expecting her enemy's heir

The Seymore sisters have spent years planning vengeance against the two men who ruined their family ten years ago. They’ve planned for every single eventuality… except the Rossi cousins themselves!   

 Book 1: Bound by the Italian's ''I Do'' by Michelle Smart (March 2023)
Book 2: Expecting Her Enemy's Heir by Pippa Roscoe (April 2023)

                                                                                Expecting her Enemy's Heir

        Today was the day.

        Amelia Seymore peered through the window at the dark grey clouds on the horizon, while early morning joggers and cyclists risked life and limb in the narrow juncture between the bus and the pavement. The start, stop of the number 176 as it crawled north across the bridge was making her nauseous, but it was the smell of damp wool and deodorant that forced her from the bus a stop early, gasping for fresh air. Or at least as fresh as you got in Central London during peak commuter hours. Amelia shook her head trying to regain the focus and sense of stability she had a reputation for. Maybe she was coming down with something.

        Get yourself together, she ordered herself firmly. Nothing could distract her or knock her off course. Today had been ten years in the making, but it wasn’t the long hours, sleepless nights or the punishingly hard work that steeled her. It was the memory of her father’s face the last time they had spoken. The look in his eyes as he had turned away from her, his shaking hand reaching for the bottle of whisky on his desk. That was the reason she and her sister, Issy, were doing this. That was why she hadto succeed today.

        Scanning the four-lane road, and too impatient to wait at the lights, Amelia skipped behind a cyclist and in front of a police car. Waving an awkward ‘oops’ at the cops, she arrived in front of a building considered to be the brightest addition to the crown jewels of the London skyline. While the Shard glittered like a diamond and the Gherkin shone emerald green, the imposing rose-hued building that housed Rossi Industries had been affectionately nicknamed The Ruby and was considered the perfect edifice for the two devastatingly handsome property tycoons who owned it.

        Amelia craned her neck to look up at the impressive head office of the international conglomerate that inspired both awe and anger in her. Every single day for the last two years she had made this same walk, knowing that she was entering the lair of the two men that had destroyed her family. And every single day she had promised herself and her sister that they would have their revenge.

        Vengeance hadn’t come naturally to Amelia. And it certainly hadn’t been immediate. She and her sister had been fifteen and thirteen, respectively, when they had first seen Alessandro and Gianni Rossi. Not that they’d known who they were back then. No, they had simply been two young men who had interrupted a Sunday roast to speak with their father. And in one conversation, the Rossi cousins had stolen their father’s company out from under him and decimated everything that she and her sister had ever known.

        Cold fury tripped down her spine as she retrieved the ID swipe card that proclaimed her Project Manager for Rossi Industries and entered the building. Amelia smiled at the security guard in spite of the memories that held her stomach in a vice, passing through the barriers to the bank of lifts that would take her to the sixty-fourth floor.

        As she waited in the deserted lobby for the lift to arrive, she counted down the floors as if it were a ticking bomb the Rossis had no idea of and she relishedthat today would be the day their world shattered, just as hers and Issy’s had. And then it wouldn’t matter if she had nearly thrown it all away in one night, just over a month ago…

        We shouldn’t be doing this.

        Amelia clenched her teeth, trying to ignore the way the rough, gravelly voice rubbed against her skin even now and once again desire wrapped around a part of her she’d never known she had. A desire that hit her like a tsunami, drawing her beneath the surface and snaring her in the undertow.

        I… I want to.

        With those three words she had betrayed her family, her sister, herself.

        No!

        She wouldn’t let that one night, that one mistake, ruin everything she and Issy had worked so hard for. Yes, she had spent one illicit night with her boss—her enemy—Alessandro Rossi. But it didn’t change anything. She just had to ignore the cascade of erotic memories that haunted her. Because no matter what had happened six weeks ago in Hong Kong, it in no way justified or excused what Alessandro and Gianni had done ten years ago to her family. And because of that, today was the day that the Rossi cousins would fall.