“That I cannot do, signorina.” Irritation crossed his features as he stalked toward her again. “And I already know the truth. Our son was born nearly seventeen months ago, on November the twenty-fifth, in a small hospital in Port Pierre, Louisiana. You were in labor for twenty-two hours, and the only person at your bedside was Carla Breaux.”
Lily sank onto the couch again as her legs gave way. He knew the truth. “Why did you ask me if he was yours if you know so much?”
“Because I wanted to hear you say it.”
Lily felt as if she were collapsing in on herself. Her body folded over, slowly, until her head was nearly between her knees. Fury and fear mingled in her gut, bubbled into a great howl of rage that erupted from her throat, astonishing her.
Astonishing Nico, if the alarm on his face was any indication.
“You are not taking my baby away from me,” she vowed. “I’ll go back to that cell and stay there, but I will not tell Carla to hand over Danny to you.”
He went to the bar set against one wall and poured a measure of caramel-colored liquid into a glass. Then he returned and held the cut crystal out to her. “Drink this.”
“No.”
“You are overwrought. This will help.”
She gripped the glass in both hands, more to make him go away than anything. When he stood so close, her head felt fuzzy. Thankfully, he retreated a few steps. He picked up a phone, issued what she assumed were a set of orders since whoever was on the other end never had time to speak before he hung up again.
“You will call your friend Carla and tell her to bring Daniele to the airport tomorrow morning.”
“I won’t,” she said quietly, resenting the way he so easily Italianized her son’s name.
“Indeed you will,” Nico replied. “You can make this easy, or you can make it hard. Should you not cooperate, you might never see Daniele again. Because you will not leave Montebianco. He could grow up motherless, and alone.”
Numbness crept over her. “You would do that to your own son? You would deny him his mother?”
She didn’t miss the nearly imperceptible clenching of his jaw. “I will do what it takes to make you see reason, cara. If you cooperate, this will not have to happen, si?”
“How can you be so cruel?”
He shrugged an elegant shoulder, and Lily saw red. The spoiled bastard! The glass tumbled to the floor and shattered against the tile as she lunged for him. Nico was faster, however. He swept her high into his arms and carried her across the room as she kicked and struggled.
“Dio, woman, you are wearing sandals. Do you want to slice your feet to ribbons?”
Lily didn’t care. She simply didn’t care about anything any longer. This man, this cold evil man, was trying to take away the one person in the world who meant the most to her. It was her greatest fear come to life. She would not allow it.
She twisted in his iron grip, throwing him off balance so that he stumbled. Lily pressed her advantage and they fell to the thick Oriental carpet together, Nico taking the brunt of the impact. A moment later, he flipped her and she found herself on her back, Nico’s hard form pressing into her, breast to belly to hip.
“Stop fighting me, cara,” he said harshly. “It changes nothing.”
Lily wiggled beneath him, tried to shake him off. His solid form didn’t budge. The point of a star-shaped medal dug into her ribs. “Why are you doing this to me?” she cried. “You have dozens of children with your mistresses, so why do you care about mine?”
Rage, disbelief, frustration—they chased across his face in equal measure. “I have one child, Liliana. Only one. And you have kept him from me.”
“I don’t believe you,” she gasped out.
Nico shifted and the medal’s point thankfully stopped pricking her. He gripped her arms, forced them above her head. He seemed to hover on the edge of control. “Have you never thought that gossip magazines might lie?”
“They can’t all be lies.” There had to be a grain of truth, right? Perhaps they exaggerated, but there must be something to it. Not one of the reporters she knew at the Register would dare write something so patently false.
Nico’s laugh was short and bitter. “You have obviously never been the victim of these carrion. They feed on outrage and misdirection. There’s hardly a single thing they print about me that is true.”
“Now I know you’re lying. I’ve seen photos of you with lots of women—”
“I have had many mistresses,” he said, cutting her off. “This is to be expected—”
“Why? Because you’re some kind of God’s gift—”
“Basta! You seek to exasperate me, signorina, and you succeed. Nevertheless, I have one child.”
Lily’s chest heaved in frustration as she stared up at him. But her eyes closed as the truth of his words sank in. Gossip magazines thrived on scandal. She knew that. But she didn’t want to believe he spoke the truth. Because if he did, so much she’d thought about him would be wrong. The blood drained from her head as the implications sank in.
“But if Danny really is the only one, that would mean—”
She couldn’t finish the sentence, uncertain what to say next. Was Danny in line for a throne? Impossible.
Nico said it for her. “Yes, cara, our child is my heir and second in line to the throne of Montebianco.”
Her insides were jelly. “How is that possible?” she managed. “We aren’t even married.”
“It just is,” he said, his accent thickening suddenly as she moved.
Lily took advantage of his distraction to try and buck him off. She arched her back and flexed her body upward, shoving into the cradle of his hips. His arousal sent a jolt of sensation sizzling through her.
In spite of her anger and frustration, the feeling was delicious.
Dangerous.
Nico’s breath caught as she shoved against him. The sound was slight, but she heard it nonetheless.
And just like that she was on fire, absolutely aflame with longing. How could it be possible? How could she feel sexual desire for him when he wanted to ruin her life? He’d given her the most precious thing in her world, and now he wanted to take it away. And her body didn’t seem to care. She redoubled her efforts to throw him off.
“Maledizione,” he ground out between clenched teeth. “Stop moving—or would you like to take this into the bedroom and do it properly?”
Lily’s palms pushed against the crisp material of his uniform. A desperate, greedy part of her did indeed want to do it properly. But her common sense, her anger, her sheer dislike of the man won out. “Get off me.”
“As you wish,” he said, then bounded up and left her to climb to her feet alone.
Lily hugged herself, her body still tingling with the shock of desire. How could she want him? She closed her eyes, squeezed her arms tight around her middle. My God, she really was her mother’s daughter.
She could not afford the distraction of such thoughts. She had to focus. “What now?”
He whirled on her, his uniform as crisp and perfect as if he hadn’t just been rolling on the floor with her. His royal bearing was absolute. She wondered that she’d never noticed it in the three days she’d spent with him in New Orleans.
“You will call your