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a challenge.” It was the last answer he’d been expecting from his shocked expression. “I... Someone in the club issued a challenge.”
“Who?” he demanded instantly, clearly not buying it.
“I don’t know. All I gathered is that BCS’s security was unbeatable. That your security guy’s a genius. That he...no one could ever bring down his firewalls. I...
“I was foolish enough and egotistic enough to want to beat it. Not to prove anything to anyone. Just for myself.”
“And the second time?”
“Hubris.” This time, she was relieved to speak the truth. “You closed the tunnel minutes after I created it. It shouldn’t have been possible. What you did the second time to put them up—to try to bring it down—it was a high.” She’d constantly moaned about how wrong it was with Vincenzo, but it hadn’t stopped her. He’d known how much she’d wanted to do it.
How exhilarating she found it to pit her mind against the security expert at BCS.
“Once I started, I... I lost the little sense I seem to have been born with. I... I swear, I’ll never do it again. I... I’ve never done this before. Please, you’ve got to believe me.”
“It’s not that simple, Ms. Crosetto.”
“Why not? You said—”
“I don’t trust that brain of yours. I can’t just...let you walk free.”
She reached for the wall behind her, her knees giving out. Fear felt like shards of glass in her throat. “You’ll send me to jail?”
He looked at her with a thoughtful expression, as if she were a bug under a microscope he was wondering whether to crush or not. He studied the beads of sweat over her upper lip. The shivers spewing over her entire body. “No. But I’m not letting you go, either.”
“What does that mean?”
“You’ll accompany me to Milan.”
She shook her head, trying to swim through the emotions barreling through her. Fear and hope knotted painfully in her stomach. “I can’t leave the country. I have...responsibilities.”
“You should have thought of them before you decided to embrace the criminal life. Until I get to the bottom of this, until I decide what to do with you, you’ll be my...guest. If you give me your passport, I’ll arrange for travel immediately. I can’t let you out of my sight and I do not like the idea of—”
“That’s kidnapping!” Nat broke through his casual planning. “You’re kidnapping me.”
He didn’t even blink. “The alternative is jail, Ms. Crosetto. There’s too much at stake to magnanimously forgive you.” He turned to his tablet, as if the topic was done. “Pack your things. We leave as soon as possible.”
“I can’t just... I have to tell someone that I’m leaving the country.”
“A boyfriend? Perhaps the man who put you up to this?”
“No one did,” she repeated, biting away Vincenzo’s name at the last second.
This man was dangerous, in more than one way.
More than panic shimmied through her veins as his gaze touched her face. “My job, my... I don’t even know who you are. What if you were a serial killer? A human trafficker? A harvester of organs who’s salivating at the thought of getting his hands on my body?”
His hands on her body... What was wrong with her?
This time, there was no doubting the twinkle in his eyes. Or the languid heat flaring beneath.
Nat stepped back at the mere thought of what that meant. The last thing she needed was an...attraction between them. She knew squat about men. And less than squat about ambitious, ruthless, gorgeous men like her accuser. “Criminals, Ms. Crosetto, dead or alive, however diabolically clever—” his gaze raked her from top to toe and dismissed her in the same breath “—are not my type.” He couldn’t sound more upper class, refined and sophisticated, if he tried.
Everything she wasn’t.
“But since I do not want a hysterical female on my hands on a long transatlantic flight, I’ll tell you.” He looked around her tiny living room, frowned and then settled those broad shoulders onto the wall behind him. The action pushed his hips and thighs away from the wall, highlighting the lean masculinity of the man. Every gesture, every movement of his, called all her senses to attention.
“I’m Massimo Brunetti, the cyber security genius you took on with such ease. And since I won’t let you near an electronic device in the near future, I’ll also give you the Google version, sì?
“I founded Brunetti Cyber Securities a decade ago when I was nineteen. I’m also the CTO for Brunetti Finances, an international finance giant. My brother, Leonardo, is the CEO. That’s the one who wants you behind bars pronto.
“Our family, if you hadn’t realized already, is old power and wealth, the kind of European dynasty others try to emulate unsuccessfully,” he added, with nothing of the pride that was in his tone when he spoke of his security company. “So, yes, far more than your average pretty, rich boy who likes to have his way. Proceed with caution, sì?
“Also, I’ll allow you one single call and you’ll make it in front of me.”
LACK OF SLEEP made Nat grit her eyes as dawn painted the New York sky beautiful shades of pink and orange. Unlike the light pollution that dimmed its shine in the city, the sky here in the country that she’d been driven into at three a.m. in a tinted limo, her sad little bag in hand, was gorgeous. The private airstrip was a hubbub of activity.
Massimo Brunetti...that name and all the power, wealth and reach that came with it had kept Natalie up all night.
She had Googled him the moment Vincenzo had mentioned BCS to her. Him and his CEO brother, Leonardo Brunetti. If Massimo was the brains behind Brunetti Finances, Leonardo was the heart. Cut in the same cloth as Massimo, ruthless when wielding his power, but much more socially active among the glitterati of Milan. The face of their business, the man who flashed his teeth at his enemies, brought in investors, managed the funds, while Massimo built brilliant software that brought in billions of revenue.
“Powerful men make powerful friends or enemies,” Vincenzo had said, when she’d asked if he knew them. “A small favor,” he’d called it. Easy for her incisive mind.
“Can you bring down BCS’s security, Natalie?”
When she had argued that she couldn’t risk anything criminal, she could never go down that path again, he had clasped her hand.
“I’d let nothing happen to you, cara mia. Find a flaw, bring it down. Nothing more. I’ll not ask you to retrieve anything you discover, if you do crack it. Nothing to steal. Just find a weakness in the system.”
“Then why?”—the only question she’d even thought to ask.
“Let’s just say I have my eyes on the man who built it. I need to know if he’s as good as they say. Not a single hacker I’ve hired so far has been able to get through.”
And that had been his lure and she’d more than happily taken the bait.
She could’ve refused. He hadn’t insisted on it. He hadn’t called it as a return on all the favors he’d done for her and Frankie. He hadn’t once, in the ten years since they’d met, mentioned how he’d saved her from a bullying foster parent, or from a wretched future in the juvie system. He hadn’t mentioned not turning in Nat herself when he’d caught her stealing his wallet the first time they had met.