Spaniard's Baby of Revenge

by Clare Connelly

  Since that day in the pool, something had shifted for them. She’d come to his bed each night and he’d slept wrapped around her, a hand possessively curved over her stomach and a certainty in his chest that she was right where she belonged.

  He stared at the newspaper spread over his desk and the photo they’d chosen to print of her, and his gut twisted with a mix of fury and disgust. She was only young in this picture—ten, perhaps? And her mother stood beside her, wearing a skimpy dress and huge sunglasses, looking every bit the drugged-out supermodel he had discovered her to have been.

  Perhaps if he didn’t know Amelia as he did now, he wouldn’t have noticed the fear in her eyes. Nor the panic stretched across her beautiful young face.

  But he understood every cell in her beautiful body, he knew her, in many ways better than he did himself. And even though they’d met only eight months earlier, seeing her in this picture, he understood exactly what she was feeling. There were photographers in the background of the photo, paparazzi, and her small fingers were curved around her mother’s, as though she were the protector, the adult.

  He swore a guttural oath into his office as he reached for his phone and dialled her number on autopilot. His eyes took in the headline to the left of the article: Tycoon’s Marriage Merger!

  His gut clenched.

  In a move the billionaire businessman himself describes as ‘fortuitous’, the marriage of Amelia diSanto to Antonio Herrera brings together two warring dynasties—and a merging of assets that will form one of the biggest financial powerhouses in the world.

  ‘Prim’Aqua will be at the heart of my business operation going forward,’ Herrera says. ‘It gives me great satisfaction to bring the company back into the fold. The future is bright.’

  He hadn’t even been misquoted. He had said that, and myriad other self-congratulatory statements lauding his own success in reacquiring Prim’Aqua. At the time, he’d thought only of Carlo’s reaction on reading the news. He’d taken pleasure from imagining his sworn enemy having to see evidence of Antonio’s success—and the marriage that would add insult to injury.

  He hadn’t thought of Amelia. Not when he’d given the interview.

  He hadn’t known her then. He hadn’t known that she’d wish to keep this marriage secret, to give herself time to adjust to it. He hadn’t known that she would turn out to be every bit as sweet as she’d seemed that night, long ago, in Bumblebee Cottage. He hadn’t known that he would come to depend on her, that she could answer every single one of his needs.

  His eyes dived to the next page, where there was a photo with him and one of his ex-lovers. A woman whose name he struggled to remember in that moment. Billionaire Bachelor! ran the second headline, and there was a list of his famous past lovers.

  His chest felt as though it were being split in two.

  ‘Answer your phone,’ he snapped, then hung up and dialled her number again.

  It rung out, but he kept trying, all the while reading the article.

  Every paragraph showed it to be so much worse.

  Hell, he’d forgotten about this interview, because it hadn’t mattered to him at the time. He’d given no thought to Amelia, and how she might feel. She’d agreed to marry him, she’d agreed to give him Prim’Aqua once their child was born, and that had been the end of it.

  But now?

  Dios, please let her not have seen it.

  With another oath, he grabbed his suit jacket and swung his arms into it as he walked, stalking towards the door of his office and slamming it in his wake.

  ‘Sir? You have an appointment in ten...’

  ‘Cancel my afternoon,’ he bit out, jabbing a finger against the door of the lift. ‘Cancel it all.’

  He barely recognised himself in the shimmery reflection of the lift. His face was white beneath his tan. So this, then, was what true fear felt like.

  * * *

  Amelia stirred her tea, a gentle smile on her face. She daydreamed a lot lately. And she smiled a lot too.

  Her hand curved over her rounded tummy—now so big she couldn’t sit in properly against a table. She could use it as a table, she thought with a grin, as she balanced a book on it just for fun.

