‘Mademoiselle Gallo, it’s so lovely…’ she trailed off when Maria cut her a glare. ‘Does Mr Rufina know you’re here?’ The pitch of the poor woman’s voice rose into the stratosphere.
‘No,’ Maria replied, turning back to the lift, ending any and all hopes of further conversation the receptionist may have had.
To her right was the bank of public lifts that would take the building’s staff to whatever floor they worked on. She was aware of a few of the staff casting surreptitious glances her way as they left for the evening. Or trying to at least.
At first, Maria had bemoaned the way that she drew the male gaze.
‘They’ll never take me seriously,’ she’d complained to her cousin Antonio. ‘All they see is this,’ she’d said, yanking on the thick tumble of long black curls. ‘And these,’ she’d said, pushing out her chest. Antonio had barked out a laugh and pushed her out of his face, telling her to ‘get those things away from me.’ They’d both ended up crying with laughter. ‘Then,mi amor,’ he’d said, ‘make them take you seriously in spite of it.’
He’d been right. As always. Her cousin, her favourite family member in the whole wide world, and not just because the rest of them were worse than a den of poisonous vipers out for whatever cent they could get their greedy little hands on. No, Antonio had always been there supporting her, cheering her on, even when her own parents wouldn’t. And so what if, for the last six years, Antonio had been a little distracted by his company, and avoiding the wrath of their grandfather. He wasstillthe only person she could rely on to help her.
And so—despite having worked for longer, and harder, than most of the family members there—she had always used her clothing with near deadly intent.
Dress the part, act the part, get the part.
And today she had dressedrich.Expensive.She had dressed with the kind of class that went beyond money. And she’d done it for one reason and one reason only. She wanted Micha to know that she was so far beyond his reach they may as well be on different planets.
She wanted the boy she’d all but grown up with to know that this was the last time he would ever see her, no matter what he’d meant to her grandfather. The grandfather she had looked up to, had loved with everything she had in her, but who had never once seen her as worthy. The grandfather who had been a complex, deeply difficult man, but who sometimes she’d thought she understood. Until he had passed away and his last will and testament had been read. The shock waves that had rippled out had been catastrophic for some, but for her and Antonio? Life changing.
Because Gio’s last will and testament revealed that no matter what they had done in the last six years—Antonio marrying someone else, Maria working every hour god sent to prove her worth—Gio Gallo had never given up on his eccentric and utterly irrational plan for her and Antonio to marry and together produce the perfect heir to inherit and run his empire.
It didn’t matter that they were already Gallos. Antonio was adopted and she was female, these two things marring them in some way for their grandfather. But a child from the two of them?Thatwas what Gio had wanted from the beginning. And if they didn’t marry and fulfil the terms of the will? The entire company would be handed over to Micha Rufina—something Maria wouldneverallow to happen while she still had breath in her lungs.
Antonio felt the same, which was why he had agreed to marry her in name only, to fulfil the terms of the will. Once Antonio got a divorce from the woman he’d married for convenience six years ago, he would then be free to marryher. And once they were married, once they had inherited the company, he would sign over his share of the company that he had absolutely no interest in and they would go their separate ways. Him to his business, Alessina International, and her to Gallo Group. And no one would ever look down on her again.
Ding.
The elevator doors opened and she entered a small cubicle big enough for three people at a push. The rose gold mirrored glass threw her image back at her in soft reflections and she counted the floors down as she rose higher up the building, all the way to the penthouse.
She had been to the Paris office of Gallo Group several times over the past six years, but made sure to do so when Micha wasn’t there. She, unlike many others, hadnotbeen surprised by the meteoric rise of the boy Gio had taken under his wing all those years ago. No, she knew something of Micha’s mettle.
And it was cold, hard and impenetrable.
But still, even she had to begrudgingly respect the man’s business acumen. And where others in the family had snidely remarked about the ‘transferable skills’ of begging and thieving on the streets of Roma, she had only seen survival and determination, her sympathy for the boy she had once known refusing to budge on that instance. But she had also learned at her cost not to underestimate him.
Maria arrived at the penthouse floor with a ding and the lift doors parted to an exquisite reception area, continuing the use of the Gallo Group’s brand colours of rose gold and cream, she saw with no small sense of satisfaction.
She had been integral to the rebranding three years before and while the board had raised objections Gio had seen the sense in her plan. Gallo Group’s global perception skewed towards older males and while that had worked in the past, women were the future. And it was time for the Gallos to damn well catch up.
Frowning when she realised that the receptionist was not at her desk, she checked her watch. It was, she realised, after six in the evening, but it was strange that Micha’s secretary would have left already.
She made her way on thickly piled carpet towards the regional CEO’s office. The doors were wide open and unable to help herself, she entered and—just like the previous times she’d been here—immediately gravitated over to the window that stretched from floor to ceiling across one entire side of the huge office.
Many others might have boasted three-hundred-and-sixty-degree views. But what did that matter, when the one window of this office showed the Eiffel Tower in its entirety? Even as a little girl, she’d loved Paris. And her heart sighed just to see the most famed image of France stretched out before her.
For a moment, she wondered what it would have been like to be here under different circumstances, but before that half-formed fantasy could even take hold, she felt the hairs on the back of her neck raise.
‘What are you doing here,cara?’
‘You don’t get to call me that,’ she said, her words filled with the poison she wished she could use to hurt him the way that he’d hurt her.
Micha saw her flinch at his words, at how the muscles tightened all the way across her shoulders and back. He clenched his jaw, instantly regretting the word that had slipped past his usually ruthless self-control.
‘How did you get in here?’ he demanded, raising the armour that had broken at her shocking and surprising appearance in his office. He stalked over to his desk to put down the folder he had in his hands. And to buy himself some time to get over the impact of the sudden and perturbing sight of Maria Gallo.
He had seen her only a few weeks before at Alessina Gallo’s party. Antonio’s mother was trying her best to keep the disparate threads of the family together in her father’s absence. The man’s will had left more than the company without leadership, and both the family and the business were at risk of breaking apart because of it.
‘I walked.’
