Dante was totally floored. He’d been sent on an impossible mission. Another death. He closed his eyes, shutting out the imposter, thinking of his grandfather who’d been fooled into believing he had another Isabella who might look like his beloved wife. Everything within him railed against delivering such a devastating disappointment.
Anger stirred. Why hadn’t the private investigators picked up the identity swap? How had this woman deceived everyone? No problem now in understanding her responses to him. She’d been scared out of her mind about getting tripped up. He opened his eyes to glare furious hostility at her.
‘Explain to me how you managed to take Isabella’s place without anyone questioning it,’ he commanded, pushing himself upright and walking over to where she sat, standing over her, using deliberate intimidation to draw what he wanted out of her.
She didn’t try to fight him this time. Her connection to his cousin poured from her in a stream of pleading for his understanding…how she’d come to share Isabella’s apartment and use her name to get employment at the forum, the car accident, her friend burnt beyond recognition, her own identification cards destroyed in the fire, the mistake made by the authorities because of a handbag she’d been holding when she’d been thrown clear…
‘I remembered afterwards that was why I’d taken off my seat belt. Bella was driving and she asked me to get a bag of sweets out of her handbag which she’d thrown onto the back seat. I couldn’t reach with my seat belt on, so I unclipped it and leaned through the gap between the front seats, hooked my hand around the shoulder strap and dragged it onto my lap.’
‘Her handbag must have contained her driver’s licence,’ Dante tersely pointed out. ‘The identification photo…’
‘It wasn’t a good one of her. We both had long curly hair, hers darker, but that could have been from bad lighting when the camera shot was taken, and she was smiling so you couldn’t tell her mouth wasn’t as wide as mine. Her eyes were squinted up so their different shape wasn’t so obvious, and I guess my face was bruised and puffy from the accident, making it look rounder. Even so, there was enough doubt about who I was for the police to call in the employment manager from the forum to identify me and because of my working under Bella’s name…’
‘Very convenient for you.’
She flushed at his acid sarcasm. ‘I was in a coma for two weeks after the accident. The identification was made while I was still unconscious. I didn’t know about it until after I woke up, and then all the medical staff was calling me Miss Rossini…and I let them. I let them because I had nowhere else to go and I needed recovery time from my other injuries, and I didn’t think Bella would mind…’
‘How could she?’ Dante savagely mocked. ‘She was dead.’
‘Yes,’ she agreed miserably. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t know about you. Bella told me she was an orphan like me. No family. I didn’t think it mattered when the police came again after I woke from the coma and I identified the driver as my flatmate, Jenny Kent…a nobody who wasn’t connected to anyone. And that was the end of it.’
‘Not the end. You took over Isabella’s life because she had more than you,’ he accused mercilessly. Money was a prime motivation. It always was. She’d just proved him right again.
‘I only meant to do it for a while. Until I could…’
‘Well, you fooled everyone effectively. You can go on fooling them for another two months.’
He would not fail his grandfather on what was virtually a death-bed request. It didn’t matter who this woman was. She could make up for the deception she had played by being a good and loving grand-daughter to Marco until he died.
She shook her head, pained bewilderment in her eyes. ‘I was going to leave here tonight, become Jenny Kent again. I’m sorry I…’
Ruthless purpose surged in Dante, cutting her plan of escape dead. ‘I will not allow you to destroy the hope that made my grandfather send me on this mission. You will come to Italy with me. You will stay with him in the villa on Capri until he no longer needs you. He will know you as Isabella…’
‘No! No!’ She leapt to her feet in panic, hands wildly gesturing protest. ‘You can’t! I can’t!’
He gripped her flailing arms. His eyes burned through the glaze of horror in hers with unshakeable determination. ‘I can and you will. If you don’t do as I say, I’ll call the police and have you arrested for identity-theft and fraud, and I promise you your term of imprisonment will be a lot longer than two months!’
Shock, fear, despair chased across her face.
‘So what do you want to be, Jenny Kent?’ he mocked. ‘A common criminal rotting in jail or a pampered grand-daughter living in luxury?’
CHAPTER FIVE
Rome
One Week Later
JENNY stood in the bedroom assigned to her in Dante’s palatial apartment and stared at her reflection in the mirror, barely recognising herself. She had been transformed into someone else—the Isabella Dante wanted to present to his grandfather. It was incredible what money could do; incredible, fascinating and frightening. It had the power to make anything possible.
She now had a passport in Isabella’s name, an entire wardrobe of fabulous designer clothes—some acquired in Sydney while they waited for the passport, the rest bought during a stopover in Paris—a face that had been made over by a beautician, her once thickly tangled mass of hair cleverly cut into a tousled cascade of wild sexy curls, newly applied perfect fingernails, polished in a natural tone, plus a whole range of fantastic accessories to complement her new look—belts, bags, shoes, jewellery.
She’d flown halfway around the world in a private jet, been waited upon hand and foot, eaten food she’d never been able to afford, stayed in penthouse suites at the Gondola Hotels, and any minute now Dante would come and collect her for the helicopter flight to Capri. A different life, she thought. A totally different life which still didn’t feel quite real to her.
This image in the mirror was Dante’s puppet, moving and acting to his will. Even how it was dressed…
‘Wear the Sass and Bide outfit,’ he’d instructed. ‘This first lunch at the villa will be informal, and the design is something fresh and individual. Lucia would not have seen it anywhere. She’s not into Australian fashionistas.’
Lucia…Bella’s other cousin.