When her father shifted from making vague threats about one day marrying her off to the unpleasant, yet undefined, man of his choosing into concrete plans involving dinner dates and a selection process among a set of specific suitors, Leontina Tavian understood that it was time to escape.

At last.

What shocked her was that even though she’d known all along that this would happen and had worked out a plan to address this situation the very moment she determined that her condition could no longer be hidden, it still managed to shock her that the moment itself had arrived.

In the form of the person least likely to notice any changes in her, because he barely saw her.

Her father did not skulk about, much less sneak, and therefore could not possibly know what Leontina’s plans were. Much less why she’d had to make them.

And yet here he was, filled with his usual bluster.

She’d been minding her own business in the family castle—though, really, the castle was nothing more than a monument to her father’s boundless self-regard—reading in the library. The library where, she’d been told, her late and long-lamented mother had spent the bulk of her time when she, too, had lived under Umberto Tavian’s thumb.

This was only one reason the library was Leontina’s favorite place in the castle. Another reason was that while she assumed from context clues that her father was literate, she had never actually seen him pick up a book in her life. And certainly none of the usual hangers-on who flitted all around him in the hopes he’d throw some of his money or influence their way could be accused of such a tedious pastime that could not possibly benefit their aspirations.

The library had always been Leontina’s safe space. Since her father had not seen fit to pay any sort of attention to her education, she’d had to take matters into her own hands. Meaning that she had managed to read almost every book in this library, an enterprise that had taken her years. Particularly as some of the books in this library had clearly been placed here for aesthetics, not information or entertainment.

Still, one of the few things she knew about her late mother was that she had been a champion of education, and Leontina felt she had no choice but to try to follow in her footsteps. It was never a bad thing to have more knowledge rather than less.

Today, however, the footsteps that eventually disturbed her studies belonged—as unlikely as it seemed—to Umberto Tavian himself. Her father.

Who never, ever, came in here.

Or near her at all if he could help it.

Leontina was so startled that she almost gave him the satisfaction of flinching when she looked up to see him standing there. He was scowling down at her as she sat in her favorite cozy chair, her feet propped up and a stack of books at her elbow.

“My God, you’ve turned out scraggly,” was her only living parent’s touching remark.

Umberto was not a nice man. He was not a kind man. It perhaps went without saying that he was also nothing in the broader neighborhood of a good man, either.

Unlike her older brother, Giaco, who liked to put on a show when in their father’s presence, Leontina had always preferred to avoid the man entirely. Better to actually hide away, out of his sight, she’d always thought. Rather than what Giaco did, which was to parade about in plain and scandalous sight instead, thumbing his nose at their father at every opportunity.

But then, Giaco always had been the flashy one.

“Can I help you find a book to read?” she asked, because she couldn’t imagine why else he was here. It was second nature by her twenty-fourth year to keep her voice neither too sweet—because that would set off her father’s alarms, distrustful of sweet as he was, having no experience with it—or too deliberately bland, which would only enrage him.

Leontina liked to aim somewhere in between. It allowed her father to think that she was an idiot.

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That he fully believed this, she was certain, was what had kept her safe for years.

“I’ll need your appearance sorted out, and fast,” he growled at her. Ignoring what she said, of course. “I’ve invited a selection of potential suitors for dinner tonight. You are to be entertaining, but not too bold. Demure, but not shy. Appealing, obviously, but nothing too tarty.”

Leontina felt everything inside her go cold, though she knew better than to show it. She shook her head instead, as if she was confused. That was easy because she genuinely was confused.

“I’m sorry, but what sort of dinner party is this?” she asked, as if she hadn’t heard the word suitors.

“The only point in having a daughter is marrying her off advantageously,” Umberto barked at her. “How many times must I tell you this?”

She knew better than to answer the question. That drew undue attention, and Leontina’s stock in trade was her ability to disappear. Right here in plain sight, if possible—though today he hadn’t happened upon her. He’d come looking for her.

Her usual tricks weren’t going to work.

“We have no choice but to make haste with this,” Umberto continued in the same exasperated growl heavily laden with distaste, clearly not expecting her to answer him in the first place. It was the wise choice for a reason. “Your brother has ruined everything.”

Leontina didn’t know exactly what her infamous brother had done, only that it had driven her father utterly mad with rage. He’d come back from a business meeting in Madrid—the sort of thing he usually dominated and liked to brag about to his acolytes—in a grim fury.

