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CHAPTER ONE
THERE WERE MANY REASONS Dante Santoro enjoyed coming to this villa high on a cliff on the edge of Lake Como whenever he could, and in no small part it was because nobody in the world, including his family, knew that he owned this place.
He had bought it when he’d thought he would go mad with grief, when he had needed to be completely alone with the heartbreak and desolation that had come from losing his wife and daughter in the most unimaginable of ways. Even now, five years after their deaths, the tentacles of grief were firmly wrapped around him, so as he looked out at the brooding winter-scape of this famous part of Italy, saw a thick fog rolling across the steel-grey water, and he was glad. Glad for the weather matching his mood, glad for this time of year when the sky was dark and leaden, glad that the hordes of cheery tourists who descended upon Como in the summer months were thin on the ground. And glad, most of all, for his villa’s remoteness and virtual inaccessibility—on a hook in the lake, a narrow, steep road was the only ingress, so perilous that only those with knowledge of the villa would dare attempt to use it.
Which was why, as he looked out on the decidedly moody vista, a palette of greys and muted alpine greens, and glimpsed a flash of colour, he leaned forward, his body tightening with a strange sense of adrenaline.
What was it? A balloon? A drone?
There it was again!
Bright red, flying in the fast-moving wind. Fabric? Yes. Fabric. He relaxed. It could be from anywhere, anyone. It was not a person. He was still alone.
Only, just as that reassuring thought spread through his mind, he saw more movement, this time, a turquoise jacket, attached to a body that was chasing after the scarf with an elegance he could appreciate even at this distance. Elegance? A child? For surely this person was a child, or perhaps, he supposed, a diminutively-built adult.
Fight or flight responses were beyond anyone’s control and Dante’s had been honed by the accident that had claimed his family.
He would not see another person hurt on his watch.
Something tightened his gut as without another moment’s thought he turned, striding through the building, grabbing his coat at the door then breaking into a sprint. His villa was elevated with a huge drop right where this person was running fast. They were so intent on chasing the fabric that he knew the person was only seconds from disaster.
He ran faster, his heart in his throat.
Not again.
Georgia laughed—God, it felt so good to laugh—as she reached for the errant scarf once more, shaking her head at how the fabric seemed to have taken on a life of its own. “You bloody thing. Get back here this minute,” she muttered, employing the tone of voice she might have used on the twins when they were younger, in an (often futile) attempt to corral them into order. But the scarf was as receptive to her scolding as her younger brothers had been, so she stopped, out of breath from a ten minute chase, standing with her hands on her hips and staring as it snagged on a branch well and truly out of reach.
But as a child, Georgia had been an exceptional tree-climber. Her father had taught her to always have one hand connected to a branch, but so long as that grip was stable and you could get a good foot hold, the sky was the limit. She was just about to begin her ascent when a pair of hands closed around her shoulders, gripping her tightly and spinning her around, bringing her face to face with a pair of eyes that were so impossibly dark they reminded her of midnight. He was too close to make out his features with any clarity, but there was a look in his eyes that caused her spine to tingle.
“What the hell are you doing?” He asked in English, though his voice was accented. How did he know she wasn’t Italian, she wondered in the back of her mind, as she found she could only stare back at him. Her brain, and mouth, wouldn’t work.
“Do you speak English?” He asked in Italian now, so she nodded. She’d studied Italian for years, when she could, because she’d known that as soon as the boys went off to college, Italy would be the first place she’d visit. Just as she’d wanted to back then, before the accident had fundamentally altered the entire course of her life.
“My scarf came loose,” she said, quirking a brow upwards, as if to indicate the location of said scarf. “I have been chasing it down for over ten minutes but it doesn’t seem to want to be caught. Perhaps it doesn’t like my perfume,” she attempted a joke, but the man’s face was tense, his eyes cold.
“This is not funny.”
She frowned. “What’s not?”
“Do you have any idea how close you are to the edge?”
She glanced over her shoulder and her lips quirked downwards. While she was, in fact, nearer than she’d realized, there was still a meter or so between herself and the cliff.
“An inch is as good as a mile, I always think.”
“Ridiculous. You know nothing of this place. The clifftops are not always steady. Landslides happen. You were not even looking.”
While all of that was true, she couldn’t help but be aggravated at the high handed tone of this man she’d never met in her life.
“Yeah, well, what does it matter to you anyway? It’s my life. If I want to fling myself down into Lake Como, so what?”
A muscle throbbed low in his jaw and his fingers tightened on her arms, though she suspected he didn’t realise it.
“This is my land,” he ground out. “If you have a death wish, take it somewhere else.”
“Your land?” She stared at him, perplexed. “How could I have known that? There are no signs, there’s no fence. I just followed a path.”
“There is no path.”
