Page 3 of The Sicilian’s Deal For 'I Do'

But then, he’d learned the truth: that the Marinis were trying to swindle him. The company his own father had fought tooth and nail to buy ten years earlier had become practically worthless. Did the older Marini really think Luca was so stupid? That he wouldn’t undertake more due diligence than the average person?

His team of forensic accountants had been raking over Marini corporate documents for more than a month and finally found evidence of Gianni’s deception, of the true state of Marini Enterprises. It was almost bankrupt. Using an admittedly clever scheme of shadow companies and trusts, he’d been able to make it look profitable and successful in order to lure a buyer, but it was all a façade.

Just like Mia.

Outrage had filled every cell of his body. It wasn’t just the money, it was that they’d taken him for a fool who would believe their lies. It wasn’t as if Luca craved anyone’s approval, least of all his father’s, but in the back of his mind there’d been the knowledge that Carrick Stone was waiting for Luca to fail, to come back to Australia with his tail between his legs. The Marini family wouldn’t have ruined him—Luca was too wealthy—but he would have been mortified for the truth to come out, and for his father to know. And so he’d left, without a backwards glance.

And yet...

In the warm, afternoon sun, standing near the edge of his infinity pool, Luca reached for his phone once more, his eyes landing immediately on the article, to the photo of Mia standing, smiling sweetly, beside a man Luca had met on a handful of occasions. Lorenzo di Angelo had inherited the responsibility of running his family’s textile business, based out of Milano, but in the last few years he’d been launching an impressive move into the south, and wider across Europe. Luca had been watching with interest—he watched all business expansion with interest, having an almost savant-like ability to track the landscape of corporate movements across the world.

So, Gianni had found another investor.

And Mia was going along with it, just like before, a willing lure to the next mark.

Mia Marini engaged—again!

Even though he didn’t regret walking away from their deal, something about the headline left a stain of discomfort in his chest, and he couldn’t say why. Mia had gone along with her parents’ scheme. She worked for the business; she was undoubtedly complicit in their lies. And yet, the media coverage of their failed wedding had all focused on her. Jilted. Ditched. The photo of her in the square, the dress covered in ice cream, a child staring at her with wonder as she’d looked at the sky, face scrunched, lips parted.

Shame had been a blade at his side, even when he knew he’d done the right thing, even when he knew she deserved it. He’d ignored calls from his father—as if Carrick had any right to lecture Luca about any damned thing—and his half-brother, Max. Though that was much harder to do, given the affection and respect he felt for Max Stone. But he hadn’t wanted to answer questions about the marriage, nor about the Marini business, and the fact he’d left Mia to clean up the mess after he’d discovered the truth.

And hadn’t she deserved that?

She’d gone along with it all. She could have told him the truth, especially on that night, by the car, but she hadn’t. That kiss... He closed his eyes as he remembered, as pleasure vibrated through his body in a way that still had the power to shake him. What had he thought? That a kiss like that was somehow an unlocking of her soul? That she would be honest with him because of the desire that exploded between them?

There was too much at stake for honesty.

She’d been a willing piece in the whole scam, had even been willing to sell herself into the deal, to marry a man she didn’t know, to get him to shore up a worthless company.

That made her almost the guiltiest of all.

After the wedding of the century that wasn’t, Mia Marini is trying again, this time with the oldest son of the di Angelos, bringing together two of Italy’s most established families.

Well, good for Mia. She’d duped another guy into the scheme.

He placed his phone down on the table, moving to the edge of the pool and staring now at the crystal-clear water that led all the way to the tiled edge, and beyond it, to the immaculate Sicilian waters.

She’d been an irrelevancy at first.

And then, she’d kissed him—or he’d kissed her—and a spark of desire had ignited into something far more powerful.

She’d been his fiancée.

He could have taken her if he’d wanted, and suddenly, he had wanted. He’d wanted to fold her into the back of the car and drive away from her parents and their estate, drive anywhere there was a big, comfortable bed, and make love to her, to hear her moan a little more like she had, to have her cry out his name.

He didn’t need to go back to his phone, to look at the photo. He could see Mia in his mind, as she’d been that night beneath the milky moonlight, and as she was in the picture, with di Angelo. He dived into the water as a resolution formed firmly in his mind. Less a resolution, he thought with powerful strokes, but a need to possess what was, at one time, his. Or should have been.

He’d walked away that night because he’d been angry with her, angry that she’d lied to him, angry she’d tried to dupe him, then kissing him like that.

He was still angry.

But the Sicilian blood ran hot in his veins and it demanded something of Luca that he could no longer deny: before Mia married anyone else, before she willingly sold herself to another man for the sake of her family’s crumbling empire, she would be his.

All his, just as she’d pledged to him when they’d become engaged, and as her body had promised that night when they’d kissed beneath the moonlight. Something had been ignited between them, something urgent and intense. He’d been able to ignore it until now, until reading that Mia was about to marry someone else, and he would lose the ability to act on this desire once and for all. With a new sense of resolve, he cut through the water, temptation finally something he intended to obey.

Ostensibly, the ball was a way to honour her parents. Each year, the Marini family hosted this event, a fundraiser for her parents’ charity, but for Mia, it simply drew attention to how alone she was. Despite her newly announced engagement, despite her parents’ professed love for her—it all felt like an elaborate lie! She was marrying a man she barely knew and certainly didn’t love, who’d made it clear he intended to be a free agent right up until they signed on the dotted line—which was fine by Mia, she was under no illusion as to the kind of marriage they’d have.

But on top of that, she’d been raised by parents who’d taken her in out of a duty to her biological mother—her adoptive mother’s oldest friend—and who’d found themselves steadily disappointed by Mia as she’d grown. Somewhere deep down, Mia was sure they did love her, in their own way, and certain that they wanted the best for her, but it hadn’t been a happy childhood and even now the shadows of those years reached into her life and dulled her view of things.

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