Alessandro hadn’t meant to ask the question. He surely didn’t mean to bother with the answer. He was curious despite his determination never to be curious about anyone. Curiosity implied caring, and he didn’t care. And yet… ‘Anything interesting?’ The words sounded provocative.

      Mia licked her lips, her tongue looking very pink as she touched it to her full, lush lips, the instinctive movement causing a dart of desire to arrow through him, unsettling in its intensity. ‘Not really.’ Her gaze skittered away from his. ‘Not much.’

      ‘Tell me.’ His voice was low, the words a command, but with a thread of something dark and rich running through it, a promise he hadn’t meant to make. Mia turned to look at him, her eyes widening, looking very blue and clear. Eyes he could drown in if he let himself. He stepped closer. ‘Tell me,’ he said again.

      ‘Well…’ Again her tongue touched her lips. ‘You have a reputation for being ruthless. You take over companies, strip them of their assets, and fire about ninety percent of the staff before absorbing the company into Costa International.’

      That was the gist without being entirely true, but Alessandro wasn’t about to defend his actions. They spoke for themselves.

      ‘Are you going to do that with Dillard’s?’ Her chin lifted a little. ‘Fire everyone? Get rid of it all?’

      He eyed her for a moment, considering what to tell her. For some contrary reason he didn’t like the thought of her thinking badly of him, which was ridiculous, because he’d been thought of far worse by the furious CEOs he’d displaced.

      ‘I’m not going to fire everyone,’ he said at last. ‘I never do.’

      ‘Ninety percent, then.’

      ‘Your percentages are a bit off.’

      ‘Do you enjoy it?’ she asked, her voice choking. ‘Ruining people’s lives?’

      He stared at her for a moment, fighting the urge to explain the truth of his mission. But, no. He was not going to justify himself to her. He was certainly not going to care about her opinion. ‘Does it seem as if I do?’ he asked, meaning to sound dismissive.

      Slowly she shook her head. ‘You don’t actually seem cruel.’

      ‘No?’ He tried to keep his voice disinterested.

      ‘The media portrayed you as a bit of a cowboy…someone who came from nowhere and had a meteoric rise. Not entirely respectable, but not cruel.’

      ‘Well, they were wrong,’ Alessandro said lightly, even though her words were like razors on his skin. ‘I’m not at all respectable.’

      ‘Is that why you took Dillard’s over? To seem respectable?’

      The question grated. As if he wanted to don Dillard’s shabby suit and call himself a gentleman. ‘Not at all. I don’t care one iota if I seem respectable or not.’

      ‘Then why bother with them? Where is the profit?’

      ‘In the clients I keep.’ Although Alessandro suspected there would be little profit indeed. Profit was not why he did what he did, at least not in regard to companies such as Dillard’s.

      ‘And what about all the employees? Innocent people…don’t you care about them?’

      More than she would ever know. ‘You’re sounding like a crusader, Mia,’ he warned her. He did not wish to discuss this any longer. ‘It’s quite dull.’

      Her eyes flashed. ‘So sorry I’m boring you, but people’s lives are at stake. Besides… I would have thought you might understand how they felt.’

      He tensed, the perception in her eyes like a needle burrowing into his skin. ‘Oh?’

      ‘The media said you came from a poor background…the slums of Naples.’ He angled his head away from her, not trusting the expression on his face. ‘Is that true?’

      ‘Slums is such a pejorative word, but I suppose, in essence, yes.’ He did his best to sound bored. He was bored.

      The last thing he wanted to talk about was his pathetic past…the endless chaos of moving from grotty flat to grotty flat, the stints in foster care when his mother had lost custody of him, the endless jobs she’d taken cleaning office buildings, the countless boyfriends she’d had in a desperate bid to assuage the despairing sadness of her life. A childhood he’d done his best always to remember, to remind him of how he would be different, even as he pretended to forget.

      ‘Then if you know what it’s like to be poor, to live from pay check to pay check, how can you fire people like that?’

      ‘Because I know what it’s like to work hard,’ he said in a steely voice, ‘and to earn what I have. And anyone who does those things will have a position with Costa International, that much I guarantee.’

      Her eyes widened. ‘They will?’

      She sounded so hopeful it made him cringe. ‘Dillard Investments was dying on the vine. I just plucked it before it fell, withered, to the ground. If anything, I’ve saved people’s jobs in the long run.’

      ‘Do you really mean that?’

      Impatient now, he shrugged. ‘Henry Dillard was charming, I’ll grant you that, but he was a terrible businessman. I did his employees a favour.’ Why had he stooped to justifying himself? ‘I’m not the monster you seem to think I am,’ he finished levelly. ‘Regardless of what you read online.’

      She stared at him for a moment, and he felt as if she were seeing right inside him, that blue, blue gaze burrowing deep down inside his soul, reaching places he’d closed off for good. He looked away, shrugging as he took a sip of champagne,