To Have & To Hate
Caitlin Crews
Chapter One
IVYAMIS HADonce declared—after having to put up with entirely too many self-congratulatory speeches from those who should have chosen respectful silence on the occasion of her mother’s funeral—that returning to her former stepfather’s ostentatious Italian castle would occur only if she first crawled the length of England on hands and knees. Over broken glass. Twice.
In fairness, that was how it felt now that she was actually doing it five years later.
Even the ancient rolling hills of Tuscany, with so many cypress trees dressed in pockets of mist in formation along the edges of old, lush vineyards, failed to mask the sensation of too many sharp edges pressing into her flesh.
Her typical reaction to anything having to do with the Tavian family.
Made worse now that she was actually back in their vicinity.
It had taken exactly one phone call to be thrown back into the worst memories of her teenage years. Umberto’s oily, patronizing voice. That knowing chuckle, as if he’d expected this call all along—which he probably had. As if all the work she’d done to turn her back on this place and these people had been nothing but an exercise in futility.
A silly girl’s attempt to escape reality.
She’d nearly told him where he could go right then. It had hurt her jaw to keep it clenched so tight.
But she told herself to shake it off and shape up, sitting there in the back seat of one of Umberto’s fleet of shiny, obnoxious Range Rovers. He had insisted that he send his plane to come pick her up. That she not lift a single finger to get herself to Tuscany—something that a person who didn’t know Umberto might consider a kindness.
Ivy, sadly, knew her former stepfather—the man who had made her lovely mother so desperately miserable—entirely too well.
There wasn’t a single thing the creepy old man did that wasn’t about control.
Especiallythe things he dressed up in solicitous disguises.
She looked out the window and reminded herself that she was no longer the awkward girl she’d been when she’d first been dragged here against her will, forced to leave her home behind to follow this whim of her mother’s. On the contrary. These days Ivy was what this place had made her. There was a strength in that.
Besides, she was here for a purpose.
This wasn’t her starry-eyed mother making up fairy tales in her head. This wasn’t the notably romantic screen legend Alana Amis allowing a powerful and mysterious Italian to sweep her off her feet—and then sweeping up her daughter along with her because Alana had been lovely in so many ways but had never been one for boundaries.
Ivy smiled, remembering what her mother had said on that topic.Darling, I am anactor. My life is about expandingpastboundaries, not collapsing into them.Something Alana had taken seriously.
This time Ivy had decided to come here of her own volition. This time, Ivy had decided that she would play Umberto’s game and beat him.
Assuming that was possible given Umberto had been running his power plays since long before Ivy was born.
The Range Rover purred its way up the drive and then stopped at the imposing front door of the ancient castle that was habitually featured in architectural magazines. The sort of publications that liked to fawn over each and every one of Umberto’s choices and suggesting hisdiscernmentin financial matters made himkeenly situatedin thelexiconof style. As if a corporate titan like Umberto—who had never polluted his business bona fides with an actual day of leisure in all the time Ivy had been forced to live with him—actually sat about poring over the incidental details of the many investment properties he owned. Much less the details of this castle that had been called thequiet bedrock of the Tavian brand, because, yes, the man considered his family a marketing tool and used them that way, too.
Obviously, he had his staff hire more staff to handle all such details and yet more staff to disseminate the myth of his greatness in all things to the wider world in the form of the odd puff piece.
The actual bedrock of the Tavian brand was Umberto’s bottomless greed.
Once the car was parked, the usual phalanx of indistinguishable staff members poured out to greet Ivy. They took the small bag she’d brought with her and ushered her inside, pretending to ask after her needs and desires when any guest to this place must know that what really mattered was the way Umberto had decreed they ought to be treated.
Ivy was slightly shocked that she wasn’t marched off to the dungeons.
She’d always been convinced that there were dungeons here somewhere. Actual cells, not simply all the mind games that were played here the way some families played a bit of cribbage of an evening.
“You may wait here,” a serene-faced woman told Ivy as she led her into a room on the ground floor of the castle, away from the far grander reception rooms and a ballroom as famous for who wasn’t invited inside as who was—Umberto did love to make a Hunger Game all his own whenever possible. The woman even bowed her head as she retreated.
None of the staff had looked familiar to Ivy, which didn’t surprise her. It wasn’t easy to have a personal relationship with an angry, despotic old man who thought he was smarter than anyone he’d ever encountered simply because he was richer. Having toworkfor him had to be nothing short of torturous.
Ivy looked around the room they’d left her in. It was one of the castle’s numerous salon-type places because, apparently, outrageously wealthy people got too easily bored with onlyoneplace to sit. She drifted farther into the room, noting in an almost clinical fashion the pedigreed art on the walls. The sort of antiques that would make a Christie’s auctioneer weep. Carefully arranged objects were stacked here and tossed there—because thesuggestionthat the occupants might really come and read all of these books, or might have collected these pieces on some sentimental journey instead of simply buying them because they were sought after by others, was the real truth about what was considered fashionable in houses like this.
