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CHAPTER ONE

ROSA BARANSKI SAT on the kitchen worktop, ostensibly waiting for the coffee percolator to finish, and gazed down at the slate tiles She hated the flooring Even with the benefit of under-floor heating it always felt so cold

It was incredible to think she had once lived in a house of the same proportions as the place she currently called home In that, her first children’s home, she had shared the house with forty other children and an ever-rotating shift of adults The ho she had hated until she had discovered how terrifying silence could be and how loneliness could destroy your soul

Back then, her bedroom had been around the same size as the one she had now Then, she had shared it with four other girls

In those dark days and nights she had dreamed of escape

Around two decades on, and for entirely different reasons, she had coain At least now she had the power simply to leave

But she could not do anything until she had spoken to Nico However ht, she could not leave without an explanation It wouldn’t be fair

For what seee on her phone, her sto at the bland, almost curt words that leapt off the screen It was froo and could not stop reading it She should delete it but she couldn’t It was her only tangible link to him

Shifting her position in order to peer out of the , she felt her belly do a funny skipping thing as she spotted the sleek black Maserati crunch slowly over the long gravel driveway before disappearing from view

Nicolai was home

The dread coursing through her bloodstream was reminiscent of the first time she had met him She had attended an interview for the role of his teular PA, who had gone into early labour

She had sat in a large waiting room with five other potential candidates She hadn’t been able to help but notice that the secretary who had been placed in charge of them visibly braced herself every time she knocked on his office door The other candidates must have noticed it too All of them had sat in hushed, almost reverential silence

If Nico Baranski’s reputation had not already preceded hiht of the candidates’ faces after they had been intervieould have been enough to terrify them One by one they left his office ashen-faced One wo back tears

Rosa had been the last to go in

By that point her nerves had been shredded

She had entered the plush, masculine office and been confronted with an i stare

She had breathed a visible sigh of relief