk, Gio had pulled up to his full height, the black-eyed glare stopping Micha’s words so much so that he nearly bit his tongue.
‘It’s just that—’ Micha had tried again.
‘No,’ Gio said. The word a bullet. ‘It’s not your mother, it’s not your friends or your career prospects. What itis,’ he said, stressing the word, ‘is an impossibility.’
‘Sir, I—’
‘She is not meant for you,’ Gio spat, the poison dropping into Micha’s skin. ‘You know my feelings on this.’
Micha clenched his jaw.
‘But, really, it’s notmyfeelings you have to worry about. You know how much she wants to lead this company. At seventeen, she already has a better business head than my children do at twice her age. She was born for this. She wants this. And shewillchoose this over you, Micha.’
Micha huffed out a disbelieving breath.
