The Illegitimate King (Castaldini Crown 3)

Chapter One

The present

Finally.

The word reverberated in Ferruccio Selvaggio’s head, spread in his blood along with the thick, bitter ooze of grim satisfaction.

He’d finally gotten Clarissa D’Agostino where he wanted her.

A supplicant coming to beg his favor. In—he flicked a glance at his Rolex—twenty minutes’ time.

She couldn’t be here soon enough. He’d been waiting too long for this moment. Six years. That was how long she’d evaded him. Snubbed him. The princess who thought his hard-won wealth and power not enough to raise him to the status of the men she deigned to mix with, men born with the right lineage. The blue blood who thought a bastard, no matter how rich and influential, not worthy of civility.

But despite all her haughty disdain, he had Princess High-and-Mighty coming to do his bidding. And if everything went according to plan—and he now possessed all the leverage to make sure it did—he’d have her doing his bidding far longer and in far more ways than she thought.

He’d have her, period.

He’d been fantasizing about having her ever since that first night he’d seen her. That first glance.

It had been his first time in the royal court. He’d been uncertain of his reception, of his reaction to being there. Most of the people there had been D’Agostinos. His so-called family.

But he didn’t share their name. His parents hadn’t had him the acceptable way, hadn’t given the name to him. Others had given him the surname he used now. He’d been called by it so many times, it had stuck. So he’d made it legal.

The evidence that he was a D’Agostino had been presented to him long ago. At the time, he’d demanded public recognition. His parents had been willing to give him anything but that. He’d told them what to do with their love and offers of support. He’d survived so far without them. He’d make it on his own, make it to the top, the same way.

Finally he’d reached a height of success from which he thought it time to satisfy his curiosity. He wanted to see what it was like, the place that should have been his home. What they were like, the people who should have been his family. If he’d been missing anything. If he could make up for it if he had been; if he could grow the roots he’d never had.

He’d entered the king’s court unannounced. By then, he’d had enough clout that he could walk in anywhere in the world and be welcomed. And the court had welcomed him. To this day, he remembered none of those who’d done so. Besides his meeting with the king, he remembered nothing before and nothing after he’d seen her across the teeming space.

She’d been wiping at something on the neckline of that ethereal violet dress. In profile, her face had been a study of concentration and consternation. He’d felt everything inside him prime, rev into awareness.

Stunned, not knowing what that upsurge meant, he’d needed to look her in the face, in the eyes. Then she’d turned, fulfilled his need. And something he’d always scoffed at had ripped through him. A bolt of attraction. More, of recognition. Of the one woman who translated his every fantasy into glorious reality.

Physically, she’d been the amalgam of all the endowments he’d never thought could be gathered in one being. Hair the color of Castaldini’s beaches, streaked with rays of its sun, permeated by tones of the rich soil of its mountains. A body at once willowy and womanly, unconscious femininity screaming in its every line and curve. A face that embodied all his tastes and demands.

But it had been her eyes—which really had turned out to be violet, when he thought he’d imagined the color from that distance—and what he’d seen in them, that had snared him.

To think he’d thought they’d shown a reflection of his awareness, his discovery. He thought he’d seen more, too, a quality that had snapped the trap shut: Vulnerability.

Right. Clarissa D’Agostino was as vulnerable as an iceberg to the Titanic.

He still seethed to remember how he’d sought her, bared his need to have more of her, revealed his moronic belief in the existence of a connection between them that had transcended time and logic. He still burned at the memory of the moment he’d gotten what he deserved for such idiocy, when she’d stared at him as if he’d lost his mind, then told him to go find someone in a lesser…situation—who’d deem him good enough to…be with.

She’d told him that dozens of times since then. With every rejection of the invitations he’d never ceased to issue. Making them had become the masochistic lash he used every time he found his will to go on flagging, using the anger and frustration to keep on rising, keep on acquiring everything in his path. As he couldn’t acquire her.

But now he finally would. One way or another.

He’d teach her a lesson. Many lessons. He’d take her down a few dozen pegs, and he’d revel in every one.

He braced his arms against the balustrade, cast his gaze into the distance. The sun’s gold was starting to deepen as the star quickened its descent toward the endless expanse of liquid turquoise and emerald that was the southern Castaldinian Sea.

Another rush of bitter anticipation tumbled and sprayed through his system like the waves did on the shore. He wasn’t here only for the spectacular vista the tower of his mansion afforded him. This was also the best vantage point from which to view the winding road over which she’d be brought to him….

Everything seemed to dim as the last three words replayed in his mind like a distorted old recording.

Brought to him. Not coming to him of her free will, unable to wait to see him, as she had in too many dreams to count.

What would he have felt if she’d been rushing here with hunger in her eyes, with longing on her lips?

If only…

His lips compressed as he tore his eyes away from the road and blindly roamed the view he could no longer see.

No. No if onlys. She’d made her choice that first night. Had reinforced it countless times throughout six interminable years.

Even if she changed her mind now, for whatever reason, it would be too late. Now only one thing mattered. That she had no choice. That there was no way she could reject him again. And he intended to savor every second of her downfall, starting—he snapped another look at his Rolex—ten minutes from now.

He pushed away from the balustrade, swung around.

Time to put the finishing touches to his plan.

“Until then.”

The words, spoken like a pledge, a prophecy, in the lethal tone of a dangerous man, reverberated inside Clarissa’s head.