CHAPTER ONE

      ‘ONE PLATINUM CHRONOGRAPH WATCH. A pair of diamond-studded cufflinks. Gold signet ring. Six hundred and twenty-five pounds cash, and...Obsidian Privilege Card. Right, I think that’s everything, sir. Sign here to confirm return of your property.’

      Zaccheo Giordano didn’t react to the warden’s sneer as he scrawled on the barely legible form. Nor did he react to the resentful envy in the man’s eyes when his gaze drifted to where the sleek silver limousine waited beyond three sets of barbed wire.

      Romeo Brunetti, Zaccheo’s second-in-command and the only person he would consider draping the term friend upon, stood beside the car, brooding and unsmiling, totally unruffled by the armed guard at the gate or the bleak South East England surroundings.

      Had Zaccheo been in an accommodating mood, he’d have cracked a smile.

      But he wasn’t in an accommodating mood. He hadn’t been for a very long time. Fourteen months, two weeks, four days and nine hours to be exact. Zaccheo was positive he could count down to the last second if required.

      No one would require it of him, of course. He’d served his time. With three and a half months knocked off his eighteen-month sentence for good behaviour.

      The rage fused into his DNA bubbled beneath his skin. He showed no outward sign of it as he pocketed his belongings. The three-piece Savile Row suit he’d entered prison in stank of decay and misery, but Zaccheo didn’t care.

      He’d never been a slave to material comforts. His need for validation went far deeper. The need to elevate himself into a better place had been a soul-deep pursuit from the moment he was old enough to recognise the reality of the life he’d been born into. A life that had been a never-ending whirlpool of humiliation, violence and greed. A life that had seen his father debased and dead at thirty-five.

      Memories tumbled like dominoes as he walked down the harshly lit corridor to freedom. He willed the overwhelming sense of injustice that had festered for long, harrowing months not to explode from his pores.

      The doors clanged shut behind him.

      Zaccheo froze, then took his first lungful of free air with fists clenched and eyes shut. He absorbed the sound of birds chirping in the late-winter morning sun, listened to the distant rumble of the motorway as he’d done many nights from his prison cell.

      Opening his eyes, he headed towards the fifteen-foot gate. A minute later, he was outside.

      ‘Zaccheo, it’s good to see you again,’ Romeo said gravely, his eyes narrowing as he took him in.

      Zaccheo knew he looked a sight. He hadn’t bothered with a razor blade or a barber’s clippers in the last three months and he’d barely eaten once he’d unearthed the truth behind his incarceration. But he’d spent a lot of time in the prison gym. It’d been that or go mad with the clawing hunger for retribution.

      He shrugged off his friend’s concern and moved to the open door.

      ‘Did you bring what I asked for?’ he asked.

      Romeo nodded. ‘Sì. All three files are on the laptop.’

      Zaccheo slid onto the plush leather seat. Romeo slid in next to him and poured them two glasses of Italian-made cognac.

      ‘Salute,’ Romeo muttered.

      Zaccheo took the drink without responding, threw back the amber liquid and allowed the scent of power and affluence—the tools he’d need for his plan to succeed—to wash over him.

      As the low hum of the luxury engine whisked him away from the place he’d been forced to call home for over a year, Zaccheo reached for the laptop.

      Icy rage trembled through his fingers as the Giordano Worldwide Inc. logo flickered to life. His life’s work, almost decimated through another’s greed and lust for power. It was only with Romeo’s help that GWI hadn’t gone under in the months after Zaccheo had been sent to prison for a crime he didn’t commit. He drew quiet satisfaction that not only had GWI survived—thanks to Romeo—it had thrived.

       But his personal reputation had not.

      He was out now. Free to bring those culpable to justice. He didn’t plan on resting until every last person responsible for attempting to destroy his life paid with the destruction of theirs.

      Shaking out his hand to rid it of its tremble, he hit the Open key.

      The information was thorough although Zaccheo knew most of its contents. For three months he’d checked and double-checked his sources, made sure every detail was nailed down tight.

      He exhaled at the first picture that filled his screen.

      Oscar Pennington III. Distant relative to the royal family. Etonian. Old, if spent, money. Very much part of the establishment. Greedy. Indiscriminate. His waning property portfolio had received a much-needed injection of capital exactly fourteen months and two weeks ago when he’d become sole owner of London’s most talked about building—The Spire.

      Zaccheo swallowed the savage growl that rumbled from his soul. Icily calm, he flicked through pages of Pennington celebrating his revived success with galas, lavish dinner parties and polo tournaments thrown about like confetti. One picture showed him laughing with one of his two children.

      Sophie Pennington. Private education all the way to finishing school. Classically beautiful. Ball-breaker. She’d proven beyond a doubt that she had every intention of becoming Oscar’s carbon copy.

      Grimly, he closed her file and moved to the last one.

      Eva Pennington.

      This time the growl couldn’t be contained. Nor could he stem the renewed shaking in his hand as he clicked her file.

      Caramel-blonde hair tumbled down her shoulders in thick, wild waves. Dark eyebrows and lashes framed moss-green eyes, accentuated dramatically with black eyeliner. Those eyes had gripped his attention with more force than he’d been comfortable with the first time he’d looked into them. As had the full, bow-shaped lips currently curved in a smouldering smile. His screen displayed a head-and-shoulders shot, but the rest of Eva Pennington’s body was imprinted indelibly on Zaccheo’s mind. He didn’t struggle to recall the petite, curvy shape, or that she forced herself to wear heels even though she hated them, in order to make herself taller.

      He certainly didn’t struggle to recall her individual atrocity. He’d lain in his prison bed condemning himself for being astounded by her singular betrayal, when the failings of both his parents and his dealings with the establishment should’ve taught him better. He’d prided himself on reading between the lines to spot schemers and gold-diggers ten miles away. Yet he’d been fooled.

      The time he’d wasted on useless bitterness was the most excruciating of all; time he would gladly claw back if he could.

      Firming his lips, he clicked through the pages, running through her life for the past year and a half. At the final page, he froze.

      ‘How new is this last information?’

      ‘I added that to the file yesterday. I thought you’d want to know,’ Romeo replied.

      Zaccheo stared at the newspaper clipping, shock waves rolling through him. ‘Sì, grazie...’

      ‘Do you wish to return to the Esher estate or the penthouse?’ Romeo asked.

      Zaccheo read the announcement again, taking in pertinent details. Pennington Manor. Eight o’clock. Three hundred guests. Followed by an intimate family dinner on Sunday