Modern Box Set 1-4 June 2020 by Lynne Graham

Author:Lynne Graham
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Mills & Boon Modern
Published: 2020-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWO

WHEN A MAN was a known monster, there was no need for posturing.

Benedetto Franceschi did not hide his reputation.

On the contrary, he indulged it. He leaned into it.

He knew the truth of it, after all.

He dressed all in black, the better to highlight the dark, sensual features he’d been told many times were sin personified. Evil, even. He lounged where others sat, waved languid fingers where others offered detailed explanations, and most of the time, allowed his great wealth and the power that came with it—not to mention his fearsome, unsavory reputation—to do his talking for him.

But here he was again, parading out like l’uomo nero, the boogeyman, in a crumbling old house in France that had once been the seat of its own kind of greatness. He could see the bones of it, everywhere he looked. The house itself was a shambles. And what was left of the grounds were tangled and overgrown, gardeners and landscapers long since let go as the family fortune slipped away thanks to Anthony Charteris’s bad gambles and failed business deals.

Benedetto had even had what was, for him, an unusual moment of something like shame as he’d faced once more the charade he was reduced to performing, seemingly preying on the desperation of fools—

But all men were fools, in one form or another. Why not entertain himself while living out what so many called the Franceschi Curse?

The curse is not supposed to mean you, a voice inside him reminded him. But rather your so-called victims.

He shrugged that away, as ever, and attempted to focus on the task at hand. He had little to no interest in Anthony Charteris himself, or the portly little man’s near slavering devotion to him tonight. He had suffered through a spate of twittering on that he had only half listened to, and could not therefore swear had been a kind of “business” presentation. Whatever that meant. Benedetto had any number of fortunes and could certainly afford to waste one on a man like this. Such was his lot in life, and Charteris could do with it what he liked. Benedetto already failed to care in the slightest, and maybe this time, Benedetto would get what he wanted out of the bargain.

Surely number seven will be the charm, he assured himself.

Darkly.

His men had already gathered all the necessary background information on the once proud Charteris family and their precipitous slide into dire straits. Anthony’s lack of business acumen did not interest him. Benedetto was focused on the man’s daughters.

One of them was to be his future wife, whether he liked it or not.

But what he liked or disliked was one more thing he’d surrendered a long time ago.

Benedetto knew that the eldest Charteris daughter had been considered something of a catch for all of five minutes in what must seem to her now like another lifetime. She could have spent the last eight years as the wife of a very wealthy banker whose current life expectancy rivaled that of a fragile flower, meaning she could have looked forward to a very well-upholstered widowhood.

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