Apart from the fact that Milan was too close to his estranged parents, and it was where he’d lived with his ex-wife for the few short months their so-called marriage had lasted, it was also where he’d met the one woman who’d tested his family duty and honour to the limit. She’d almost driven him mad with desire, but duty had won. His passion and desire had been overridden, but that brief weekend affair with Sadie Parker had made him wish things were different—that he was different, that he hadn’t already had his future mapped out by a family who thought more of their family name than anything else.
Irritation coursed through him as he opened the note.
Welcome to your home. For the next two weeks Antonio Di Marcello does not exist. You will be known as Toni Adessi and you will report to Centro Auto Barzetti, across the road, as soon as you have changed, your undercover job for the next two weeks.
You may only contact me, Stavros or Alejandro on the phone provided. You will not make contact with anyone else via any method for the next two weeks. You have two hundred euros on which to live. Under no circumstances are you to blow your cover. If you succeed, I will make the promised donation of five billion dollars to set up a global search and rescue.
Use your time wisely. This challenge is not about fixing cars, Antonio. It is about fixing your past.
Sebastien
Antonio refused to focus on that last sentence and instead picked up the worryingly old-fashioned phone and checked the contacts. There were just three: Stavros and Alejandro, who’d taken up the bizarre challenge also, and Sebastien himself.
A furious expletive tore from Antonio’s lips. How the hell was he supposed to conduct his business without a decent phone and from such a primitive room? Hell, there wasn’t even a laptop, just the smallest television he’d ever seen. Sebastien was serious. There was to be no contact with his real life.
His instinct was to walk out and return to normality, but doing that would mean much more than a failure of his personal challenge. It would be even more than Sebastien not creating the global search and rescue charity as he had promised he would if they all successfully completed their challenges. Such a charity was meaningful to all of them, after the avalanche which could all too easily have snatched Sebastien from them. Yet still this challenge was far greater than that. It was about a code of honour so strong that not one of them would ever question it—or break it.
He looked at the overalls, vest T-shirt and jeans which were complete with authentic grease stains and bit back further words of fury as the need to succeed surged. Failure was never an option he tolerated. He’d show Sebastien he could do this ridiculous undercover job and whatever it was his challenge entailed. He might have been born into wealth, but he’d amassed a far greater fortune since taking over the family business, turning it into a global success within the world of construction. He’d fought every bit as hard as Sebastien had in his business. Family wealth and an ancestry which went back generations were not as beneficial as the club’s founder member thought.
Again a harsh expletive tore from him. Whatever it was that Sebastien had engineered for him to face, he needed to warn Stavros and Alejandro just how serious Sebastien was about the challenge. He had to let them know it was far more than proving they could survive without their wealth and everything that went with it. All those superficial things Sebastien had scorned just months ago.
A quick inspection of the phone revealed it did at least have a camera and he took a photo of the pile of clothes and money and sent it to Stavros and Alejandro.
This is me for the next two weeks, Toni Adessi, a mechanic, complete with grease-stained clothes, in Milan of all places. Be warned. Sebastien means business!
He took off his top-quality, made-to-measure suit that he hadn’t quite been able to relinquish that morning, despite Sebastien’s earlier warning of needing to be undercover and disguised for this challenge before arriving. He hung it over the back of a chair, then pulled on the jeans and T-shirt and, over the top, the overalls. He slipped on the provided sunglasses—he always wore a pair, but never this cheap or tacky—and pulled the cap on. The work boots completed the outfit and when he looked in the small mirror hanging by the door he hardly recognised himself.
He had at least heeded Sebastien’s warning enough not to have shaved for the last two weeks, something which had alarmed his PA, and now he had much more than the stubble he was used to. The dark growth of a beard was as uncomfortable to look at as it was to wear. His thick, unruly black curls were hidden beneath the cap and even to his own eyes he was unrecognisable as Antonio Di Marcello, heir to the Di Marcello fortune as well as a businessman in his own right.
He strode across the room, the boots heavy and strange on his feet and not even new, something he tried hard not to dwell on. He looked out of the narrow window onto the street below and saw the garage where he was to work. A small laugh escaped him. Sebastien really had done his homework for this challenge. Not only had he sent him to a garage to work, and therefore indulge his passion for motor engines, but it was in Milan, the home of his parents. He hadn’t been back since his divorce.
That had been over three years ago. Was this the real challenge? The past he had to fix? The marriage was not fixable. Sebastien was the only one who knew the truth of that and the weight of the promise he’d made his ex-wife. So why Milan? If not to repair his damaged relationship with his parents?
Briefly the image of his ex-wife floated into his mind, but as always it was pushed aside by Sadie, the one woman who’d threatened to capture his heart for good. He and Sadie had had a wild and hot weekend over three years ago, here in Milan, only weeks before he’d succumbed to the pressure of his tyrannical father and married Eloisa. From the moment he’d first kissed Sadie and made her his, she had become the woman he really wanted, if only family honour and tradition hadn’t been bearing down on him like a wild bear. If he’d known what he knew now about his ex-wife, he’d never have let Sadie go—at least not until he was ready to do so.
He pulled off the cap and resisted the urge to fling it at the wall and walk away from this ridiculous situation and the memories it stirred. Such thoughts were of no use to him now and he savagely discarded them.
He had two weeks of living as a different person to get through and he’d show Sebastien he could rise to this and any challenge he threw his way. Determination fizzed inside him as he left Antonio Di Marcello in the small apartment and became Toni Adessi. He crossed the street, shaded from the morning sun by the height of the buildings, and headed to the garage where he was to work. At least it was a job he could convincingly do. His love of cars and engines had been with him since he was a young boy, thanks to an unlikely friendship with the estate’s gardener, who’d had a passion for motor racing.
* * *
He hadn’t been working more than two hours when he saw exactly why Sebastien had sent him not just to Milan but to this garage. He glanced up to the upper level, to what was obviously the office window, and at first he thought he was seeing things, that just being in this area again had brought Sadie Parker to the front of his mind. Like a ghost of what could have been, tormenting him for the ill-fated decision he’d made to put family honour and duty above his wants and desires.
Sadie Parker was the only woman who’d made him want things he couldn’t have. The only woman he’d walked away from before he was ready to do so. Unsure how to deal with this unexpected twist to his challenge, he turned his attention back to the customer, hiding his shock behind his usual charm.
He glanced up again to see Sadie had turned and was talking to someone else in the office. He took advantage of her distraction to study her, to remember the softness of her hair and the eagerness of her lips.
The customer spoke to him, dragging his mind back to the present and the fact that he was undercover. If Sadie recognised him, he was done for. His challenge would be over before it had even begun and there was no way he was going to let a pretty face from the past do that. He refused to contemplate losing. There was no way he would be the one to fail at something which didn’t