THE ROSSETTI RING REQUIREMENT

Please let this work.

Please let this work.

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 to still 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 the name of 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 that this—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.

        ‘I don’t,’ she rushed on to say, ‘want any of the authors or contracts or staff, or even assets. I just…’ She swallowed, knowing that she was revealing herself far too much to the man who was called a shark on a good day. ‘I just want to buy back the name.’

        ‘And you plan to fund this purchase with the proceeds of the sale of your own business?’ Gio asked, his accent leaning into his words.

        Erin frowned. She opened her mouth to ask how he knew that, but he pressed on.

        ‘You sold a lucrative business that you started up in your first year of university in order to buy back the name of your father’s company?’ The Italian’s voice was sharp like a whip, the tone, clear as a bell, incredulous.

        ‘My family’s company,’ Erin stressed, before biting her lip at the overshare.

        Of course, Signor Gallo would have done his research, so he knew about HomeJames, the sober-driver app she had started at uni. What had started as a favour to her flatmate had quickly spun into a way of earning money to counter the exorbitant costs of student living that no scholarship could fully cover. Being a ‘sober driver’ for drunk peers quickly spiralled into a hugely successful country-wide business. Students, it seemed, were far more likely to trust other students to get them home safely. It was a win/win for everyone.         A friend of a friend had wanted to test their app development skills, and they had worked together on the design as coursework for both their degrees. They’d sold the company six months ago and split the profits. Profits Erin wanted to use to buy back her family’s company—in name if nothing more.

        ‘Yes, sir. I did.’

        Gio shook his head as if disappointed.

        ‘It is the one thing that seems to run contrary to the fact that you are, by all accounts, a sensible, intelligent, promising young businesswoman. You are letting sentimentality get in your way.’

        It was horribly close to the argument she’d had with her mother the last time Erin had seen her. And she said to Gio what she had said to her mother. ‘I’m comfortable with that.’ Because sentimentality was what kept her on the right side of the line, what kept her from being too much like her father.

After a period of time that would have made most grown men weep, Gio Gallo grunted and sat back in his chair, reappraising her through narrowed eyes.

        ‘I have a counter-offer,’ he announced.

        She hadn’t expected anything less, but it still hurt. She’d wanted this to be easy. Just a simple transaction so that she could go home with the company name and start to work in earnest.

        ‘I will do as you’ve asked. More so in fact. I will sell you Charterhouse—the publishing house and all its assets, for one million pounds.’

        Shock blanketed her brain. He’d do what?

        It was beyond her wildest dreams. And after a few quick calculations, she realised she would even have a little money left over from the sale of her startup to cover the costs of operations to allow for the smooth transition in ownership and revenue. She could—

        ‘On one condition.’

        Her heart sank. She should have known it was too good to be true.

        ‘What do you know of Enzo Rossetti?’ Gio asked, his hawk-like gaze penetrating hers.

        Surprised by the hard left turn of the conversation, Erin wracked her brain.

        The Playboy of Amalfi? The moniker slipped into her thoughts.

        ‘Enzo Rossetti—famous for being infamous. Early thirties, American-Italian,’ she recalled. ‘Itinerant playboy. Always breaking hearts and climbing out of the wrong bed,’ she said, calling to mind the many headlines that had delighted in his bad behaviour. And she had scowled every single time she had seen it. The man was everything she hated about celebrity and money. Wasteful, careless, arrogant, promiscuous.

        ‘And…’ Gio prodded.

        ‘He is the son of American actor Luca Rossetti and an Italian heiress… Amelia Gallo,’ Erin said as she put the pieces of the puzzle together. ‘The daughter you disinherited just over thirty years ago.’

        ‘Mmm,’ was Gio’s response to her scathing description of his grandson. ‘I want you to marry him.’

        ‘Pardon?’ she asked, knowing that she couldn’t have heard him correctly.

        ‘I want you to marry him,’ Gio repeated in exactly the same tone.

        Erin’s gasp turned into a shocked choke, and Gallo waited for her to recover.

        ‘I am not here to find a husband, Mr Gallo,’ she said trying to regain her composure. ‘I am here to buy back my family’s company.’

