Page 22 of With a Vengeance

Eight cars away,Anna faces the only other person who remains in the first-class lounge, desperately wishing he’d also leave. More than that, she wishes Dante Wentworth had never boarded the train to begin with. It’s his father she wants here, trapped with the others in her meticulously woven web.

That Dante crashed the party shouldn’t surprise her. After all, it’s how they first met.

“I must admit, I’m impressed,” he says. “This is quite a plan you’ve cooked up, Annie.”

It takes all of Anna’s strength to not gasp. No one has called her that in a very long time. Hearing it again after such a long absence makes it feel like time has bent back on itself, shuttling her into the past.

“One you shouldn’t be a part of,” she says. “If you think taking your father’s place tonight will spare him, I can assure you it won’t. You’re only delaying the inevitable.”

Dante sits back down at the piano. “I’m not here to spare anyone. Least of all him.”

“Then why are you here?”

“Because I wanted to see you,” Dante says with such sinceritythat it would have made sixteen-year-old Anna swoon. He always knew exactly what to say. He still does. But Anna has learned a few things herself over the years, including how to resist the charms of Dante Wentworth.

“What made you think I would be here?”

“The invitation,” Dante says. “When I found it on my father’s desk and read the message on the back, I knew you were behind it. You should have had someone else do that part, you know. I’d recognize your handwriting anywhere.”

Anna briefly closes her eyes, mad at Dante for noticing and mad at herself because he’s right. They’d written to each other so much back then. Letters filled with swooning declarations of love that will make Anna die of embarrassment if she gives them too much thought.

So she doesn’t give them any thought at all. That was a long time ago. In another life. And the lovestruck teenager who spent all those late-night letter-writing sessions searching her brain for words to describe how her heart felt is dead. In her place is a different Anna now.

Dante, on the other hand, seems exactly the same. He’s older, of course, the hard living of his twenties giving him a touch of raggedness that somehow only makes him more handsome. Especially when he starts playing the piano again, his face scrunched in concentration as his nimble fingers trip across the keys. This time, Anna recognizes the tune. “You Made Me Love You.”

That had been her favorite song, back when she was in love withhim.A time in which they were supposed to hate each other.

No one had explicitly told them that. Things didn’t work that way on Philadelphia’s Main Line. People who lived where they lived and were as rich as they were didn’t have enemies. There, everyone smiled and air-kissed in public while trying to tear each other to shreds behind closed doors. But their fathers werebusiness rivals, so it was silently decreed that the two of them should have nothing to do with each other.

Anna knew who Dante was, of course. They moved in social circles close enough for her to hear all about the charming rapscallion son of Kenneth Wentworth. Enough for Anna to know that she’d probably hate him. At sixteen, she was a hopeless romantic, raised on love sonnets and Shakespeare. She had no time for the spoiled sons of local captains of industry. It didn’t matter that she was the spoiled daughter of one. Anna swooned over Laurence Olivier and harbored dreams of being an actress herself. She’d even been cast as Juliet in her prep school’s upcoming production ofRomeo and Juliet.

Then came her parents’ annual Christmas party, in which their house was flooded with strangers in formal attire, including a boy in a sharp navy suit and red silk tie. Halfway through the party, he slid next to Anna and introduced himself only as Dante, either because he didn’t want to share his last name or because he knew he didn’t need to. In Philadelphia, there was only one Dante worth knowing.

“I’m—” Anna started to say, but Dante cut her off.

“Oh, I know everything about you, Anna Matheson.”

Anna blushed, although she had no idea why. Maybe it was the knowing way Dante said it, as if he had peered into her thoughts and seen her deepest, darkest secrets and yearnings. More likely, it was because Dante was undeniably gorgeous. Even though she’d been told he was handsome, Anna was still unprepared for the sight of the boy standing in front of her. Those blue eyes. That swoop of dark hair that couldn’t quite be tamed. The slightly crooked smile that alternated between awkward, devilish, and seductive. Her beloved Olivier had nothing on Dante Wentworth.

Thankfully, Anna kept enough of her wits about her to say, “Surely not everything, Mr. Wentworth.”

“I know that we’re not supposed to mingle.”

“Our fathers definitely wouldn’t like that,” Anna said.

“Which makes the idea seem deliciously appealing.”

Dante took a step closer, and Anna’s world narrowed until it was just the two of them. It didn’t matter that they were in a crowded house filled with holiday revelers. All she could see was the beautiful boy standing before her.

As soon as she was fully under Dante’s spell, it was broken by the sound of Anna’s mother shouting across the room.

“You get away from him!”

A hush fell over the party as Anna’s mother stomped to a corner of the room where her brother, Tommy, was talking to a man she’d never seen before.

“I said get away from him!” her mother bellowed. “Don’t you dare talk to my son!”

Tommy, now the center of attention, tugged at his shirt collar as his cheeks turned crimson. “We’re just chatting, Mom.”

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