Page 32 of Forbidden Until Midnight

He blinked, closing his mouth before it dropped open more than the few millimetres it already had in shock.

Money most definitelywouldhave been easier.

How could he make that promise to her? He was already lying to her. Had lied to her every single time they had met. Their entire interactions were coloured by that lie.

But how could he not, when she stared up at him with something in her eyes that he couldn’t shatter? So much had been taken from her, could he really afford to take this from her too?

But agreeing to her request would cross a line that he would be unable to reinstate. And a perverse part of him almost welcomed that knowledge. Welcomed the fact that what she was asking from him guaranteed a future in which he would disappoint her. One way or another, it would be a certainty if he gave her his word.

He took a breath, and ignored the way it shuddered in his lungs as he did so.

‘Yes, I can promise that,’ he said, wondering if by not saying the words it made his crime any less.

The smile that lit her features this time was genuine and warm. She bounced a little on the balls of her feet and he wished it didn’t make him want to smile in response.

‘Thank you. I wanted at least one person here who won’t lie to me,’ she said and, before he could react, she leant forward and reached up to kiss his cheek, his stomach flipping into his throat and his soul going straight to hell.

By the time he had regained control of himself, she had disappeared back down the stairs and off somewhere he couldn’t follow. Slowly, step by step, he returned to his place at the table with Karl, Aditi and Amita.

‘Is everything okay?’ Amita asked.

He forced a smile to his face. ‘Yes, in fact I’ve just acquired a new business.’

‘On New Year’s Eve?’ asked Karl, impressed.

‘Yes. A neighbour. I’ve nearly doubled my land.’

‘Now, that really is a reason to celebrate,’ Aditi exclaimed.

He nodded, and let them raise their glasses, even though there was no alcohol on the table. And no matter how self-righteous he’d been about the need to keep his head that evening, he would have given his neighbour’s business back for a bottle of whisky in that moment.

‘Who was that woman?’ Amita asked quietly, looking back up to the empty balcony.

‘No one important,’ he lied for the second time that night.

CHAPTER EIGHT

New Year’s Eve two years ago, Amsterdam

THESOUNDOFlaughter was painful to Santo’s ears. He’d flown in from a meeting in Helsinki with Mads in his private jet and not bothered to stop at his hotel room first.

He felt...angry, disappointed. Frustrated and just damn tired of playing this game.

‘She’s not a game, Santo.’

‘Then tell her the truth yourself and leave me out of it.’

‘If you want to stop...’

‘No.’

No. Santo didn’t want to stop. He wouldn’t break his promise to Pietro. The old man—who wasreallybeginning to look every day of his sixty-two years—had made the visit out to Puglia especially.

They’d spent hours talking about it. About how Pietro had been reaching out to Analise Carson in secret. How he’d never stopped loving the woman he’d spent only a few short months with when she was travelling around Europe on her own.

Pietro had been devastated when she’d returned to England, believing that her family would never agree to let her be with someone like him, so he’d acted rashly and become engaged to a family friend from Naples. It hadn’t taken long for the news to get back to Analise, who had found herself rebounding into the arms of Edward Carson. And when she’d discovered she was pregnant, it was too late. Edward had believed the child was his and proposed. It had all spun so out of her control that she’d been unable to stop it.

When Pietro had finally found out he’d broken the engagement amicably with his fiancée and tried to win Analise back, but they’d discovered just how dangerous Edward Carson could be. He might not have got his own hands dirty, but the ‘mugging’ which had broken Pietro’s leg, collarbone and several ribs, as well as fracturing an eye socket had left him with all the money in his wallet. The message to Analise’s ‘ex’ couldn’t have been clearer. But that didn’t stop Carson from going after Pietro financially for years. Every now and then Carson still poked and prodded, believing, like most, that Pietro’s finances were simply the middle of the range business acquisitions that appeared on paper. But he hadn’t been born the son of an ex-Mafia enforcer for nothing.

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