        ‘And I am offering you terms,’ he insisted civilly, as if he’d not just asked her to prostitute herself. ‘I will sell you back your family’s company, whole and as it is, for one million pounds if you become Enzo Rossetti’s wife.’

        Erin fell back against the soft leather of the sofa.

        ‘I… I’m not that kind of person, Mr Gallo.’

        ‘I don’t know where you got your principles from, Ms Carter. It certainly wasn’t your father.’

        She felt his words like a slap. There were few people that still remembered the man who had frittered away the small fortune he’d exchanged for a company that had been in his family for generations, and she had let it slip her mind that Gio was one of them. A company Gallo was offering to sell her back…in its entirety.

        ‘Why?’

        ‘That is my business and not yours.’

        ‘You are making it my business by trying to marry me to your grandson,’ she pointed out, not unkindly—still unsure as to whether this was all part of some age-related cognitive decline.

        ‘He’s not my grandson. He is the child of someone who was once a member of my family.’

        The cold, ruthless, way in which he spoke of his daughter cut Erin to the bone. But she couldn’t afford to get lost in Gio Gallo’s convoluted family drama. She was here for one reason and one reason only.

        As if sensing that she was beginning to bend, he pressed on. ‘If you agree, then Enzo Rossetti is not to know of my involvement or the entire deal is off. Do I make myself clear, Ms Carter? Tell him whatever you need to in order to get him down the aisle. Make up whatever story you like. I don’t care,’ Gio Gallo said with an Italian shrug of his shoulders. ‘I just want him married.’

        Erin blinked. And then she laughed, because the situation was utterly hopeless. But even though it felt that way, she couldn’t stop thinking her way through how she might actually pull this off.

        ‘And then I can divorce him? Or get an annulment?’ she asked, needing to be sure of what he was saying.

        ‘You think you can resist the charms of the Playboy of Amalfi?’ Gio asked, something a little like amusement lighting his eyes.

        ‘That won’t be a problem, I assure you,’ Erin replied confidently, thinking of all the sordid headlines and broken-hearted women he’d left in his wake. ‘But, just so I’m clear, you’re not asking me to…sleep with him?’ Erin asked.

        ‘I’m manipulative, Ms Carter, not crass,’ he replied disdainfully. ‘I don’t care whether you sleep with him or not, only that the marriage certificate is signed. Once that happens, I will appoint you CEO of Charterhouse and you can take over operations. Six months following that I will approve its sale to you.’

        ‘But what does that achieve?’ she asked, thoroughly confused by Gio’s intentions.

        ‘I have my reasons. I do not need to explain them to you.’

        It was the least patronising way she’d ever heard ‘don’t worry your pretty little head about it’, but it still grated on her. Even though she recognised that he was right. What did it matter to her if she could do what he needed her to do? She’d still get Charterhouse.

        ‘Even if I did go through with this, wouldn’t he have to agree?’ she asked, the thought of Enzo Rossetti—never seen without a model, a royal, or an heiress on his arm—finding any interest in her whatsoever almost ludicrous.

        ‘You do yourself a disservice, Ms Carter. I believe that you are resourceful. Intelligent. Beautiful, in that English way that some people find…appealing,’ he said in a way that made it abundantly clear that he was not one of those people.

        But Gio’s offer had already begun to sink its claws into her. She could get the family company back. With the staff, with the author list. With all the things she wanted to do with it, her wildest dreams were beginning to play out in her mind.

        But she had to get married to do so? Could she do that to someone? Could she abuse their feelings like that?

        Like Enzo was known to abuse the feelings of the women he used?

        As if he sensed her prevarication, Gio glared at her, his gaze ice-cold, sending a shiver across her shoulders. 

        ‘Ms Carter. It would be remiss of me not to inform you that should you refuse my offer, I will take Charterhouse and break it down piece by piece, asset by asset, until there is, and never will be, anything left of it. Do you understand?’

        A cold shiver tripped down her spine. Oh, yes. She understood perfectly. She had been manipulated into a corner by the man before her. Oh, she had been a fool! A fool to think that she could go head-to-head with someone like Gio Gallo.

        And the other thing she understood perfectly was that if she had any hope of reclaiming her family’s business then she might have to do what Gio Gallo wanted: marry the world’s most notorious playboy.