She stood to move round the desk to squeeze Carla’s arm in reassurance. “I appreciate this wasn’t an easy thing for you to tell me.”
Carla released a heavy sigh. “Why are men such selfish bastards?”
Grace smiled without humor. “I think it’s programmed into their DNA.”
Carla snorted. “Well, I’m concentrating on my career in future. No man is ever going to make a fool of me again with false declarations of love.”
Grace hadn’t known Carla well a year ago, but she knew Carla had been engaged then but had broken off the relationship when she went home from work early one afternoon and found her boyfriend in their bed with another woman.
Carla had confided this to Grace one morning during their coffee break. To add insult to injury, Carla said, she’d had no choice but to throw out her thousand-count cotton bedsheets!
Grace knew that Carla had been trying to make light of the trauma with that last comment, but it was also another reason why it must have been hard for the other woman to tell Grace about Matteo’s duplicity. Especially when Grace was the “other woman” in this scenario.
“I’m sure they’ll make you manager of your own store soon,” she told Carla confidently. She certainly deserved the promotion.
“I’m feeling sort of divided about that at the moment.” Carla grimaced. “On the one hand, it would be great to move up the career ladder, but on the other, I’ve really enjoyed working here since you took over as manager.”
Grace knew that her predecessor had been something of a martinet, which, to her mind, didn’t fit in with the warmth, comfort, and distraction a bookstore should offer.
But at least the change of subject had diverted the other woman from Matteo Zalotti.
Grace’s own thoughts on the man were censored and caused her hands to clench into fists she wanted to use to hit Matteo on his perfect, arrogant nose.
“I think I’ll take first lunchbreak, if that’s okay.” The fresh air might help to clear her head, and her heart, of the two-timing Matteo Zalotti.
Which was what stepping out into the weak November sunshine in the alley at the back of the shop should have done, but the moment Grace turned to close the door behind her, something was thrown over her head, confining her in complete darkness. Her hands were twisted behind her back before she was lifted off her feet and carried, kicking and screaming, then lifted and thrown into what she could only assume, from the soft thrum of an engine turning over, was the luggage area of an SUV. Her suspicion was confirmed when she felt the movement of the vehicle as they drove away from the bookstore.
Chapter Fifteen
“What is it, Vinnie?” Matteo smiled across his desk at one of his foot soldiers, a man he knew had remained loyal to him during the years of Ricci’s despotic rule. Anyone who hadn’t been loyal was now reduced to ashes, like the man who had blackmailed Matteo for so many years.
Vinnie looked decidedly uncomfortable as he shifted awkwardly from one foot to the other. “This is a little unorthodox but…well, my niece arrived at the estate a short time ago, and she refuses to leave until she’s spoken to you.” He winced. “She can be a little forceful.”
Considering Vinnie currently looked pussy whipped, Matteo believe him. “I don’t have a problem with seeing her,” he assured. In fact, he would welcome the distraction from his torturous thoughts of promising Brunelli he wouldn’t see Grace again. He wasn’t sure he could do it. “Do you know what it’s about?”
Vinnie’s flushed face creased into a frown. “She said if you refused to see her, I should mention the name Grace.”
Matteo rose abruptly to his feet to look across at Luca. “Bring her in here. Now,” he added tensely when his bodyguard didn’t move quickly enough for him. Matteo immediately recognized the tall and dark-haired woman who was shown into his office seconds later. “You work in the bookstore with Grace.”
She looked at him sneeringly. “Which is why you’re going to tell me where she is.”
“Carla!” Vinnie hissed in warning.
She glared at her uncle. “He’s responsible for abducting a friend of mine.”
“Yes, but—”
“Did you say Grace has been abducted?” Matteo cut harshly into the exchange, his heart pounding and his palms damp as he clenched his hands at his sides.
“As if you didn’t know that!” Carla scorned. “But you can’t disappear a woman in broad daylight without someone seeing it. There are several homeless people who, during the day, troll the bins of the café farther along from the bookstore. When Grace didn’t return from her lunchbreak, I spoke to one of them, and he told me he’d seen two men wearing black suits in the alley an hour or so earlier. One of them threw a black bag over the head of a red-haired woman and the other one twisted her arms behind her back and secured them before putting her in the back of a dark vehicle and driving off.”
Matteo was having so much trouble breathing, he felt as if he was on the brink of hyperventilating. Which wasn’t going to help anyone, least of all Grace.
“It wasn’t me,” he bit out.
“Of course it was you!” Carla scoffed. “Nothing like this ever happened to Grace till you came along.”
He winced at the accusation. “It wasn’t me,” he repeated. “But I have a good idea who it was,” he added grimly.
It would be just like Leon to decide he didn’t trust the answer Matteo was going to give him today and so he would eliminate the problem.
Eliminate Grace.
Carla dropped into the chair in front of his desk as if her legs would no longer support her. “The powerful Mafia man from New York who’s also going to be your father-in-law?” The same thought had obviously occurred to her.
Matteo shot Vinnie a frowning glance. The
