CHAPTER ONE

      THE LIGHT IN the wide corridor Ivo Greco walked along was muted, but the priceless tapestries that lined the stone walls provided their own glowing illumination as he moved towards the massive double doors of etched glass at the far end. The doors had to stay closed to maintain the carefully controlled humidity and light to preserve the priceless antiques.

      They provided a light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel effect, but it was an illusion. Ivo was not expecting any version of a heavenly vision on the other side because the doors led to his grandfather’s private apartments, to which Ivo had been summoned.

      His grandfather had actually sent for him forty-eight hours ago, and people did not keep Salvatore Greco waiting!

      While Salvatore was on the record as saying he respected people who stood up to him, the reality was that Salvatore, a man who possessed vast wealth and enormous power, also possessed a very fragile ego.

      As an eight-year-old, when Salvatore had taken over the guardianship of him and his brother, Ivo had not understood about egos, but he had quickly realised that it was easy to make his grandfather angry.

      It had actually been the day before his eighth birthday when Ivo’s father had decided he could no longer live without his late wife. Ivo had found his father’s body and his grandfather had found Ivo.

      Amid the horror of that day Ivo remembered the strength in his grandfather’s arms, the sanctuary they had afforded as he had picked Ivo up and taken him away from the scene that had lived on for years in his childish nightmares.

      Even as a young boy Ivo had understood that he owed his grandfather a debt impossible to repay, and this knowledge did not disappear when he realised his grandfather was no guardian angel or superhero but a hard, ruthless man, not always fair and almost impossible to please.

      But the fact remained that, no matter what he did, Salvatore was the one who had carried Ivo out of his hell. The debt remained, as did the gratitude burnt deep into his soul by the character-changing events of that day. Ivo had long ago stopped trying to please, even though he knew better than most that the old man hated to be thwarted and just how viciously he could react to any perceived insult, real or imagined. A very good reason why the people that surrounded Salvatore rarely disagreed with him, at least to his face.

      Ivo was sanguine about the reception he was likely to receive, more bothered about the necessity of postponing a meeting than the tirade of abuse and invective inevitably waiting for him.

      A nerve twitched along his hard jawline as, unbidden, a memory floated into his head; he had not always been so philosophical.

      It had taken his brother several minutes to coax him out of his hiding place in one of the warren of attics in the palazzo. He couldn’t remember what he had done to outrage his grandparent but he remembered not believing his brother when he had said, ‘Never show him you’re afraid, then one day you won’t be.’

      Ivo pushed the memory away, his symmetrical features hardening; the past was gone.

      In his view there were few things more pathetic than people who clung onto memories until they became defined by their past. He saw them everywhere, from the people who became fixated on missed opportunities, old hurts and injustices, to the guy who constantly relived his early successes on the sports field, as if lifting a trophy at twenty defined him. All were so consumed with the past that they missed the opportunities that the future offered.

      Ivo’s sights were always fixed ahead, though at that moment it was something in the periphery of his vision that caught his attention.

      The suited servant, a new face to Ivo, who had shadowed him since he’d entered the building, almost collided with him as Ivo came to an unscheduled halt. Ivo let the man’s apologies slide off him as, head tilted back, he moved backwards to get the full effect of the glowing Byzantine image on the wall, again nearly falling over the man behind who delivered another flustered apology.

      ‘New?’

      ‘I’m not sure, sir.’

      The response was perfectly polite but under the surface Ivo could almost feel the anxiety rolling off the man and, after one last glance at the wall, he took pity on him. Turning away, he caught sight of a look of relief on the man’s face; it was that look and not his own anxiety that made him quicken his leisurely pace.

      Ivo’s personal spaces were minimalist and uncluttered—functional could still be pleasing to the eye or at least his eyes—but he appreciated beauty and artistic talent in many forms. He would have liked to study this testament to the skill of long-dead artisans for longer. The irony, of course, was that his grandfather would not appreciate the beauty.

      Salvatore was a famed collector of many rare and precious objects—jade, art, porcelain—but for him it was all about the acquisition. For Salvatore, the pleasure came from possessing what someone else wanted. He might forget the history of an artwork or the name of an artist, but he had a flawless recall of the price he’d paid for any item and the identity of the collectors he outbid.

      Once through the doors and into a brighter corridor, thanks to massive windows that revealed breath catching views of the Tyrrhenian Sea that glittered turquoise in the Tuscan morning sun, Ivo turned to his shadow.

      ‘I think I know my way from here.’

      The man hesitated; clearly Ivo’s words clashed with his instructions. He began to bluster but his protests trailed away as Ivo’s dark level stare held his, and after a moment he tipped his head and faded away. Ivo’s grandfather’s private apartments were situated in one of the older parts of the building, taking up all of one of the iconic twelfth-century square towers built by an ancestor. The massive metal banded door to the study was open and Ivo walked straight in. He was prepared; even so he experienced a moment’s disorientation as he stepped over the threshold, feeling as if he’d stepped through some time portal or onto the set of a futuristic film. He almost reached for the designer shades tucked into the pocket of his suit jacket, the antiseptic white and chrome was that dazzling.

      Five years earlier his grandfather had ripped out the antique panelling along with the books that had once lined the walls, and the decor was now sleek and modern. Efficient, as his grandfather had said as they’d watched the monitors being mounted on the wall, the only thing left from the past the antique desk that dominated the room.

      A half-smile flickered across Ivo’s wide sensual mouth as he recalled the occasion he had casually admitted that he missed the old room, inviting further scorn when he had added he actually liked the smell of musty old books. This had apparently confirmed his grandfather’s suspicion that Ivo was a sentimental fool.

      Ivo had accepted the insult with a careless shrug of his wide shoulders, aware that if Salvatore had believed either of these things he would not have given him control of the IT and Communications division of Greco Industries, although given was perhaps the wrong word. When the grand gesture was made his grandfather had not anticipated the role would have any permanence.

      His gratitude at the time had been genuine even though Ivo had known that it had been intended as a wing-clipping exercise—the unspoken but universally acknowledged expectation had been that the young upstart would fail; indeed he was meant to fail, publicly.

      But Ivo had defied those expectations, denying his grandfather the opportunity to ride to the rescue. A source of frustration to a man who liked to be in control.

      And so far, Ivo had been allowed a free hand.