According to the servants—who only dared whisper about their volatile employer in the deepest recesses of the castle where no one could hear them unless, of course, said no one was hiding in the wine cellars to avoid another spectacle at one of Umberto’s endless dinner parties that were always filled with the worst sorts of people—Umberto had trashed half of his personal suite. Twice.

All while shouting Giaco’s name.

This had left Leontina to attempt to solve the mystery of what her notoriously disreputable, scandalous brother could possibly have done to so well and truly get under their father’s skin at last. The gloriously disgraceful Giaco Tavian was renowned far and wide for being the greatest waste of space that had ever assumed human form. That being the polite way to say that he was nothing but a fuck boy.

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Leontina had long been under the impression that all her brother ever did was swan about from one exotic location to the next, gathering lovers as he went. It had been a great shock to her when he’d suddenly started dating her former stepsister, Ivy Amis, and then, even more astonishing, had married her. It had taken Leontina longer than she cared to admit to understand that it had been her father pulling those strings. Once she’d realized it, the unlikely romance between the Playboy of Positano—as Giaco had once been called after a particularly ribald holiday there that had resulted in his being escorted out to the city limits—and Saint Ivy of the Orphans—because despite her famous, late, film-star parents, Ivy really and truly did give all her time and money to orphans—made sense.

Umberto loved nothing more than to play puppet master over all and sundry. And especially if that all and/or sundry was Giaco, the son he’d expected would be made in his image who, instead, had made himself the greatest thorn in Umberto’s side.

That was precisely why Leontina had taken matters into her own hands on the occasion of her brother’s deeply surprising and unexpected wedding. It had been her only chance. She had been very clear on that going in. If her plan was to work, it had to work at that wedding. Any of the other ideas she’d come up with would raise her father’s suspicions and likely get her locked away in a tower. The castle had three.

Luckily, that night had gone according to plan. It had gone much better than planned, in fact.

But she really needed to not think about that night, not now. Not while her father was staring at her, every line on his overindulged, always outraged body trembling with umbrage. She had to order herself not to let the instant wash of heat she felt when she thought about that night show on her face.

She had done what she needed to do. That was all that mattered. She had created an exit strategy and she’d simply been waiting these last few months—three whole months, to be exact—for some kind of sign. Something to make it clear that she had no choice but to put that exit strategy into immediate action.

Before the reason for the strategy took her over, that was, became impossible to conceal, and created even bigger problems for her.

And as her father stood before her, deliberately looming over her so she had no choice but to sit there quietly and gaze up at him as if in rapt attention, she knew the time had come. Because the men he started naming as his guests for the evening—the pack of would-be suitors handpicked by him because he believed they would give him more power and money, not because he gave one shit how his daughter would fare with any one of them—would have been appalling to her even if she hadn’t already resolved to leave.

The youngest one was at least twice her age, she was fairly certain. And while Leontina had no quarrel with an age gap in theory as long as everyone involved was of sound mind and capable of consenting to it all, the men her father planned to parade her in front of tonight might as well have been crypt keepers.

She was fairly sure one of them actually was a crypt keeper.

But she nodded along as her father talked, as he laid out the benefits of each potential suitor and what there was to be gained from each one of them.

He meant for him. She knew that, of course. And if she hadn’t known it already, this display from Umberto would have clued her in. If he was aware that she might have feelings about the person she was to marry, or might even have imagined he might solicit her input on this, he gave no sign.

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That was just as well, she decided. Because Leontina’s head was spinning. She fought to keep her pulse under control, because she had planned for this, damn it. She’d been planning how she would leave to avoid this very situation all along. But it was one thing to imagine what it would be like to finally know she had to leave this place at once—her childhood home, for good or ill, and the last place she’d seen her mother alive—and another to be in that moment at last.

Her father went on and on. He was ranting about what the various suitors brought to the table but he was really talking about himself, of course. And when Umberto was done, when he finally wound himself down into little more than a few growls, he gestured at her impatiently.

“I can only imagine it will take you all afternoon to make yourself look presentable.” When she didn’t respond, he scowled. “But I warn you, Leontina. I will brook no opposition. If you do not have at least one marriage proposal by the end of the night, there will be consequences. Dire consequences. I hope you do not imagine that I am joking.”

That seemed to require a response, so she ducked her head. Meekly, she hoped, though she’d always had trouble with that one. “I understand.”

“I hope so, girl,” Umberto snapped at her. “I hope so.”

But then he left. And, like it or not, that meant it was time.

Leontina blew out a breath as the library doors closed behind him. Then she counted to ten—very slowly—just to make certain that he was really gone. Though he would have no reason to imagine she would do anything but obey him. She’d made certain of that through long years of work to keep herself as much beneath his notice as it was possible to get.

