Dom stirred, a tiny mewing sound coming from his cot.
Beth held her breath. She didn’t dare take her eyes off Alessio, who remained at the threshold of the room.
‘I’m sorry you had to discover the truth like that.’ His words echoed off the walls.
Nausea roiled violently in her stomach. ‘Sorry that it prevented you taking Dom, Alessio?’
She tried to keep a lid on the fresh panic gripping her as she took in the lean yet muscular proportions of the man with a new ominous perspective. If it came to a fight, she would never win.
But she would try. She would fight. She would do whatever it took to keep Dom out of the clutches of the man from whom she had sworn to protect him. She would protect her ward with her life.
He shook his head slowly. ‘If I wanted to take him, I would have done so already.’
‘Stay back!’ He’d stepped into the room. The shoe she’d lost on the stairs was in his hand. ‘Don’t come any closer.’
She tensed her body, readying herself for the first physical fight of her life.
He took another step forward and placed the shoe on the dressing table.
Dom let out a loud cry.
Not wanting to take her eyes away from the slowly nearing Italian, she twisted an arm into the cot and groped carefully until she found Dom’s belly and gently stroked it. He cried out again. It was a cry of pain.
Valente... Alessio...stopped walking.
He expelled a deep breath then stepped back to the door. At the threshold he called out, ‘Miranda.’
The nanny appeared.
‘I’m going to take Miss Hardingstone to my suite. Domenico needs attending to.’
‘No!’ But Dom’s cries of pain were increasing and Beth could no longer bear the agony in her heart to hear them. She turned quickly and scooped him into her arms. Immediately his cries lessened.
Holding him securely and rocking him gently, she turned to her adversary and fought unsuccessfully to hold her own tears back. ‘Please, I am begging you, don’t do this. Don’t take him from me.’
‘BETH...’ ALESSIO’S FACE contorted briefly before he took five long strides to her.
She shrank back, her bottom wedged against the cot.
He gazed down at her but made no attempt to remove the fractious baby from her arms. His voice was surprisingly gentle as he said, ‘Listen to me, no one is taking Domenico from you, but we need to talk and it will be better if we can do that with privacy. My suite adjoins yours. Let Miranda take care of him and, when we’re done talking, you can come back to him.’
Alessio watched Beth’s face scrunch and her chest rise and fall rapidly, all the while rocking the baby in her arms.
He could curse.
He’d been prepared for screams, shouts and curses. He had not expected or been prepared for such anguish.
‘Give Domenico to Miranda. You have my word that you can return to him when we’re done talking.’
She turned her pleading gaze to Miranda, who came to her side and carefully lifted Domenico from her arms.
‘I’m not going anywhere,’ the nanny murmured.
Beth nodded bravely before placing a tender kiss on the baby’s forehead. ‘Have you given him any of his infant painkiller?’
‘He can have some more in half an hour. Don’t worry. I’ll look after him, I promise.’
She stepped away from them and rubbed her hands on her arms.
Knowing Beth would follow, Alessio walked to the door that adjoined their suites and unlocked it. Once in his own suite, he headed straight to the bar in the main lounge area and poured them both a hefty measure of single malt.
He held one out to her. ‘Take it. You’ve had a shock. It will help.’
Chocolate eyes, red and puffy from crying, held his briefly before she took the glass from him and carried it to one of the sofas. Only when she had sat down did she take a large drink from it.
He watched her carefully as she fixed her gaze to the ceiling and held tightly to her glass.
Lowering himself onto an armchair, he said, ‘I am sorry you had to find out the way you did. I was going to come clean in the morning.’
She turned her head and cast eyes swimming with anguish on him. ‘You’re really Alessio Palvetti?’
‘Yes.’
Her head dropped forward. The silky hair that had been wound so elegantly was in disarray, brunette locks spilling out in all directions. ‘This ball... How...? How did you do it?’
‘Giannis and I have been friends since our school days. I asked him to host the ball in his palace and employ your company to run it. He owed me a favour and agreed.’
She rubbed the back of her neck and muttered, ‘Must have been some favour.’
Beth thought of the astronomical sum of money that had been spent on the ball, not a cent of which had been recouped from the tickets. All the money raised through the four hundred guests who had each paid forty thousand euros to attend was going to charity. ‘All this...just so you could get Dom?’
And, now he had Dom in his clutches, she had little doubt he’d taken the necessary precautions needed to stop Dom and her leaving the palace without him. He’d even put them into adjoining suites!
The lengths he’d gone to get them here proved him a master tactician who always thought a dozen moves ahead.
The rich were in a league of their own when it came to getting what they wanted. When money was no object, then any scruples or morality be damned. Alessio had been born without either.
‘Do not misunderstand me. Getting custody of Domenico is my primary motivation. He is a Palvetti and he deserves to take his place with us, his family. In my care he can have everything but, if custody were all I wanted, he would already be with me.’
She took another sip of her drink. Normally she hated whisky in any of its forms but right then the burn it made in her throat was welcome. It was the fire she needed to cut through her despair. ‘Then what do you want? I think of all the work we’ve done, all the hours spent, all the money spent—’
‘I wanted to get to know you.’
She finally allowed herself to look at him. ‘Why?’
The emerald eyes that had turned her veins to treacle lasered into hers. He leaned forward and spoke quietly. ‘I wanted to learn about you through more than the reports and photographs my investigators provided me with.’
‘You had me investigated?’
‘I thought it prudent to look into the character of the person caring for my nephew.’
Her head span so violently she felt dizzy with the motion.
He’d been spying on her.
She should have known Alessio’s silence since she’d refused his offer of money in exchange for Dom had been ominous. She’d lulled herself into a false sense of security and underestimated him, and underestimated the lengths he would be prepared to go to.
Everything Domenico had said about his brother