Italian’s Last-Minute Mistress
Tara Pammi
Chapter One
SAMEERAFISCHER STOODin front of the wide marble steps at the entrance to the most beautiful villa on the shores of Lake Como and tried not to hyperventilate.
It was the first time she’d flown across the Atlantic. The first time she’d hopped on a plane to anywhere. The first time she wasn’t accompanied by her overprotective parents.
That she’d traveled so far to meet a close friend/ex-boyfriend who had ghosted her for months couldn’t muddy her satisfaction at what she had achieved.
Although it was alarming how much Matteo had hidden about his family’s standing. Even she, a naïve twenty-three-year-old who’d never left San Francisco before, could tell that the property in front of her would be worth millions, if not more.
The villa shone against the black night, like the lake shimmering behind her, full of magnificent splendor, with the snow-tipped Alps a shadowy outline. The swarm of the designer-wearing crowd and the giant marquee on the grounds said she’d arrived right in the middle of a big-ass party.
Matteo, on one of his visits to San Francisco, had shown her pics, but only bits and pieces. The gardens that he adored but not the lake they led into. His bike but not the bright red Ferrari parked next to it. The view of Lake Como but not the spot where he’d stood when he’d taken the pic.
From the moment she’d boarded the flight to Milan—on a first-class flight and, then the chauffeured ride to Lake Como—an unsettling realization dawned. Matteo was no lowly manager in the rungs of Ricci International Finances as he’d claimed. Perhaps the fact that his surname was Ricci should have been a clue, but she’d never had reason to believe he’d lie to her…
Her confusion at his ghosting her only deepened.
Four months ago, they’d argued bitterly. No longer eighteen as when they’d met, Sam had realized that their relationship had run its course. Matteo would always remain her first boyfriend and a kind friend who had loved her during a hard time, yet they had nothing in common.
That she’d disappointed him by ending their relationship—after his patience over their long-distance relationship for nearly five years—saddened her. So surprising him by coming here had felt like a great idea. She knew that there was a friendship between them worth saving, even if the relationship was over, and this sudden silence from him worried her because it was so out of character.
Now as she stared at the glittering party, doubts engulfed her. Should she quietly leave? Wait for Matteo to show up in San Francisco again? Would he even come back, after ghosting her?
No, she couldn’t give up now. Not on their friendship, not on herself.
This could be the summer where she experienced the world as a normal twenty-three-year-old. One summer where she didn’t have to live with the crushing guilt that she’d ruined her parents’ life.
One summer where she was bold, adventurous and daring.
Alessandro Ricci stared out of his bedroom window at his family’s villa at the teeming guests and felt a spark of shame. He was the older son, and yet, he was avoiding extended family, important guests, the Bianchis among them and his aunt’s extravagant emotions.
The last was what he needed escape from the most. It wasn’t enough for his aunt that her son Matteo, Alessandro’s half brother, was finally settling down. Oh no, his aunt who had raised Alessandro ever since his mother had died giving birth to him was now bemoaning Alessandro’s own single status.
Since she was the one person in the entire world he loved more than anything, he hadn’t snarled at her. Instead, he’d chosen to hide.
His presence cast a dark pall at these parties anyway. Especially when it was his thoroughly spoiled, good-for-nothing half brother Matteo’s engagement party to the billionaire Bianchi heiress that Alessandro had had to engineer as if he were a bloody pimp. Not that he didn’t appreciate the billion-dollar investment it brought to Ricci Finances.
Even after all these years, the gathering today reminded him of his own engagement party eighteen years ago. Of how incredibly happy he had been. How gloriously beautiful Violetta had looked. How arrogantly confident he’d been in his own power that the world was his for the taking.
In the months after he’d lost Violetta, he had hated others’ happiness with a violent resentment, like a wounded feral animal. He’d hated the pity and concern, as if they were afraid for him and of him. The next few years, he’d thrown himself into sex with women who knew the score. But the short shelf life of his partners had only encouraged the young women and their mamas in his circle to portray him as a tormented man who needed to be saved by love.
Soon, the isolation had become his armor.
But in the last few months, even his father, a man of few words, had cast him concerned glances. Had started talking about how lost and broken he’d been after Alessandro’s mother had died after giving birth to him. That he had saved himself by marrying his wife’s younger sister, Maria.
His father didn’t know it was too late for Alessandro.
Every day he’d stayed by Violetta’s side as she’d tried, and failed, to fight the insidious cancer that had siphoned everything soft and good from him too. Every minute he’d seen of her struggle and lived through the unrelenting powerlessness of it had splintered his heart until nothing was left.
Now, he was far too fond of his own company and excessively critical of everyone else. There was Matteo to produce heirs for the Ricci legacy, and he had his work.
His brother and Angelina Bianchi were a practical match, though there did seem to be some affection between them now. Everyone knew that Angelina had had her heart set on Matteo since she was sixteen. While he’d never admit to it, he understood Matteo’s initial resentment toward her.
Angelina had pointed him out to her powerful father, Vittorio Bianchi, as easily as she’d have picked a stud. Then she’d pursued him with a relentless drive that the ruthless businessman in him had to admire. When Matteo had started returning her interest in the last six months, Vittorio had sweetened the merger immediately.
