Page 1 of The Housekeeper and the Brooding Billionaire

CHAPTER ONE

HESTOODBYthe arched window, staring into the solid wall of mist that covered the lake. It would suit his mood if that grey pall stayed all day, locking the island in from the outside world, away from the rising sun.

This day didn’t deserve light.

Nor do you.

Pain jabbed his ribs, piercing yet so familiar he almost welcomed it. Pain was now a permanent companion, a sign of life.

Alessio grunted with mirthless laughter. On days like this, life wasn’t necessarily a positive.

He scraped his hand around his neck, easing taut muscles. He’d been awake all night, using the excuse of the auction in East Asia as an excuse to avoid bed and the sleepless hours he knew awaited him.

The staff in the Asian office were the best. All his employees were. They could run a high-profile fine art auction without his online supervision. Even an event as spectacular as the one they’d just concluded, where fortunes had changed hands to secure some of the most exquisite antiques, paintings and ceramics the market had seen in a decade.

It had been one of his company’s most successful events. That was saying something since his family’s auction house had been brokering the sale of precious items to the world’s elite for two centuries.

Alessio should be jubilant. His staff were. His extended family would be when company dividends were paid.

Yet he’d felt no pleasure at the success of an event a year in the planning.

Not surprising. His life was as much a blank as the lake mist out there. No peaks of pleasure or even satisfaction. Not since that day three years ago. He worked harder than ever, relentlessly driving himself, because to take a break would allow too much time to reflect and feel.

He shoved his hands in his pockets. He’d never marked anniversaries, but today’s date was seared into his soul. He’d done what he had to, kept going. So many people depended on him. Family, employees, locals who looked to the Conte Dal Lago for support as they had for hundreds of years.

But keeping going wasn’t living. Not as he once had.

His mouth twisted. He’d made many mistakes. He refused to add self-pity to the list. Rolling his shoulders, he forced his mind to the emails waiting for him.

A shaft of early morning light broke the thinning mist and Alessio froze, heart stuttering to a momentary halt.

He blinked. He must be hallucinating. Lack of sleep was finally catching up with him.

Or is it guilt, playing tricks?

He didn’t believe in ghosts, despite living in thecastellowhere his family had been born and died for over five hundred years. But what other explanation could there be for the shadowy form that made his nape prickle and the hair on his scalp rise?

He leaned closer to the glass, but the image remained the same. Below the tower, on the island’s only sandy beach, was a figure.

Not one of the locals heading across the lake at dawn on some business. Not a lost tourist pretending they didn’t know the island was private and off-limits to all but invited guests. Therewereno invited guests these days.

Alessio blinked, telling himself the figure would disappear, a figment of his imagination conjured by the toxic mix of emotions this date engendered.

The mist swirled and the person disappeared. He was telling himself it had been illusion when there it was again. Not just a figure, but a woman, a young woman.

He heard the breath saw in his lungs, felt anguish sink razored talons into his belly as she walked out into the water. It rose to her slender thighs, then her waist, her fingertips sending ripples through the water.

Like in your nightmares.

Alessio grabbed the window frame for support. This wasn’t real. She wasn’t actually there. She couldn’t be. She’d been gone for three years.

Three years today.

Still she kept walking, not pausing like any normal bather on encountering that first morning chill. Instead she paced steadily deeper into the still, dark water, mist curling behind her.

Alessio’s head swam, pinpricks of light circling in his vision. The stonework around the window abraded his fingers as he clutched convulsively.

Was he going mad?

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