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PROLOGUE

BENEATH HIM, MADRID sparkled like a thousand jewels, the night lights twinkling against the inky black of the sky. It was a city of history, a city rich with stories, but in that moment Antonio Herrera was conscious of only his own history.

A history that had been defined by a family feud, a hatred that was as ingrained in his heart and soul as any one man could ever have felt. Some might say that his life had been charmed, but Antonio knew the truth. Hatred for the diSalvo family ran through his Spanish blood, poisoned his mind, and he would stop at nothing to fight this war. No, to end it.

His father had been destroyed by diSalvos’ machinations. A corporate empire, decades in the making, had been systematically pulled apart, and it had needed Antonio to set things to rights. At eighteen, he’d taken over the business, side-lining his father to arrest the financial bleed. He’d triaged their losses, strengthened their assets, and now, at thirty, he was a single man in charge of a billion-euro corporation, known the world over for being a titan of all types of industries.

His eyes drifted to the gleaming oak of his desk, and the file that had arrived that afternoon.

How strange the timing was. Less than a month after his father had died—a man who had been made to suffer at the hands of the diSalvos, a man Antonio would do anything for—and she had been found.

After a year of searching, a year of waiting for his elite investigator to turn over some hint of the elusive woman, and finally he had some answers.

Amelia diSalvo. Or Amelia Clifton, as she was calling herself. But a name changed nothing—she was still undeniably a diSalvo.

The missing piece of the puzzle, the woman in control of the vital shares he needed to take the jewel in the diSalvo empire into his own hands—Prim’Aqua—the shipping company that had, at one time, been owned jointly by the diSalvos and the Herreras, until both patriarchs had fallen in love with the same woman and bitterly broken their business alliance, turning friends into sworn enemies.

And now, this diminutive woman owned the shares Antonio needed, and he’d stop at nothing to convince her to sell them to him.

He stared at the photograph, looking for any resemblance to her half-brother Carlo.

There was none. Where Carlo was cast from a similar Mediterranean mould as himself, with dark hair, honeyed skin and jet-black eyes, Amelia was fair and slight.

Like her mother, he thought, remembering the world-famous supermodel who’d evidently, at one time, been the mistress of Giacomo diSalvo. Only Penny Hamilton had been tall and Amelia was tiny—as diminutive as some kind of fairy, he thought, looking at the way she was walking down the street in this photograph. It must have been a warm day, for she wore a simple cotton dress with thin straps and buttons down the front. It fell to just above her knees and the sun streamed from behind her, showing her tantalising silhouette through the dress’s fine fabric.

A jolt of very masculine awareness splintered through him. Desire? For a diSalvo? How could that be, when she was part of the family that had set out to destroy his?

Regardless of his determination, his body tightened and his eyes lingered a little longer than was necessary on the photograph, taking in the details of her pale peaches-and-cream complexion, a smile that was wide on a petite angular face, hair that was long and blonde—whether it fell naturally in those loose Botticelli curls or had been styled that morning, he would only be able to say after he’d met her in person.

And that would be soon.

In a small English village near Salisbury there was a billion-pound heiress, the daughter of a world-famous British supermodel and an Italian tycoon, a woman who’d been born into wealth and a blood rivalry. And she would be the key in winning this ancient family war.

His eyes dropped to the photograph once more. She was beautiful, but beauty was not uncommon. She was also a diSalvo, and for that he would always hate her. For one night, though, he would appeal to her sense of decency, he would implore her to return to him what should always have been his. And if she didn’t, he’d find another way to secure the shares.

One way or another, he would succeed. Because he was Antonio Herrera, and failure simply wasn’t an option.