Still, she’d always known that this day would eventually come.

So she allowed herself that one, long breath. Then she launched herself into action, because she really had prepared for this.

She had spent years coming up with various ideas on what constituted the best possible way to escape the castle. She’d had wild plans at first, no doubt cooked up after watching entirely too many summer blockbuster movies from America. Over time, she’d winnowed the plans down from over the top to something reasonable and practical instead.

In the end, she’d decided that simplicity was key.

She padded through the castle, taking the servants’ stairs so that nobody would see her. Not that people really looked at her even if they did see her. Leontina had worked hard to make sure she was the sort of person everyone looked straight through. Still, there was always a chance that with her father on one of his rampages, someone could be hiding the same way she always did—but she didn’t encounter a soul.

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Leontina found her way to her rooms and gathered together the very few things she truly considered hers. Her mother’s jewelry in a small velvet pouch. Just the handful of pieces that her mother had worn daily. She tucked them away and found her passport. Her laptop. Her wallet, which always contained a significant amount of cash as well as the single credit card she possessed in her own name. She’d had it since she was eighteen and had watched a documentary about escaping domestic violence. She had always kept the statements and bills digital and it was highly unlikely anyone even knew about it to question its use. Still, she was careful.

She took the time to conceal some items that she didn’t want to leave, but couldn’t take with her right now. Leontina had planned for this, too. She knew the castle better than anyone else, by virtue of hiding in it so often, and it was the work of only a few moments to secrete the things she didn’t want anyone finding while she was gone. Because it was possible she would be gone for a very long time—she understood that. She hid her journals, and her mother’s diaries, and a few other keepsakes in a secret hiding space behind an unremarkable panel in her dressing room.

There was no reason that anyone should push upon it. She knew this to be true because she’d hidden things there for years and no one had so much as disturbed the dust on it.

She took any personal items that it didn’t make sense to carry with her tonight and put them there. And when she was done, she simply headed back down the stairs in the same outfit she’d been wearing earlier when her father had come upon her in the library, carrying nothing but a tote bag over her shoulder.

Leontina made it all the way down to the ground floor and then out one of the side doors without anyone noticing her. Once outside, she made her way directly to the garages, where she helped herself to one of the sets of keys that hung in a cupboard near the servants’ door. She chose a car, set her bag on the passenger seat beside her, and with absolutely no fuss or carrying on, simply drove herself off her father’s estate. The way she’d done hundreds of times before.

She even waved at her father’s usual security detail as she passed through the gates at the bottom of the drive, and they waved back, because there was nothing remarkable in her driving off like this. She did it all the time. Even today, if security were to mention to her father that she’d done such a thing, she suspected that he might imagine she was sneaking off into one of the villages or even north toward Florence—where she could more easily please him with an item that was not a part of the wardrobe he liked to call drab and uninspiring, when he mentioned her attire at all.

That was simply the sort of obedience Umberto expected.

She hoped that was exactly what he thought. That she was off pleasing him while he plotted out the next, tragic chapter of her life to suit himself.

Meanwhile, she settled in and drove herself through the afternoon, into the evening, and on into France.

She spent that first night in Monaco in a busy, high-end hotel. Before she checked in, however, she sat in the well-appointed lobby, pulled out her laptop, and saw to a few housekeeping details. She changed all of her passwords. On everything, but particularly her bank and credit card accounts. Just in case anyone wanted to go looking once they realized she’d disappeared.

Umberto wasn’t exactly known for his ability to let go.

Leontina ordered room service and then slept fitfully, with strange dreams of chase scenes and endless running waking her up repeatedly. It was very early when she decided she might as well get up and keep going. She spent a good eight hours on the road. She took the motorway that hugged the French coastline, following it all the way into Spain before she stopped in the outskirts of Barcelona.

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And on the third day, she headed southwest and found her way into the rugged, terraced hillsides of Catalonia’s Priorat region and one of its shining jewels, the Calixto estate.

There were hints of nobility and Romans alike in the family line, dating back centuries, but in more recent generations—meaning, since the monks left the area in the 1800s—the Calixtos had been all about wine. Leontina had read all about the family vintners and the ancient estate from every online source she could find—and there were a lot of them. Especially these days.

She knew she was in the right place not only because her GPS told her so, but because she saw the signs that led her straight toward the famous Calixto vines, stretching out in all directions like their own living history.

