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side. In its heyday, the once magnificent palace had hosted a variety of foreign dignitaries, including the monarchs of France and Spain.
    Which perfectly illustrated the chasm between their lives.
    “Oh, wow,” she breathed. “You’ve done all this work?”
    “Yeah.” Bit by bit, in between his charity heists and legitimate stonemasonry jobs. And he still had a long way to go. He scanned the boards piled against one wall, the scaffolding stretched across the courtyard, the mountain of paint cans and saws.
    “It’s beautiful,” she breathed. “I love the way you’ve preserved the original features. It’s modern, but still antique.”
    He met her gaze, impressed that she understood. “That was the point.”
    “Well, it worked. It’s really lovely, just amazing. You do fabulous work.”
    Despite his resolve to keep his distance, her frank admiration burrowed beneath his defenses and evoked a glimmer of pride. He’d spent years working on the sixteenth-century palace, staining the chestnut beams, piecing together the damaged frescoes, painstakingly repairing the terra-cotta tiles. Shoring up the dilapidated, graffiti-marred structure to create a home for his baby sister and fill the void in her troubled life.
    But Paloma wouldn’t understand that. She’d been raised in an opulent castle, surrounded by every luxury, worlds apart from his hardscrabble upbringing, where he’d had to steal to survive.
    “This way,” he said, hardening his voice. He strode into one of the few rooms he’d finished and snapped on a high-powered lamp. The harsh light flooded the room, banishing the feeling of intimacy she’d sparked. Still clutching the laptop and bag of disks, Paloma sank onto the leather sofa and glanced around the room. He settled in the opposite chair.
    For a minute, he simply watched her, studying her full, pouty lips, the sooty lashes rimming her hypnotic eyes, the shimmering fall of her chestnut hair. Her undeniable beauty washed through him, the feminine lines of her face, the creamy glow of her skin jump-starting his heart. Had she been anyone else…
    But she wasn’t anyone else. She was Paloma Vergara, the princess. A member of the family he planned to destroy.
    He braced his forearms on his knees. “All right. Let’s take this from the top. What were you after back there? And I want the truth this time.”
    She hesitated, her apparent unwillingness to confide in him irritating him even more. “Look, Princess. Thanks to you, I’ve got the royal guards gunning for me. If I’m going to get arrested, I deserve to know what for.”
    She pushed her hands through her hair, the honeyed highlights shimmering like gold in the light. Her weary sigh filled the air. “You’re right. It’s my fault you’re in this mess. But I really did tell you the truth—most of it, at least. I’m looking for blackmail evidence.”
    He cocked a brow. “And?”
    Setting aside the bag and laptop, she rose. She paced to the still-dark windows, then turned and faced him again. “What I’m about to tell you… You can’t tell anyone. You have to promise. Because if the media finds out…”
    “Forget it. I’m not promising anything. Not until I know what this is about.”
    “But—”
    “I said to forget it.” He stood and stalked toward her, stopping so close beside her she had to tilt back her head to meet his eyes. “I agreed to get you into that penthouse, and I did my part. Now it’s time that you came clean.”
    Her lush mouth flattened, her eyes flashing with annoyance at his hard line. But after several tense seconds, she released her breath. “All right. The truth is… It wasn’t me Gomez was blackmailing. It was my brother, Tristan.”
    Dante’s gut stilled. Excitement leaped inside him, sending adrenaline surging into his veins. He’d guessed right. And this was exactly what he needed—information that could incriminate the prince.
    “He gambles,” she continued with a little shrug. “Nothing