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She looked about her at the empty salon, wondering if the driver had brought her to the right place.
A statuesque man emerged from the back with a disarming smile that put Ivy instantly at ease. ‘Ms McKellen?’ he asked.
‘Buongiorno,’ she said by way of greeting.
‘It’s a pleasure to meet you,’ the stylist continued in English.
She looked about her again. ‘I’m sorry, are you closed? I can come back when it’s better for you?’ she offered, and the man looked at her, confused.
‘Closed? No, this is all for you,’ he said with a dramatic sweep of his arms to encompass the entire beautiful salon. ‘Venga,venga,’ he called, and from behind him emerged what looked to Ivy like a small army.
She took a step back, a little overwhelmed by it all, and couldn’t help but wonder whether Antonio had arranged this for privacy or efficiency. It was most likely to be the latter, but Ivy couldn’t help the small wish that burst into being that for once someone might have wanted to do something like this forher. As a treat. As something special.
‘Signor Gallo told us to take extra special care of you, and that is exactly what we’re going to do,’ the man promised, clearly not realising that‘Signor Gallo’had failed to bother to tell her what ‘special care’ actually meant.
Ivy had presumed a haircut—which she was, admittedly, in need of—but when a diminutive woman pulled out a clothes rack, Ivy’s pulse jerked again in panic.
Gavvi, as he finally introduced himself, ushered her into a chair in front of a mirror, where she was poked and prodded, assessed, and found wanting. After an intense three minutes of a stream of Italian she only caught single words from, Gavvi clapped his hands once.
‘Are we in agreement?’
Ivy shook her head in denial—she hadn’t agreed to anything yet!—but no one was actually looking at her.
A glass of sparkling wine was thrust into her hand.
‘È champagne, non prosecco,’one of Gavvi’s assistants explained with a sniff of disparagement as the others complained about the English drowning themselves in buckets of the inferior sparkling wine. It was so inconceivably extravagant that Ivy couldn’t help the quiet giggle that emerged from her mouth. The moment she did, one assistant gasped and the other pointed.
‘I knew it!’ Gavvi exclaimed. ‘A true beauty is somewhere in there, beneath the drab,’ he said, delicately brushing imaginary lint from the perfectly fine grey long-sleeved top she was wearing. ‘Even if itdoesmake your eyes look like silver,’ he whispered in her ear.
Ivy couldn’t help but smile at the compliment, wondering how much extra Antonio had paid for her to be charmed. Maybe she simply could enjoy this? After all, it wasn’t as if she got to do this every day, or maybe even ever again. And as another assistant removed the cloth coveringanotherclothing rack and she saw bursts of colour that she would never dare to wear in England, she took a deep breath. She could do this. And she would.
After all, he had bought her.Twice. It wouldn’t happen again. He might be able to afford it, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t get used to it. Because all of this? It wasn’t real. And the moment that he got his divorce, she’d be back in her flat in South West London, with only herself to rely on, once again.
Antonio drummed his fingers on the white cloth of the small square table in the central square in Siena, the Piazza del Campo. He looked at his watch, his gaze narrowing on the time. She was late. His phone buzzed in his pocket and he resisted the urge to check the email notification that was surely just more bluster from the Americans, panicking about what promised to be one of the largest business deals of the century so far. It was a bold claim. One he intended to make true.
But the Americans were accusing him of being distracted. He could understand why they might feel that way, between his grandfather, his wife and his future fiancée. But Antonio would never let such things impact his work, not even for a single moment. The Chinese were trying to renegotiate already agreed upon terms. They needed to be seen putting up a fight to their shareholders and both he and the Americans could wait. But Maria couldn’t.
Already, Gallo Group was beginning to buckle beneath the lack of clear leadership. They’d just lost another VP, and while Maria was in the office every single day, working all the hours God sent to keep the roof on tight, Micha, someone he’d once considered a friend, the man that their grandfather had threatened to give the company to, was nowhere to be seen. Although his mother was of the belief that he would be at the family party at the end of the week. A family party that Antonio had absolutely no intention of attending. He rolled his shoulders subtly, trying to ease the tension in his neck, aware of the attention he was drawing.
But hadn’t that been the entire point? Sitting in one of the busiest squares in Tuscany, a place no normal Italian would be seen dead in during the summer. Tourists flocked to the region from all over the world, while Italians counted down the days until they left again and it returned to being their home. Others clung to the industry, making their money in short intervals through the year—hoping it would be enough to pay the bills through the off season.
Antonio might have never known poverty personally. But the possibility of it had always been there. A shadow life of what could have been, had he not been adopted. And it had left its mark. It was a knowing that the others of his circle couldn’t imagine. Because they were there by birth. He was there by grace, and never had he been allowed to forget it. First by his adoptive father, then his grandfather. And as for his biological parents? One of them had seen fit to abandon him not only once, but twice.
His fingers gripped the stem of the wine glass, which wobbled precariously as tension fought with condensation.
‘Scusi, Signor Gallo, posso offrirle qualcosa?’
Antonio dismissed the offer of another drink with a grimace and a shake of his head. Until recently, his life had been as close to perfect as it could get. He’d worked at his business hard, demanding only what he gave himself: excellence and dedication. He’d started with little more than a handful of contacts and what was in his personal bank account, and he’d made it a multinational, billion-dollar industry. He’d paid his mother back beyond measure, and he hadn’t looked back.
Until his grandfather had passed. And since then, everything he sought to do was frustrated by incompetence and other people’s agendas. If he were religious, he’d think his grandfather was purposely tormenting him from beyond the grave.
He missed him, Antonio realised, the miserable, autocratic bastard. He missed verbally sparring with him, finding ways to wind the old man up, to shock him, or best him. He’d been the longest, strongest, male figure in his life and,Dio mio. He was rocked by a sliver of grief rippling through his chest and lungs.
It hurt. The absence of a man Antonio had genuinely thought would survive the apocalypse. He knew Maria felt similarly, though she wrestled with it for different reasons. Their grandfather had always thought her less because she was a woman, and Antonio had never been able to side with that way of thinking. Maria was, in all likelihood, a better businessman than them all.
And if his grandfather would have just acknowledged that, they wouldn’t be in this mess at all. Everyone knew that the last thing either cousin felt for the other was sexual attraction. But Gio had refused to see it. Determined to keep the business in the family, and unwilling to leave it to him—who had not a single drop of Gallo blood in his veins—this had been Gio’s ultimate goal, no matter who it hurt.
Back when they’d been teenagers, Antonio had always thought that Maria would end up with Micha. The three of them had been inseparable, but Maria and Micha, they’d had something different. Something special. Until Micha had left, severing all contact, leaving Antonio confused and Maria utterly distraught. Antonio would never forgive Micha for the hurt he’d caused, his anger crowding out the possibility that Gio had sent Micha away because he threatened to interfere with Gio’s plans for Gallo Group’s successor. No, deep down, Antonio feared that, like his mother, Maria had paid a heavy price for caring for him. That had she not, Gio would never have even thought of his crazy scheme to marry them off.