  She stifled a yawn, then looked towards the clock. It was still the early afternoon. She’d taken to napping, to catch up on sleep, because her nights were hardly as restful as they could be. Warmth suffused her body as she remembered the way Antonio had kissed her all over the night before, his mouth finding her most intimate core and his tongue driving her beyond wild, until her nails had almost torn shreds in the silk sheets of his bed and heat had threatened to burn her from the inside out.

  He knew exactly how to touch her, to kiss her, to hold her, to give her more pleasure than she could put into words.

  She stood slowly, stretching her arms above her head before reaching for her tea and carrying it with her towards her bedroom.

  Her phone screen was glowing when she stepped inside and she moved towards it on autopilot, scooping it up to see a screen covered in alerts.

  Missed calls—lots of them. From Antonio’s office phone and Carlo’s mobile.

  Her heart began to trip faster and faster. She hadn’t spoken to Carlo in months, except via text. It had been too hard to talk to him, knowing that she was lying to him, and she still hadn’t been ready to face the reality of her brother and father’s outrage. And they would be outraged when they discovered she’d married Antonio—that she was pregnant with his baby.

  She needed time—and wanted to protect the marriage that they were building. A marriage that, in her heart, she suspected couldn’t have been more perfect if their meeting had been a true love match. Because she loved him with all her heart and every inch of her soul, and she suspected he felt the same.

  He had to.

  Love didn’t exist in a vacuum. One person couldn’t have enough love to create this abundance of feeling.

  She skipped into the voicemail section of her phone. None from Antonio, several from Carlo. Concern for her father came to the forefront of her mind—it would make sense that both men would try to contact her if something had happened to Giacomo.

  She lifted the phone to her ear, bracing herself for whatever was to come. But she couldn’t have imagined it would be anything like this.

  ‘Amelia? What the hell is going on?’

  Several curse words in Italian.

  ‘You’re pregnant? Tell me that bastardo is not the father. I swear, I’ll kill him.’

  Her skin shivered with goosebumps as she tried to make sense of how Carlo had learned the truth. She’d been so careful, and she knew Antonio understood her desire to keep their marriage quiet. So? How had Carlo learned of this?

  She clicked into the next voicemail; it was even angrier.

  ‘Call me back, damn it! What the hell is happening? You married Antonio Herrera? He’ll eat you alive and spit you back out for breakfast. How could you be so stupid? The man is a bastard, capable of only hatred and revenge. He is the devil.’

  The next one was just a string of angry Italian, finishing with, ‘How could you do this to me? He’s using you, Amelia—and, damn it, you’re letting him. He’s using you to get to me!’

  She was ice-cold and dropped the phone to the bed just as it began to ring anew. Carlo.

  She lifted it to her ear. ‘Digame.’

  ‘Damn it, where have you been, Millie?’

  ‘Not near my phone,’ she said, sitting down on the edge of the bed, numb.

  ‘Well?’ The word was bitten out and she swept her eyes shut. ‘Is it true?’

  ‘I...’

  ‘You’re married to him?’

  ‘I...’

  ‘Damn it! Do you know who he is? He hates us, Millie. How could you do this?’

  ‘It wasn’t...’ She bit down on her lip and stared at he
r hands, her wedding ring glinting as she looked at it.

  ‘He’s using you!’

  ‘No, it’s not like that. Our marriage isn’t...anything to do with this feud.’

  He swore in disagreement. ‘He told me he would take everything I care about and destroy it, just for the sake of it. I thought he meant my businesses; I had no clue he was speaking of my own sister. He seduced you and convinced you to marry him purely to hurt me. Can’t you see that?’

  ‘No!’ She shook her head, her mind clinging to the intimacy she shared with her husband, to the truth of what they’d become.

  ‘Yes. Do you doubt him capable of it? He who has set out to bring down our whole empire?’

  ‘You did the same to him,’ she fired at him, her stomach in knots.

  ‘To get him to back off!’ Carlo grunted. ‘But this was always about him—and his ability to destroy us. His sick need to avenge a generations-old feud. This is the man you’ve married. Is this bastardo to be the father to my nephew?’

