Page 2 of The Virgin's Dance with the Devil
“What was the last book you read?” Rico challenged. Mattia’s delusions of intellectualism never ceased to amuse him.
“A book on the foundations of Rome.”
Rico and Tommaso caught each other’s bemused eyes again. “Do you think my virgin unicorn would enjoy it?”
“She’d enjoy it more than anything you have to offer, but why don’t you go and ask her?” Mattia said. “It will be fun to watch you humiliated.”
“You don’t think I can have her?” In all his thirty-two years, Rico had never come across a woman who could resist him. Those who kept their guard up at his approach quickly lowered it when he told them his name. Having never suffered false modesty, Rico knew his name, wealth and looks were a killer combination.
“Not that one,” Tommaso said. “That one will never put out without a wedding ring on her finger.”
“How much do you want to bet?”
“Ten grand.”
“Done.” They shook on it, and then Rico downed his neat vodka and rubbed his hands together. “Excuse me, gentlemen, but I have ten thousand euros to win.”
Marisa Rossellini was trying very hard not to return Federico Esposito’s stare. It felt like his eyes had been on her the whole evening.
She doubted there was a sentient person in Italy who hadn’t heard of the Espositos or who was unfamiliar with their faces, so to be on the receiving end of such blatant interest from one of them was unsettling.
Led by patriarch Lorenzo, who in four decades had dragged them from being minor drug dealers in Naples – a fact conveniently memory-holed – to being one of the richest families in the country, no money or shiny shoes could disguise what the Espositos were at heart: thugs. Dangerous thugs. Dangerous,powerfulthugs. Lorenzo owned a hefty chunk of the media, including television stations, much of what was left of the newspaper industry and, more recently, social media platforms. The family had fingers in the pies of many other industries too, arms dealing only included by the very brave in their lists of them. They also had something equally as powerful in Italian society – charisma. It was Lorenzo’s special brand of charisma that made the family so dangerous.
The Italian public adored the Espositos. They saw in Lorenzo a gregarious, working-class hero made good, a stinkingly rich man who’d never forgotten what it was to be poor (as if he’d ever been truly poor!) and loved nothing more than donating his money to worthy causes close to his heart. Lorenzo had opened numerous care homes for the elderly across the country which were unique in providing top-class care and facilities at prices even the poorest of society could afford, and even had hospital cancer and children’s wards named after him. That much of the funds that paid for these good deeds were a means of laundering his filthily-gotten gains wasn’t even strenuously denied by the family: the few journalists who dared ask the question, however obliquely, were dismissed offhand, swatted away like pesky flies. That the journalists who refused to be dismissed and probed beneath the deep veil of secrecy had a habit of disappearing… well, that was memory-holed as effectively as the Espositos’ origins.
Marisa was quite sure that if she’d grown up in an ordinary household, she’d think the Espositos were the second coming too. As it was, she’d been raised by a lawyer-father whose main client was Giuseppe Martinelli, a Duke and one ofItalian society's foremost men. Giuseppe and his wife were – had been – extremely close family friends of the Rossellinis, and evening suppers had often been spent discussing the Espositos in contemptuous tones. To the Martinellis’ minds, and those of their high society friends, the Espositos were scum and undeserving of a seat at their table.
Having always disliked Giuseppe, Marisa would have loved to have seen his face when he’d learned his youngest son was marrying Lorenzo Esposito’s only daughter. However, with Giuseppe having terminated his business relationship with Marisa’s father and taken away her parents’ seat at his high society table in light of her father’s Parkinson’s diagnosis, she’d had to take her amusement from afar.
She’d not wanted to come to the party tonight and suffer seeing Giuseppe and Carmella. The way they’d treated her parents was something she prayed daily to find forgiveness for, but Luisa had begged her to come. Luisa had married Giuseppe and Carmella’s older son, Gennaro, in a deal to prevent the Rossellinis going bankrupt (Marisa was quite sure both Martinelli sons hated their father as much as she hated him), and it was a marriage most definitely made in cold loathing. Considering her sister had given up her life, even if the marriage was only temporary, to save their family, the least Marisa could do was support her when Luisa needed her.
And so Marisa had travelled to the party with her sister and brother-in-law, braced for an evening spent with the Espositos, the most powerful and dangerous family in Italy.
What she hadn’t factored in was catching the eye of the youngest Esposito son.
He was good-looking. She couldn’t deny that. Gorgeous even. How the disgusting Lorenzo had bred four gorgeous offspring was something she’d take up with the higher being if she were admitted into heaven. Lorenzo’s wife was a handsome woman, so probably they’d inherited their looks from herside of the gene pool, but still. There was a basic unfairness at play. Having the face of an angel when you had the heart of the devil put the unwitting at a disadvantage.
Marisa wasn’t unwitting. Ignoring Federico’s blatant ogling was the best way to deal with a situation like this. Carry on dancing and pretend not to feel his eyes on her. Carry on dancing and refuse to reciprocate the long looks. Except… it was hard not to look back. It felt like being back at school. There had been a boy she’d known for years and shared many subject classes with, but had never given more than a passing thought to until one science lesson when she was fifteen she’d turned her head and found him staring at her. After that, it had been a nightmare to stop herself from staring back, in part to see if he was still looking and in part because knowing he was interested in her had piqued her interest in him. When he’d finally asked her on a date, she’d become so taken with him that she accepted. It had been an unmitigated disaster.
Soon after that date, Marisa had spent two years committed to the idea of being a nun.
While she’d long since abandoned thoughts of joining a convent, she was still to go on another date. She’d been asked on occasion but always gracefully declined. Either they didn’t make her feel anything or they were the type of men she could imagine having to use her knee on again.
None of those men had been even a fraction as dangerous as Federico Esposito or had a fraction of his swarthy good looks. Square-jawed, his nose was a touch too big and his mouth too wide, but they fitted him perfectly. It was his eyes, though, that were the killer. They were deep-set and piercing, and as she danced, she couldn’t help wonder what colour they were. Dark brown like his hair, which he wore short at the sides and long at the top? Instinct told her not.
The tempo of the music changed to a slower beat. Catching Luisa’s eye, she mimicked having a drink. Her sister’sglance darted to the table their champagne was warming and flattening on, and she made a slight grimace before nodding. Gennaro was sat at that table deep in conversation with his brother and Niccolo’s best friend, the affable playboy Dante Coscarelli.
She’d barely set off when the hairs on the nape of her neck lifted. The beats of her heart were already accelerating when she felt a tap on her shoulder.
She turned to find the imposingly tall and broad figure of Federico Esposito standing before her.
His eyes… they were blue; a deep, piercing blue… gleamed down at her. “Dance with me?”
Taken aback at this forwardness from a man she’d never spoken to, she scrambled for a response. “I was about to have a drink.”
“One dance and then a drink?”
Trying not to panic, she looked for Luisa, but her sister had disappeared from the dance floor.
