“And I will wager you didn’t try hard enough,” he growled. “I never got a letter.”
It staggered him to think she’d spent all those months carrying his child, and he hadn’t even known it. He hadn’t specifically refused contact with her, but he had a long-standing policy of not accepting phone calls from people—especially women—not on his approved list of business associates. As for the letter, who knew if she’d even sent one?
“Well, I sent it. It’s not my fault if you didn’t get it.”
His vision was black with rage. “How convenient for you,” he ground out. “You say you sent a letter, but what proof do I have? You could be lying. And you could have done more, if you’d really wanted to.”
“Why would I lie about this? I was alone! I needed help! And not only that, but what else would you have had me do?” she snapped tearfully. “Fly to New York with my nonexistent credit cards and prostrate myself across the floor in front of your office? I tried to get in touch with you, but it was like trying to call the president of the United States. They don’t just let anyone in—and no one was letting me in to you!”
The moment she finished, her voice rising until it crackled with anger, the baby started to cry. Drago looked at the child—Nicky, Nicholas Adrian—and felt a rush of confusion like he hadn’t known since he was a boy, when his mother would come into his bedroom and tell him they were leaving whatever place he’d finally gotten settled into.
He didn’t like that feeling. If they were still in the apartment, he would have stalked out and gone for a run in the park. Anything to put some distance between him and this lying, treacherous woman. But he was stuck in this car and his head was beginning to pound.
Holly bent over and started trying to soothe the baby, ignoring him as she did so. She talked in a high voice, offered the child a pacifier and made shushing noises. A tear slipped down her cheek, and then another, and her voice grew more frantic.
“Holly.”
She looked up at him, her eyes so full of misery. He felt a rush of something akin to sympathy, but he shoved it down deep. Locked it in chains. How could he feel sympathy for her when she’d lied to him? When she’d used him?
He hated her. And he would not let her get away with keeping his child from him. Not any longer.
“Calm down,” he ordered tightly. “He senses your distress.”
“I know that,” she snapped. She turned back to the baby—his son—and began to unbuckle the straps holding him in the seat. Then she pulled him out and cradled him against her, rocking and shushing until his tears lessened. Finally, he took a pacifier and Holly seemed to wilt in relief.
“You’ve been in my house for nearly a week now,” Drago said, his voice so icy it made him cold. “And you’ve kept the truth from me. You had every chance to tell me, Holly. Every chance. Just like before.”
She didn’t look at him, and he wanted to shake her until she did. The violence whipping through his body frightened him, though he knew he would never give in to it.
But he’d never been this shocked, this betrayed, before. His mother had sold him in the end, sold him for money and freedom to do as she liked, and even the pain of that didn’t quite compare to this.
He had a child, a baby, and the only reason he knew it was because he could do math. If he hadn’t figured it out, would she have ever told him? Or would she have done the job, taken the money and disappeared with his child?
Until she’d spent it all and needed more....
Drago shook himself. “You have nothing to say to me?” he demanded. “You would sit there after what you’ve done and refuse to explain yourself?”
Her head came up then. Her eyes were red-rimmed. “I didn’t know how to tell you. I thought you might throw me out again.”
He reeled. She was unbelievable. A user. A schemer. First it was perfume; now it was a child.
He despised her.
“I might still,” he growled. He wouldn’t be as tender as his uncle had been. He knew what could happen when you let a woman keep a child she couldn’t take care of properly, and he would never allow that to happen to his own son. He would use the might and money at his disposal to make sure she never saw this boy again.
Her eyes widened with fear. God help him, he relished it. He wanted her to wonder, wanted her to suffer as he was suffering.
“You would do that to your own son?” she asked, her voice wavering.
The violence in his soul whipped to a frenzy. “Not to him, Holly. To you.”
* * *
Fear was an icy finger sliding down her spine. It sank into her body, wrapped around her heart and squeezed the breath from her. Drago sat beside her, his handsome face far colder than she’d ever seen it before.
He hated her. She could see it clearly, and her heart hurt with the knowledge that any sort of closeness they might have been building was lost. Crushed beneath the weight of this new reality.
She was frozen in place, frightened with the knowledge that he could kick her out of his life and keep her son. That he would even try.
And then, like the sun’s rays sliding from behind the clouds to melt an ice-encrusted landscape, the first fingers of flame licked to life inside her belly. They were weak at first, vulnerable to being crushed out of existence.
But Nicky stretched and reached up to curl his fingers into the edge of her cardigan, and a wave of pure love flooded her with strength.
She met Drago’s cold stare with a determined look of her own. Her heart was a fragile thing in her chest, but she didn’t intend to let him know it. “You will not separate me from my son. Not ever.”
“You forget who has the power here, cara,” he said tightly.
“And you forget who Nicky’s legal parent is,” she threw back at him.
His jaw was a block of granite. “There are ways of remedying that,” he said, and her stomach dropped through the floor.
“No,” she choked out. “No. There’s nothing you can do to change it.”
She would fight him with every ounce of strength she had left in her body to prevent it. He would never take Nicky away. Never.
He was not the same man she’d spent the past few days with. This man was infinitely darker, more frightening. “Everyone has a price, Holly. Even you.”
She hugged her baby’s little body to her. “You’re wrong, Drago. I’m sorry if you had a bad childhood, and I’m sorry you think your mother traded you for money. But I love my son and I’m not giving him up. You don’t have enough money to even make me think about it, much less ever do it.”
His eyes glittered and she shivered. “We’ll see about that, cara.”
He didn’t say another word to her for the rest of the car trip. Instead, he got on the phone and started talking in rapid Italian. He made two or three calls before they reached the jet parked on the tarmac, and Holly’s nerves were scraped raw by that time.
She wondered who he was talking to, what he was saying and what he planned to do. Was he talking to his lawyers? To someone who would bar her from the plane while he took Nicky and jetted off for Europe?
She held her baby tighter. She would never let him take this child from her. She wouldn’t let anyone bar her from the plane and she would never accept money in exchange for Nicky.
There simply wasn’t enough money in the world to make it worth her while.
When they reached the jet, Drago told her to hand Nicky over to Sylvia, who stood at the bottom of the stairs, smiling warmly. Holly cradled her baby close and refused,