  She wanted to dispute what he’d said, but memories of conversations spun into her mind—his description of his childhood, the love he’d felt for his father. A father who’d suffered as a result of Carlo’s machinations.

  It was all too hard to process.

  ‘How did you find out about us?’ she asked, turning to the one thing she could attempt to make sense of in that moment.

  ‘The article,’ he snarled. ‘Tell me you’ve seen it?’

  ‘I...no.’

  ‘Then you are in for a wake-up call. Your husband—’ he spat the word ‘—couldn’t help boasting about taking over our family empire. “A perfect merger”, he calls it. You are little more than an afterthought—a bride for the sake of business. This is the man you married.’

  Her chest felt as if it were being washed with acid. Panic was curving around her, and the baby in her belly began to flip and flop in response to the adrenal surge.

  ‘I can’t believe it.’

  ‘It’s online.’ There was a pause. ‘There. I’ve sent you a link.’

  ‘Gracias.’

  She disconnected the call without knowing if the conversation was at an end. Her forehead was hot and clammy as she clicked into the text message link and the article expanded on her device.

  Tycoon’s Marriage Merger! the headline screamed.

  She read the article with a growing sense of panic and a lessening ability to breathe, then stared at her phone, the whole world seemingly made of shards of a broken mirror that she had no idea how to safely traverse.

  ‘Amelia.’ She hadn’t heard him come in and the sound of his voice startled her. She lifted her gaze towards him and saw the tightness in his expression. The wariness too.

  ‘You gave an interview?’ Her words were low and throaty, her sense of betrayal evident in each sore syllable.

  A muscle throbbed low in his throat and she stared at it, then shifted her gaze sideways, to the corridor beyond the door. Their baby kicked against her ribs but she didn’t react.

  ‘A long time ago,’ he conceded, nodding, stepping into the room but pausing when she stiffened.

  ‘When?’ She looked at him, a plea in her features.

  ‘Before we were married,’ he said. ‘I had forgotten about the damned piece.’

  ‘Don’t.’ She shook her head, standing, nothing making any sense any more.

  ‘Don’t what?’

  ‘Don’t lie to me. Don’t act as though this wasn’t all a part of your plan.’

  His brows knitted together as he stared at her, then he closed the gap between them, his stride long and purposeful. ‘I am sorry the article ran. I am sorry I couldn’t prepare you for it. I gave the editor an earful on the drive over here,’ he said with a shake of his head.

  ‘He’s just doing his job! What were you doing? Bragging to all and sundry about how clever you are to have acquired the company you’ve always wanted through this...marriage merger of ours! That’s all this is for you, isn’t it?’

  ‘I have never used those words to describe what we are,’ he contradicted fiercely. ‘And you know as well as anyone that the reason I married you is for our baby, not because of Prim’Aqua.’

  She recoiled as though he’d slapped her and breath burned in her lungs. She did know the reason they’d married, but it still hurt to be reminded of how calculated this had all been for him. ‘And somewhere between my agreeing to marry you and us actually getting married, you had time to gloat to a journalist about the controlling stake in Prim’Aqua you’d scored?’

  He ground his teeth together. ‘It is a statement of fact, not a gloat.’

  ‘And the hurt this article caused my family? Can you imagine how they felt, waking up to read this?’

  His expression tightened, his eyes glistening black. ‘I do not care what your family felt,’ he said finally, coldly, and then, with a noticeable softening of his features, ‘I care about you. About any hurt this stupid journalism has caused you to feel.’

  She bit down on her lip and turned her back on him. ‘Hurting my family does hurt me. You’ve known that all along.’

  He was silent.

  ‘Nothing’s changed for you, has it?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ he queried from right behind her, so his breath was warm against her flesh and her stomach twisted at his nearness and the distance she felt growing between them.

  ‘You still hate my family—even though they’re a part of me, and our baby is a part of them.’