But it was only when she saw the great, sprawling house in the distance—clearly repurposed from some monastery back in the day, she was sure she’d read that somewhere—that she began to feel her nerves kick in.

Because she had done what she’d had to do. She would do it again. Leontina tried not to think too much about that night, and how…shocking it had all been. How electrifying.

How unprepared she’d found herself when all was said and done. Because it turned out, books did not in fact prepare a person for everything. Prepare them to think about it, perhaps. But to do it? Apparently not.

“A worthy lesson,” she told herself now, trying to sound a bit hearty. Possibly even jolly.

As if she wasn’t on her way to deliver a bombshell that might very well be poorly received.

In fact, she assumed it would be.

She blew out a breath as she drove and let one hand drop to smooth over her belly. It had been three months, almost to the day. She had never been one for communal dining when she could avoid it, so nobody had missed her when her relationship with food took a sour turn over the past few months. Leontina had become a kind of ghost in the kitchens because her cravings demanded one thing and nothing but that thing for several weeks, only to suddenly take against it the next.

She had only just begun to feel like herself again.

Just in time to move on to phase two, apparently. Which involved fewer cravings, she hoped. But was starting off with a whole lot more drama.

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There had never been a possibility that she’d avoid that part. She’d known that, too.

She pulled up at what she assumed was the front door of the grand house and got out of the car. The drive had been beautiful, but as she stood there, breathing in the scent of a late September summer as it spilled over Catalonia, Spain, she felt the beauty of it all seem to…take her over. There had been signs of harvest all around as she’d driven through the region. The sky was so blue it ached, but the weather was mild and pleasant. It was tempting to relax, to imagine the worst was over. That she was safe now.

But when she closed the car door and turned toward the house itself, she froze.

Because he was standing there.

For a wild moment or two, she had the distinct impression that for the first time in her life, she might actually faint.

It was as if the earth and the sky kept changing places, but she realized it was in her head. Because he stayed exactly where he was.

He was none other than Pau Calixto. One of the wealthiest and most formidable men in Spain, and likely the world. Though she rather thought that was the least interesting thing about him.

The trouble with Pau was that he stole all the light from the sky and the sun as if it was his by right. And then kept it—because it was as if it all simmered there, beneath his skin, like a warning and an invitation at once.

She found herself breathless, and not for the first time.

He was very tall, with dark hair and fathomless dark eyes, and every part of him was lean and hard and commanding. His shoulders were broad and his hips were narrow and when she thought of him she always imagined him in a crisp, bespoke suit made in some or other dark fabric.

Even though today he wore only a pair of trousers and the sort of T-shirt that looked casual and likely rivaled the cost of the vehicle she was driving.

He did casual clothing as effortlessly as he did business attire. Leontina hadn’t known that before now. It seemed a critical oversight on her part, because now there was no pretending that he didn’t have one of the finest male forms she had ever beheld—and she had made a study of the male form, in fact. As a part of her education.

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Surely that was what the internet was for, even in a mean old man’s drafty castle.

But she looked up again and had to admit that despite the triumph of muscle and sinew that made him into something like art, it was his face that seemed to stake a claim deep within her. That stern, forbidding, uncompromising face.

She was already breathless, but that face made it worse.

Those dark eyes of his looked black from a distance but she knew, close up, that they contained threads of gold and the hint of green. He had a nose that made her think of predatory things—raptors, perhaps. Or great hawks. His mouth was stern and unsmiling, but the trouble was, she knew what he could do with it.

It felt like minimizing him to say that he was beautiful, because a word like that could not begin to contain him or describe him. It was too…soft.

When everything about this man was hard. Looking at him felt the way she imagined it would feel to be a bit of coal crushed down into diamonds.

And yet, just like on the day of her brother’s wedding, she couldn’t bring herself to look away from him.

Pau Calixto, the man who had ruined her father, according to the whispers in the cellars. The man who was in cahoots with her surprisingly devious brother, a shock to all, but especially to Umberto, who had imagined he was making a deal with Pau himself.

Pau Calixto, the man who was, though he didn’t know it yet, the father of her baby.

Leontina forced herself to smile. She wished, suddenly, that she’d thought to pack something a little bit more elegant than the shapeless, serviceable dress she’d been wearing since leaving Tuscany.

But she couldn’t do anything about that. There was only this.

Her exit strategy whether he liked it or not.

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“Hello, Pau,” she said, not exactly brightly. Though not, perhaps, as measured as she might have liked, either. “You might want to brace yourself. I’m afraid I’ve come with some potentially difficult news.”

End of excerpt