Sicilian's Bride For A Price. Tara Pammi
silence. “You can’t place conditions on how I use the money. No micromanaging my life.”
“You’re not doing this to piss me off, are you?”
She rolled her eyes. “No. As much as our shared history gives you reason to believe that, I’m not.”
He took a step toward her. “Are they blackmailing you? Whatever it is, I’ll take care of it. What was it, Alisha? Drugs they hooked you into? Naked pictures?”
“What do you mean, naked pictures?”
Her shock was so genuine that it took Dante a couple of seconds to speak. “Who do you think took care of that junkie rock star before he could sell your pics to every tabloid magazine?”
A frown tied her brow, her gaze staring at him unseeingly. “Richard threatened to sell naked pictures of me? Did you see them?”
“Of course I didn’t look at your pictures,” he snapped. “He gave us enough proof to show it was you.”
He pushed a hand through his hair, the very prospect of that idiot taking advantage of a young Ali turning him inside out even now. It was the one time in his adult life that Dante had lost his temper and given in to the urge to punch the man’s pretty face.
Vikram had had to restrain him physically.
“So did you pay him?” Ali asked softly.
“I don’t respond well to threats, just like you. He gave me the flash drive with the pics on it and I smashed it with a paperweight.”
She laughed, the sound full of a caustic bitterness. “Wow, you really don’t think much of me, do you?” Her mouth trembled. “Mak and Kiki are the last people who would blackmail anyone. For the first year, when I moved here, I didn’t pay for anything. Board or food. Whatever I pay them, believe me, it’s very little in return for what they did for me.”
Would the woman never develop a sense of self-preservation? “It’s not a hardship to be kind to an heiress, Alisha. A payoff is usually expected at some point.”
Hurt painted her small smile, her eyes widening, even as she bravely tilted her chin.
He had hurt her. The realization sat tightly on his chest.
“They don’t know who I am, Dante. When you showed up at the restaurant a week ago, it was the first time I told either of them who I was.”
“Alisha, I don’t—”
“And if you say some stupid thing like I haven’t earned it to give it away, believe me I did. Mama earned each and every one of those voting shares. She lost Papa to the blasted company. And all she got were those in return. So, yes, she paid for them. And y’know what? I paid for them too because I should’ve grown up with my father and brother and Mama in the same house. I shouldn’t have had to wonder why Papa barely visited me. Vicky shouldn’t have had to wonder how Mama could have so easily given him up. I shouldn’t have had to wonder why it took Mama’s death for him to be in my life.
“I shouldn’t have to wonder what I lacked that meant he chose...” Her chest rose and fell, a haunting light in her eyes. “I paid for those shares, Dante. And I want some good to come out of what I’m signing up for with you. Something to ground me when you drive me up the wall over the next few months. That money will be a nice deposit for the business Mak and Kiki want to begin.” She swallowed and met his gaze. “They welcomed me with open arms when I desperately needed friends, when I needed to be loved.”
The vulnerability in her words struck him like a punch to his solar plexus, bringing in its wake a cold helplessness.
I’m not that impulsive, destructive Ali anymore.
Her words from a week ago haunted Dante as he watched her climb the steps to the aircraft. Maybe she wasn’t that same old Alisha anymore. But as far as he knew, people didn’t really change.
A reckless Alisha wouldn’t have visited London three times and tried to patch up her mother’s favorite charity.
A spoiled Alisha wouldn’t have lived in anonymity when she could have simply used her father’s name to live in luxury.
So maybe he hadn’t known Alisha at all.
Maybe he didn’t know the woman he was marrying after all.
ALI STARED MINDLESSLY as she stepped onto the flight and elegant luxury met her eyes. Every moment she spent with Dante, the past relentlessly pulled at her. Along with all the moronic decisions she’d made in anger, in hurt, coming back to take a chunk out of her ass.
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