And, heaven help him, he knew tears weren’t far away for Amelia and he fought a ridiculous urge to comfort her. That was not who or what they were.
‘I was not talking about an abortion,’ he said in a tone that was carefully wiped clear of emotion.
‘Then what exactly did you mean? What “solution” is there to this?’
‘We’ll get married.’
The relief that had glanced across her features was swallowed by another look of abject panic.
‘You’re kidding?’
‘Do I look like I am kidding?’
‘No,’ she said, ‘but you must be crazy if you think I would ever marry you.’
‘It was not a suggestion,’ he said, moving away from the door and returning to his desk.
It was a calculated risk—she would either leave, now he’d given her the opportunity, or she would stay.
And Antonio’s instincts, finely honed through his experience in business and trade, told him that she would stay and fight. Because Amelia was not a coward, and she was also not a fool. She might be pregnant with his baby but he held all the trump cards. The perfect bargaining chip to get everything he wanted. Not just their baby, his heir, but Prim’Aqua as well. A primal sense of accomplishment made him want to roar like an animal in the jungle. He pictured his father, pictured all he’d lost, the grief he’d known, and he swept his eyes shut for a moment and simply breathed it in: the certainty that all was about to be righted, once and for all.
‘And why is that?’ she asked: he’d been right. She wasn’t running. She was staying, because she knew as well as he did that this marriage was inevitable.
He took his time, savouring the moment, and then delivered the final blow to her insistence that marriage was a bad idea. ‘Because if you don’t marry me you know I will destroy your brother once and for all.’
She drew in a sharp breath but then seemed to rally. ‘You wish you could do that. But you forget, Antonio, I’ve had time since that night to think, and I’ve told Carlo about you. He knows what you’re up to, and he’s not worried.’
‘No, he doesn’t,’ Antonio said simply.
Amelia’s eyes narrowed. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Come and see.’
She glared at him, as though moving close to him was the last thing she wanted.
But Antonio simply loaded up a spreadsheet on his computer and waited with a veneer of patience. Sure enough, a moment later, accompanied by a heavy sigh, Amelia closed the distance between them, pausing just behind him.
‘What am I looking at?’ she demanded.
‘How much of your family’s portfolio I have absorbed over the years,’ he said, running his own eyes over the spreadsheet with a sense of triumph.
It was all laid out in simple black and white and it painted a stark picture. Several of the companies, if he clicked on them, would show dramatically declining stock prices.
He heard her breathing change, grow faster, and he closed his eyes for a moment before flicking off the computer screen.
In the reflection, his eyes met hers.
‘You’re saying,’ she asked quietly, ‘that you’ll leave Carlo alone if I marry you?’
Antonio was at a fork in the road. The anger he had felt for a long time was balanced against a child he was determined to raise, and he found he couldn’t turn his back on either. ‘No,’ he said, standing and surprising her by being right there, so close they were almost touching. ‘I’m saying that if you marry me and hand over your Prim’Aqua shares, I will leave his remaining businesses alone.’
Indignation shaped her features as the full force of his words sunk in. ‘You’re blackmailing me?’
He made a sound of disagreement. ‘I am offering you a chance to potentially save your brother from financial ruin,’ he corrected. ‘And I am offering us both a chance to raise our baby as a family, which is, surely, your preference?’
‘My preference is never to see you again.’
He arched a thick dark brow. ‘Let us stick to the realm of reality, hmm?’
She turned away from him and he fought an urge to lift his fingers to her chin and angle her face back to his. He didn’t like it when she hid her expressive face. ‘I will never give you those shares.’
Determination flashed in the depths of his black eyes. ‘Then I will continue to destroy your brother in other ways. And believe me, Amelia, I do nothing by half measures.’ He slashed his hand through the air to emphasise his point. ‘Already I have wiped half a billion dollars off the value of his business interests—in a little over a month. What do you think I will have achieved by the year’s end?’
She drew in a sharp gasp and lifted her face to his. ‘You can’t be serious?’
‘Does it look as though I am joking?’
He was a study in humourless, dark intent.
‘But...why?’
‘Because I hate him,’ he said through gritted teeth. ‘And because he deserves this.’
She swept her eyes shut and his gut fired with adrenalin.
‘A week after I turned eighteen, I came home from college to discover my father crying.’ Sympathy clouded Amelia’s expression. ‘He’d lost everything—because of your father and your brother. A liquidator had been approached to step in. I honestly believe he wanted to end his life rather than live with the shame of his bankruptcy.’
Pink bloomed in her cheeks. ‘I’m sorry he experienced that.’
His eyes lifted to hers, firing with the same strength that had led him then. ‘I took over the company that same day. Bit by bit I rebuilt it. It was not easy, querida, and it did not happen fast. Every day when I woke up and stared down the barrel of uncertainty and doubt, when I knew my father’s life and pride were riding on my success, I swore that I would win. And that I would make your brother pay for what he’d almost done.’
Amelia drew in a sharp breath.
‘I hate him.’
‘I can see that,’ she whispered unevenly. ‘But that doesn’t give you the right to ruin his life...’
‘He gave me the right.’ Antonio closed his eyes for a moment and he was back in the past, remembering the bleakness in his father’s eyes that night, many years earlier.
‘He made an enemy of me long ago, and nothing will change that.’
‘You talk like this about my brother,’ she said stiffly, ‘yet you actually expect me to marry you?’
‘Yes.’ His answer was instantaneous.
‘And you’d be happy with the fact you’re blackmailing me into it?’ she countered, her eyes narrowed. ‘You haven’t even asked how I’m feeling. You haven’t asked about the baby, the due date, nothing! You are heartless and selfish and so damned focused on revenge against my family that you don’t even see me as a flesh and blood woman, do you?’
At that, his eyes flared and every cell in his body that was noticing only her womanly self pushed him forward. ‘You ask if I see you as a woman?’ he demanded fiercely, and now he cupped her cheeks and held her mesmerised face still. His voice was gravelly when he spoke. ‘You think I don’t want you even now, in the midst of all this?’
Her eyes lowered and he could feel the rushing of her blood; he could see the way she was as affected by this as he.