  He made a growling sound of dissent. ‘Everything’s changed. We are married. When I gave that interview, I didn’t see you as much more than a means to an end, it’s true.’

  She winced.

  ‘I have never hidden my feelings about your family.’

  She frowned, knowing this to be the case and still somehow finding it impossible to process. An ache began to throb, deep in her chest. Or was it more like a ticking—incessant, unstoppable, louder and louder, speeding up and echoing the frantic racing of her heart?

  ‘What’s going to happen when our baby is born?’ she whispered, curling her hands over her stomach. ‘And I want to take him or her to Italy to see his grandfather? Or his uncle? Are you going to resent that? Are you going to hate me being there? Are you going to refuse to come? Or will you come and fight with two of the people I care about most?’

  He ground his teeth together. ‘I’ve told you, your relationship with them has nothing to do with me.’

  She shook her head painfully. ‘But what of our child’s relationship with them? I will be raising our baby to love their whole family—that means my family—to talk about them with love, to speak Italian and understand his or her heritage. My child will have your last name but it will still be my child, of my family, with all that implies.’

  His expression was shuttered. ‘But around me he will be Herrera,’ Antonio said simply. ‘As you are now.’

  The ache in her chest grew. ‘I’m not any part of this feud,’ she said. ‘And I can’t believe you’re continuing after all this!’

  ‘I am doing no such thing,’ he said, his expression sombre. ‘I have made no move against your brother since we married. I have left his business interests alone, even though I have had opportunity to destroy him ten times over. What is this if not proof that I am standing by our agreement?’

  ‘Our agreement?’ She paled. ‘That’s why you’ve backed off from Carlo’s companies?’

  He spun her around in his arms, his eyes searching hers. ‘Why else?’ The question was asked as if from the depths of his soul, as though he truly couldn’t comprehend what was wrong with that statement. ‘I am doing what you asked of me.’

  And suddenly she needed to sit down. She collapsed onto the edge of the bed, pressing her fingertips into her temples.

  ‘Hermosa, what is it?’

&nb
sp; She ignored his apparent concern. ‘That damned deal we made way back then is why you’ve left Carlo alone? You’ve let him be only because I’m giving you Prim’Aqua.’ Her eyes glistened when she lifted them to his. ‘That’s all you care about.’

  He swore softly. ‘Not all I care about.’

  ‘Yeah?’ she demanded, scoffing.

  ‘You know I care about you. It is why I’m here, Amelia, in the middle of the afternoon. Because the thought of you reading that article and thinking I had just given this interview...’

  ‘But you don’t love me,’ she interrupted curtly, gnawing on her lower lip.

  His eyes showed consternation when they locked to hers, impatience too. ‘Love is beside the point,’ he intoned flatly, and the words seemed to come from a long way away. ‘I respect you and value you. I desire you and I have chosen to make a life with you.’

  ‘But love would be a reason to leave my family alone. Love would be a reason for you to forget your hatred of them.’

  ‘Nothing will allow me to do that,’ he said gently, crouching down so his eyes were level with hers. ‘I have hated them for ever and, no matter what role you play in my life, I can’t simply forget how I feel.’

  ‘You strike me as a man who can do anything he wants. So what you’re saying is that you don’t want to forgive them.’

  His jaw was square, and the room was heavy with angst and sorrow for a moment before he nodded curtly. ‘No,’ he said at length. ‘I do not want to forgive them. I want to hate them. I like hating them.’

  ‘Even when it hurts me.’

  He shook his head curtly. ‘They are separate to us.’

  ‘No, they’re not.’

  ‘They have to be. For our child, we must separate your family...’

  ‘No, for our child, you must forget your need for revenge...’

  ‘No.’ A simple, final word that was like a nail in the coffin of all of her hopes.

  ‘So your hatred for them is greater than anything you feel for me,’ she said with a nod, as the truth of their relationship crystallised in her mind. ‘You still expect me to hand over my shares in Prim’Aqua when our child is born?’