Page 121 of Modern Romance October 2025 5-8

The Rossetti Ring Requirement

Pippa Roscoe

Prologue

Please let this work.

Please let thiswork.

Erin Carter nibbled anxiously on her top lip as she tried to ignore the heavy glare from the receptionist peering over her spectacles at her as if surprised that Erin had the temerity tostill be here.

As if others would have taken the hint and left by now.

Erin looked at the gold script imbedded in the double mahogany doors fronting the office she desperately needed to enter.

GIO GALLO.

The octogenarian Italian billionaire owner of Gallo Group had resisted every single one of her numerous attempts to meet with him in the last three years. Until now. Which was why Erin had accepted, rather than questioned why he had finally agreed to meet her. It was enough that she was here. Even if he was keeping her waiting.

This is a bad idea.

Oh, she wished her mother’s imagined voice wasn’t so clear in her head.

They’d argued about this off and on for the last three years, ever since she’d shared her hopes with her mother.

It’s gone, Erin, and good riddance. All it ever did was bring us pain.

But her mother was wrong. If Erin could just get her family’s company back, if she could just convince Gio Gallo to let her buy just thenameof the company, then she’d be able to honour the promise she made to her mother and fix what her father broke when he sold it ten years ago.

And it wasn’t just a wild hope either. Erin had worked hard at school to get grades not only good enough to get into university, but also to secure a full scholarship for her business management degree. A scholarship that was very much needed after her father’s grand schemes and hideous debts had quickly burned through the funds from the sale of the small publishing house that had been owned by her family for generations.

Erin had worked hard, learned voraciously through placements and even started her own business, all the while attending university full time. She’d used Gio Gallo himself as the business model for her dissertation and could quite likely write an unauthorised biography of the man. Gio Gallo, she knew, was a man ruthless enough to disinherit whatever family member had upset him that month, something he had done twice at least.

Which was why she also knew thatthis—keeping her waiting—was a tactic with the sole purpose of making her uncomfortable.

‘Ms Carter?’ the perfectly presented assistant said, without deigning to look in her direction. Red talons pointed her towards the large double doors to the left of her desk.

The door opened to reveal Gio Gallo standing in the doorway, his hand outstretched for her to shake.

When she reached him, she found his grip firm, even if the skin on his palm was smooth in a way that spoke of age rather than youth. He was smaller than she’d imagined, but the piercing gaze he shot her reminded her not to be fooled by his appearance.

‘Ms Carter.’

‘Mr Gallo.’

‘Have a seat,’ he said, gesturing to the buttery soft chesterfield that faced another glass coffee table. ‘Coffee?’

‘No, grazie.’

‘Parli Italiano?’ Mr Gallo asked.

‘Mi scusi,’ she apologised. ‘Not really, no.’

Gio nodded once and waited for her to sit before he did. She felt as if it were a habit for him, a hangover from a different time. Which it probably was, she realised. His manners and his morals made him a law entirely unto himself—and it had garnered him great success.

‘Mr Gallo, thank you for seeing me,’ she started, hoping that he couldn’t hear the tremor in her voice. ‘I’m here to talk to you about Charterhouse.’ He nodded, yet still remained silent. She took it as her cue to continue. ‘As you know, you bought it from my father ten years ago, yet what was once a household name, recognised and familiar for its publication of crime novels, is now all but forgotten,’ she said, swallowing the hurt. ‘And I want it back.’

Not even a twitch appeared on Gallo’s wrinkled face.