She didn’t care about the level of demeaning disdain with which he’d no doubt smear her. She was not letting this end without stripping off a few layers of his rhino hide. Maybe she’d even find something beneath to shame into coming through for his father and his kingdom.
She unclasped her death grip on her phone, hit another speed dial button. Megan answered on the first ring.
She fired away. “Megan, I want you to get me every shred of info on Prince Durante D’Agostino of Castaldini. And I don’t mean financial and personal profiles. At least, nothing reported in ‘reliable’ or ‘respected’ sources. Dig me up all the dirt. Make it thick, and make it quick. I need it…ten days ago.”
Durante stared at the wall across his extensive bedroom.
It looked so…tempting. All walls did. He wanted to bang his head against each and every one.
It was the conviction that some explosive pain and serious self-abuse might dampen the volcano seething inside him that tempted him.
How? How had he found himself in this position?
He trusted his instincts, which had steered him through his meteoric rise. But he’d always deferred acting on them until he’d deliberated all ramifications. Instinct didn’t equate with impulse to him. He’d believed that he was without urges, did nothing with spontaneity. His closest people told him he took premeditation to uncharted and aggravating heights. That was, until Gabrielle Williamson. Her.
His instincts hadn’t just totally misled him about her nature. He hadn’t thought once before accepting their verdict, hadn’t found ramifications to ponder as he let himself be swept away in the tide of what he’d thought mutual perfection. She’d satisfied his every demanding taste, his merciless critical eye finding only things to appreciate in her. Even the qualities that she’d put forward as her shortcomings, her hang-ups, had charmed him, secured his unquestioning empathy. And it had all been the practiced routine of a hardened seductress who got ahead in the world by seducing powerful fools like him.
If that night had been her first approach, if he hadn’t researched her in advance, if he’d found out her truth after he’d tasted her for real, he wouldn’t have been able to walk away, would have blinded himself to wallow in the pleasures she offered. He would have signed that contract, and maybe, like her previous victims, would have ended up signing over half his fortune. Or all of it.
And the worst part? His condition seemed hopeless.
He’d known how hopeless it was when his cousin Eduardo had passed by to check on him with that outspoken bride of his, Jade.
Durante hadn’t exited his penthouse for five days, spending that time prowling the cage of his mind. He’d thought it might save his sanity to have a distraction, especially that of people whose show of caring wasn’t a setup. So he’d invited them in.
It hadn’t played out that way. He’d bristled at their alarm at the sight of him. But when their solicitude had taken the form of questions, prodding, advice, with Giancarlo joining in the chorus of concern, he’d gone off like a landmine.
They’d exchanged the same look that he’d seen on employees faces during the last and most aggressive of his uncharacteristic blowups at his offices. Eduardo and Jade had given Giancarlo—the keeper of the beast—sympathetic murmurs, before they’d left, telling Durante he needed to seek one of two things. A radical lifestyle change. Or psychiatric help. He’d faced it then.
The one thing he needed to seek was her. Gabrielle.
No matter how much he’d told himself to forget her, to move on, he couldn’t.
He still couldn’t bring himself to seek her out. He missed the persona she’d projected as much as he missed his mother, with the same hopelessness of ever seeing her again. To him, that persona had also disintegrated before it died. The night he’d shared with Gabrielle was entrenched in his memories and senses. He couldn’t bear to see her wear another face.
But he’d reached the point where he no longer cared. He had to see her, with any face, at any cost.
He grimaced at his reflection in the full-length mirror then exited his bedroom. At least he no longer looked like the missing link between primates and Neanderthals.
He’d go to her now. This time, he knew what he was getting into, who he was dealing with. He’d walk into the situation with all the brutal clarity of disenchantment, take from her what he needed to get her off his mind and out of his system before walking away…
“I hope this won’t get me tossed from the veranda.”
Durante rounded on Giancarlo. “If you’re worried, as you should be, wear a parachute first. We’re high up enough that there’s a fifty-fifty chance you’d land with only minor fractures.”
Giancarlo grinned. He was Durante’s deceased valet’s youngest son and was eight years Durante’s junior. But for the past seven years, since he’d taken over his father’s position, he’d become even more invaluable than his father had been. He was an irreplaceable assistant who observed their situations impeccably in public and in private became a friend as trusted as Durante’s younger cousin Eduardo and younger brother Paolo, if less intrusive than either. Not that that said much, because those two were incorrigible. Each had married the “love of his life,” and things had gone from bad to dismal.
But Durante wasn’t in any condition to humor even Giancarlo. Now that he’d decided to see Gabrielle, he felt as if there were burning coals beneath his feet.
“I know you forbade me to interrupt you unless there was a lot of blood involved—”
“And you’re not bleeding,” Durante growled. “Yet.”
Giancarlo went on as if he hadn’t spoken, unperturbed. “—but there’s a lady downstairs asking to speak with you. She’s—”
“Gabrielle.” Her name blared in his mind. He growled it, not wanting Giancarlo to utter it as if he had to be told she was here. When he knew. Knew. “Gabrielle Williamson.”
Giancarlo nodded. “That’s her name, yes. I took the liberty of admitting her to the foyer. I judged she warranted the courtesy, because she was the first woman you ever took to Angelica, and the first—and I trust, the last—creature you’ll ever sing to. But because you’ve been like a tiger with a half-ripped-out claw since you stormed down from her residence, I assume you don’t want to see her? Shall I tell her you’re busy having a breakdown?”