Page 22 of Amadeo (Dark Legends #4)

Chapter One: The Demoness

Luca

Impossible.

That was what this had become.

Ever since she had arrived, my life had been turned upside down.

Why my father had agreed to this merger was beyond me.

Bianca Palmentari, the daughter of Vincent Palmentari was the devil in Versace.

I hated the idea of a bonding between Palmentari and Descalia, but my father wouldn’t budge.

And no matter what I tried, he refused to tell me why he accepted this idea.

Descalia Corp had been on its own and very successful ever since my father started it.

I had been running it for the last two years and all its numbers had skyrocketed.

So I knew it couldn’t be that the company needed saving by accepting a merger.

We were a billion dollar company and we ran this town.

Yes, we were attached to the mafia, but we were bigger than most of the men who ran that organization.

They treated me and my father like Dons.

I wasn’t sure I wanted to be a Don in any case.

No, I thought of myself as a CEO of a company.

We barely dealt in anything illegal, so the Famiglia part was just a tradition or just for show maybe.

Then my father hit me with it. We had to share this show.

It had come as an immediate shock and it had been the first time my father and I had disagreed over something major.

I hated the idea and he wanted the idea.

He had informed me that I needed to collaborate with Ms. Palmentari to complete the deal.

So here I was again, pacing in my office, waiting for this infuriating woman.

She was late again. How she could think to represent us in Italy was beyond me.

Yes, ok. I knew that had been part of why my father had agreed to this.

Our two families had been close for almost three centuries or some astronomical period of time like that.

Thirty decades he had said. I wanted to yell back at him.

SO WHAT? Because being old friends even that long didn't mean you needed to go into business with them.

I felt like I was missing something here about this deal, but no one was fessing up.

The door opened and I halted in my pacing.

My two brothers stepped in, Dante and Amadeo.

I glared at them. “Well, has she arrived yet?” I snapped the question.

Dante shook his head and looked over at Amadeo. “Do you want to tell him or shall I?”

With his usual grin, Amadeo shook his head. “You are aware that whoever does it becomes the messenger and we all know what happens to the messeng—”

“STOP!” I almost shouted at the pair as this was the way they operated when they were around me.

Attempting to lighten me up, so they said.

Make me more human, so they said. Well, if that meant being a fool, they could keep it.

“You two need to grow the fuck up. And one of you needs to answer my question.”

My brothers simply stared at me. They did look like they were trying to hide their smiles. Or should I say smirks. Because that is what these two always wore…Smartass smirks.

“Ok, so I flew over to the Ambassador Hotel,” Amadeo explained.

“Where Ms. Palmentari is staying. Landed on their rooftop. Went down a floor to the penthouse and was blocked by two of the largest men I have ever fucking seen in my whole life. I mean if you thought Rocky and Tito were huge? You need to see these behemoths. Like I instantly thought up names for them. Bam-Bam and Andre The Giant. These two are monstrous creatures.”

I let out a long frustrated breath and pushed my fingers through my hair. My brothers were both intelligent and well educated, but you couldn’t tell that when they started talking.

Dante shook his head. “That did not answer his question, Deo. And I think he is about to blow a gasket.”

Amadeo gave him a nod. “Nothing new about that. Luca does that on the daily. You’d know that if you ever came to this floor, Dante.

Which you don’t do very often and I think that is why.

” He chuckled. “But me? I have nerves of steel. I am the only brother brave enough to work with Luca the Legend .”

“Luca the…” I shook my head and did like I usually do to offset his jokes, I ignored them. I now stared at him. “Skip the funny stuff and the gorilla guards. I’ve heard all your jibes and I’ve seen the behemoths a few times now. All I want to know is the demoness on her way or what?”

“The demoness has arrived.”

My head shot up as I spotted her by the door, behind my brothers. “Well, shit,” I swore under my breath.

“Is that any kind of language to be using in the office?” Bianca asked in that low purring voice of hers.

Sometimes that purr made the hairs on my arms rise up. I forced my shock from her sudden appearance away. Placed my expression in a neutral blank and reeled in my temper. I would use the creed I’d sworn by ever since I first saw her…Treat her coldly and with a business like aplomb.

My brothers separated like the divided great sea before Moses and did what they always do.

Smirk.

Unfortunately, this stepping aside allowed me to fully see her now.

To get the full experience of seeing her.

Much to my detriment, my eyes couldn’t shift to anywhere else.

No, of course not, while around this female, nothing in me seemed to work right.

Not my brain, not my business acumen, not a damn common sense brain cell.

Suddenly, the sight of my brothers disappeared. The office disappeared and only one thing existed.

This woman, the one I described as a devil or a demoness. Only she existed for me now.

Stepping forward in a sleek, black halter dress and gold pumps on her feet, she literally glided over toward my desk.

She walked like she was on a cloud as her gaze pinned me with some kind of mesmerizing effect I had yet to figure out.

Her long tan legs seemed to traverse in sync and rhythm with her slightly swaying hips.

The woman didn’t walk really, she seemed to move in a sleek way like a professional model on a runway.

With her flashing dark eyes and long black tresses, she only ever seemed to wear a deep red lipstick and maybe eyeliner.

The rest was all her, not cakes of paint.

Being lucky to have the genes she inherited, she didn’t seem to need makeup.

My father had described her as a combination of regal starlets from a past of long ago.

A cross between Sophia Loren and Gina Lollobrigida.

I never heard of them, but once I looked those two up on the net as they looked in their heyday, I felt like he hadn’t even described her beauty well enough.

Curves that were unlike any I’d seen on a woman.

Not any American woman anyway. Yes, she was tall and curvy.

Endowed naturally with what they would call voluptuous breasts.

Her body was my type. Check one on my attractive list. Held herself with total grace and had a good grasp of emotional self-control.

Check two on my list of good qualities. Voice like an angel…

Check three on the purr. Ok, so let's just round it up to a ten. A total ten.

And this was why I hated her.

Yes, I allowed that visceral negative feeling to roll over me now.

I needed hate or dislike desperately as armor.

I needed every weapon in my arsenal for this battle of the sexes.

I had no intention of ending up like my foolish brothers.

Wrapped around her delicate pinky. Whooped like a puppy, running to fetch for her.

Enraptured by a female to the point where they had changed their lives just to be with these women.

This particular female seemed to try that enrapturing from the first minute we met. I almost fell at her feet, I admit it. With her beauty, her voice and those dark eyes of hers, she had reeled me in like a sea bass ready to be filleted. I almost fell for it too. As they say…Hook, line and sinker.

After our first meeting, when she left the room I fell into my chair like a deflated balloon. Worn out from fighting my inner beast that wanted to rip her dress from her voluptuous body and pin her to my desk. Take her like a starved man who hadn’t had any sex after being in prison for five years.

I realized right then as I sat there– stunned in my office chair– how truly dangerous Bianca Palmentari really was.

Now, as she got to where I stood, I waved her to a chair.

I stepped behind the desk to move back… as far back as I could get.

I would make sure to keep myself out of her reach and I needed to avoid that scent.

Her scent….her magnificent scent. A perfumed cross between jasmine, musk and Chanel.

Truly a dangerous weapon in her arsenal.

And so the battlelines had been drawn, the pheromones set to fire like missiles to scorch through my ego. I got ready, told myself to take it slow, watch my words, not watch her and above all—do not look into her eyes. Like with Medusa, to gaze into those orbs, could cost me my soul.

No woman would ever control me. No woman was ever worth losing my control.

NOT QUITE THE END…

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