CHAPTER ONE

      ENZO CARDINALI WAS not a man who appreciated parties. They were, in his opinion, nothing more than an excuse for people to waste time talking about trivialities while drinking themselves insensible and generally behaving badly.

      He was not a fan of trivialities or bad behaviour either.

      He stood in the corner of Henry St George’s lavishly appointed drawing room, watching all the gorgeously attired people in it laugh and bray and talk nonsense to each other, nursing the same tumbler of Scotch he’d been holding for the past hour, impatient and not a little irritable.

      The house party he’d been invited to had gone on for what seemed like an eternity and he was done with it. He’d been done with it the moment he’d arrived. His usual state of being, in other words.

      He had no tolerance for waiting and, since other people didn’t move at the speed he did, it felt as if waiting was all he did. Which made him constantly irritable.

      Dante, his brother, had often told him he needed to cultivate a little patience, but Enzo didn’t see why he should. He hadn’t been put on this earth to make other people comfortable and, if they couldn’t keep up with him, that was their problem. Of course, that then made it his problem and that was the part he didn’t like.

      He should have had Dante handle the particular bit of business he was in England for, but at the last minute he’d decided it was too important to let his laid-back brother handle it and so here he was. At a weekend-long house party at St George’s extensive stately home deep in the Cotswolds.

      St George was a rich industrialist with deep pockets and a taste for old-fashioned parties, during which he conducted most of his business. A state of affairs with which Enzo was not particularly happy. However, he was putting up with it because St George also owned an island just off the coast of Naples that Enzo was desperate to get his hands on.

      So far the party had been useful, in that he was halfway to convincing the old man to sell the island to him, and now all he needed was to close the deal.

      Except St George was baulking—for what reason, Enzo didn’t know, nor did he care. What he cared about was having to exert himself and make nice, something that didn’t come easy to him, in order to close the deal this weekend.

      Across the room St George’s white head bent as he leaned down to listen to a woman at his elbow. He was apparently a popular host and many of London’s business elite jockeyed to get invites to his house parties.

      Enzo shifted restlessly on his feet. Dio, this was interminable. He’d been waiting for an opportune moment to corner St George and present him with a final offer, but the man was constantly surrounded by people.

      Dante had warned Enzo to be polite about it, but maybe his brother could go to hell.

      Enzo wanted that island, Isola Sacra. It was the closest thing to Monte Santa Maria he’d come across, the tiny island kingdom in the Adriatic that had once been his home before his father, the king, had made one petty power play too many and parliament had decided it had had enough of royalty, declaring itself a republic and politely inviting the royal family to leave. For good.

      The Cardinalis had found a place for themselves on mainland Italy, in Milan, but it had never felt like home to Enzo. He’d been fifteen when they’d left Monte Santa Maria and he’d felt rootless ever since.

      Once, he’d been heir to a kingdom. Now, he had nothing.

      Well, nothing except a multi-billion-dollar property development company, but that wasn’t quite the same.

      It was a home he wanted. And, since he could never go back to the one he’d had, he needed to find himself another somewhere else.

      The guests in the drawing room swirled, the laughter and noise putting him on edge, making him feel even more restless.

      St George was still talking to that woman and Enzo decided that, if he hadn’t finished talking to her in another couple of minutes, he was going to go over there and make St George an offer regardless of politeness. His brother’s advice be damned.

      He wasn’t a stateless fifteen-year-old boy cowering in an apartment in Milan any more. He was the CEO of a billion-dollar company with offices in cities around the globe.

      He might not have a country, but as far as the business world was concerned he was still a king.

      Across the room the door opened suddenly, the movement catching Enzo’s attention, and a small child peered round it, scanning the room with wide eyes.

      Enzo frowned. What was a child doing up at this time of night? It was nearly eleven p.m.

      The child—a small boy—took a step into the room, looking around uncertainly. He wore blue pyjamas and his black hair was spiked up. There was something familiar about him. Something that Enzo couldn’t quite put his finger on.

      The boy had to be St George’s young son—a surprise late-in-life baby, since St George was in his early sixties. He’d married a woman around half his age four years ago and her subsequent pregnancy so soon after the wedding had caused a minor sensation.

      Not that Enzo had ever been particularly interested in gossip, and why he remembered it now was anyone’s guess.

      But still. There was something about that boy.

      The child took another few steps into the room, his eyes wide. They were an unusual colour. Gold. Like new-minted coins.

      The familiarity tugged harder at Enzo. There weren’t many people with eyes that colour, not so clear and startling. In fact, he only knew of two: his father and himself. Golden eyes were a Cardinali family trait and in Monte Santa Maria they’d traditionally been a sign of royalty.

      Strange that this child should have them too, though obviously a coincidence.

      There was another movement by the door and it opened wider this time, another figure standing in the doorway. A woman.

      She wasn’t dressed in high-end couture like the other guests, just a simple pair of jeans and a loose dark blue T-shirt. Her hair was piled up on top of her head in a messy bun, and it was as red as a fire against a twilight sky.

      The tug of familiarity became a pull, deep and hard.