‘Are you threatening me?’ she asked, her voice still thankfully level and even cool.
‘See it as you like,’ Rafe replied. ‘You are carrying my child. I missed the first three years of my son’s life. If you think I am going to allow—’
‘And if I refuse?’
‘Then I will do everything in my power to ensure I retain custody,’ Rafe said.
The words fell like stones into the silence, creating irrevocable ripples. They were words that could not be unsaid, with implications Freya did not want to envisage.
She swallowed, pushed past the bitterness and bile that crowded her throat. She’d thought Rafe was a good, gentle man, and he was—with Max. With her he was something else entirely. With her he was El Tiburón. Was this what Rosalia had faced? This heartless ambition, this single-minded determination to provide and care for his child? Was this why she had stopped loving him? Why she had left?
‘Why?’ she asked when she finally trusted her voice. ‘Why would you threaten to take my child away from me?’ Her voice trembled, broke. ‘Why would you blackmail me into marriage?’
Surprise and perhaps even regret flashed across Rafe’s face, and then his expression hardened. ‘I simply want what is best for our child,’ he told her flatly. ‘Isn’t that what you want?’
‘I want …’ Freya stopped, for she knew what she wanted wasn’t possible. Had never been possible since she’d last given in to temptation, wrecked three lives and destroyed another. Love. Happiness. A family. None of those were possible for her—except, amazingly, the last. Yet not in a way she had ever envisaged or would have chosen. Still, she acknowledged bleakly, it was the only option. Her only chance at some kind of happiness.
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