The Legend of de Marco Read Free

went to the picture which had been taken of him with the glacially beautiful Honora Winthrop. He knew without arrogance that they looked good together—dark against pale. It had been taken at the De Marco Benefit in the London Museum the week before. The night he’d embarked on his campaign to seduce his way into respectable society for ever.
    His smile turned hard at the thought of how eager Ms Winthrop had been to get into his bed. But so far he’d resisted her lures. He’d made the decision that night that the endgame would be to make her his wife, and in pursuing that aim he wouldn’t allow sex to cloud the issue. His smile faded when he conceded that it hadn’t taken much effort on his part to resist her.
    As if to taunt him, the image of a petite, sparky redhead inserted itself mischievously into his mind’s eye. It was so vivid that it drove him up and out of his chair. He stood at the vast window of his office which overlooked London. The view went as unnoticed as the paper which had fallen to the floor with his abrupt move. Rocco’s jaw clenched in utter rejection of that image and memory. And the extremely uncomfortable reminder that after his speech he’d not gone straight to Honora Winthrop’s side but to look for the nameless stranger—only to find that she’d disappeared.
    He could still remember his shock and surprise. No one—especially not a woman—walked away from him.
    He didn’t relish the fact that not once before in the fifteen years since he’d left Italy had he ever deviated from his well-laid plans—not even for a beautiful woman. She hadn’t even been that beautiful. But she’d been
something.
She’d exerted some kind of visceral pull on him the moment he’d seen her across the room.
    For that entire evening he hadn’t quite been able to stop his reflex to look for her. It burned him to acknowledge that he was still thinking of those few seconds of what should have been an unremarkable meeting. Especially when he was on track to achieving the stamp of respectability which would forever put him in a sphere far, far away from his past.
    In an uncharacteristic gesture of fatigue Rocco rubbed the back of his neck. He put his momentary introspection down to the recent security breach in his company. It had been quickly discovered and sealed off, but had made Rocco realise how dangerously complacent he was becoming.
    He’d hired Steven Murray a month ago—as much on a gut instinct as anything else, which was not normal practice for him. But he’d been unusually impressed with the young man’s raw eagerness and undoubted intellect, and something about the man had connected with Rocco on a deep level. So, despite the worryingly vague CV, Rocco had given him a chance.
    Only to be rewarded just this past week by the same man transferring one million euros to an unlocatable account and disappearing into thin air. The party last week had been a high point—and now this. It was like a punch in the face to Rocco. A sharp reminder that he could never let his guard down for a second.
    His skin went clammy when he thought of how the people he sought so desperately to be his peers would turntheir backs on him in a second if he revealed himself to be vulnerable in any way. And if that happened how quickly Honora Winthrop’s gaze would turn disdainful if he even dared ask for her hand in marriage.
    For so long now he’d been in absolute control, and suddenly he was chatting up random women in ill-fitting dresses and hiring people on gut instinct. He was in danger of jeopardising everything he’d worked so hard to attain. He was courted and fêted now because wealth made him powerful. It would be social acceptance that would secure his position for ever.
    This chink in his otherwise solid armour made him wary. People were already curious about his past. He didn’t want to give the hungry English tabloids any excuses to dig even further.
    The fact that his security team had failed to find