Chapter Eight
Olympia
I’m shivering against him as the aftershocks hit me.
His arm is like iron around my waist and I’m gripping his coat for dear life.
His mouth is gentle though, in stark contrast to the agonising pleasure that ripped me apart.
I can’t do anything but hold on as the sweetness of his kiss devastates me.
I don’t know what happened. One moment I was sitting on the couch while he stood over me, tall and dark and dangerous, telling me I had to marry him.
Next minute, I was up against him, gripping his coat, lost as a storm of desire took me, the heat of his body and the delicious scent of his aftershave, the one that’s been haunting my dreams for months, freezing me in place.
He looked down at me, some storm of emotion I couldn’t untangle flickering in his dark eyes as I’d demanded to know why he’d sent me away that night in Singapore.
I shouldn’t have betrayed that it mattered to me, but I hadn’t been able to mask my hurt.
And then he’d told me he’d lied, that he hadn’t been done with me at all, and through my shock had come triumph.
He’d felt it too, this…thing between us, still burning and still burning hot.
A bad man, that’s what he is, he said, and I told him he was wrong. Because how could a bad man make me feel this way? Make me feel as if I’d die if he didn’t touch me. And then he’d ripped open my coat, his gaze on my stomach and there had been a feral light in his eyes as he’d touched me.
I hadn’t been able to look away from his face, shivers wracking me as his hand followed the curve of my stomach and then down further.
I should have pushed myself away, but I couldn’t do it.
His touch felt too good, and I’ve had months of dreaming about him and at least a month of worrying about what to do about the baby.
But now he was here and part of me just wanted to lose myself in the pleasure he could give me.
Except reality is crashing in and I’m standing in his arms, trembling with the aftershocks of the orgasm he gave me, yet nothing has changed. He’s still the stranger I met in Singapore. The stranger who demanded that I marry him.
I rip my mouth from his and try to push myself away from him, but he won’t let me.
His arm tightens around my waist, keeping me against him, and it’s probably a good thing since I’m not quite steady enough on my feet to stand without help.
The hard line of his arousal is pressing into the sensitive place between my thighs and I’m suddenly fiercely glad that he’s as affected as I am by this heat between us.
‘No,’ he murmurs. ‘Don’t do that.’
I lean my forehead against his chest, not wanting to meet his intense black gaze, not quite yet, and I feel a gentle hand settle on the back of my head, stroking my hair.
There is something inexplicably soothing about it, but I don’t want to be soothed.
It’s Christmas Eve and my brother will be home, and I won’t be there to see him.
I’m in Sicily, kidnapped by the father of my child and he’s talking about things like marriage, and I don’t know what to do.
Don’t go to pieces, not here, not now.
No, I can’t. I can’t give into my rising panic. I have to hold it together, because it’s not just about me any more. I have a child to consider now.
‘We can talk about this tomorrow,’ he says, still stroking my hair.
‘You need to be tucked up in bed.’ There’s a roughness in his voice that betrays the effect what he did to me has had on him, and a part of me wants to use that, give him a taste of his own medicine.
A way to make me feel strong and not as weak as I feel right now.
And I hate feeling weak. I hate feeling the way I did when Ulysses first rescued me, an abused little girl afraid of her own shadow.
Fragile, that’s what my brother called me, and that’s how he treated me too, and while fragile is certainly what I was all those years ago, I’m not fragile now and I won’t be treated like a child.
So I gather my strength and this time when I push away from him, I’m strong enough that I slip out of his imprisoning arm and take a few steps back.
He doesn’t protest, but his black eyes burn as he looks at me.
‘Don’t patronise me,’ I say to him flatly. ‘And don’t think that one orgasm is going to change my mind. I’m still not marrying you.’
He stares at me for a long moment. ‘We can talk about that tomorrow. You look dead on your feet.’
I fold my arms and stare back, trying to get my brain to work again, because I have to think.
This conversation is important and some of the things he’s said to me don’t quite make sense.
Such as ‘rumours’ of me being a prisoner and how he bribed my doctor.
The speed at which he brought me here, which could naturally be that he didn’t want to deal with Ulysses, and who could blame him?
Ulysses isn’t a man you cross lightly. Then again, Rafael Santangelo looks a match for him, so it can’t be that he’s afraid of what Ulysses might do.
He’s kidnapped me on Christmas Eve and now he’s demanding marriage…
‘No,’ I say, gripping tight to my courage. ‘We’ll talk now. Tell me the real reason I’m here, Rafael. It’s not just for the sake of the baby, is it?’
A muscle in the side of his jaw leaps and he mutters something vicious in Italian under his breath. ‘Don’t push me, dragonfly.’
‘I’m not pushing you. I’m only asking you a question.’
‘And I am choosing not to answer.’
‘Why not? Are you afraid of my brother? Is that it?’
His mouth lifts in a sneer. ‘No. Why the hell would I be afraid of him?’
A fine thread of contempt winds through his voice and it betrays him. My brother has enemies—that’s why I have a security detail, after all—and perhaps Rafael Santangelo is one of them. Why else would he sneer? If so, I need to find out and fast. Before he touches me again.
‘If you know what’s good for you, you would be,’ I say. ‘You know him, don’t you?’
Rafael’s dark eyes are unwavering. ‘Don’t ask questions, Olympia. Especially when you might not like the answers.’
‘I’ll be the judge of that.’ I lift my chin. ‘I know you’re hiding something. I can’t believe you’d go to all the trouble of kidnapping me just because of an accidental pregnancy. It’s something to do with him, isn’t it?’
Again that muscle leaps in his jaw, his eyes glittering like onyx in the light.
He looks dangerous, as if he might do anything, anything at all, and by rights I should be terrified of him.
But strangely, I’m not. I keep thinking of his hand stroking my hair gently and the sweetness of the kiss he gave me as I came apart in his arms. He’s not going to hurt me or our baby.
‘I have nothing to say to you.’ His tone is edged and sharp. ‘I told you we’re not having this conversation and—’
‘I didn’t want to go that night in Singapore,’ I interrupt, instinct telling me that if I want something from him, I’ll have to give him something first. ‘I wanted to stay with you.’
Something flickers in the darkness of his eyes and he glances away. He knows I’m giving him a piece of myself, I’m sure of it, and if he’s any kind of businessman, he’ll know what it means.
Abruptly, he lets out a breath and glances back.
‘Very well, if you want the truth, I’ll give it to you.
Yes, this has something to do with your brother.
Years ago Vulcan Energy was pushing into Italy, buying up companies and ripping them apart.
My family owned a wind farm. It was my father’s passion project and he’d poured a fortune into it, so it was easy meat for Zakynthos.
Vulcan Energy swallowed it whole. My father tried to recover and start again, but the debts he ran up were too high, and eventually he was ruined. ’
Rafael’s voice is hard and cold and flat.
‘He killed himself not long after that, leaving my mother and me saddled with his debt. My mother had a job at the local bakery, but her wages weren’t nearly enough to cover the debt, so she began to court men who had money, hoping they might pay for her… “company”.’
The bitterness in his voice becomes acute.
‘I couldn’t bear for her to do that, so I found work myself, at Atlas Construction as a labourer.
It was run by the consiglieri of the boss of one of the more powerful of the Cosa Nostra families and eventually I did jobs for him.
’ He pauses, his gaze roving over my face.
‘When I told you I was a bad man, I meant it. The things I’ve done…
’ He stops, and my heart kicks against my ribs.
‘I hold your brother directly responsible for my family’s ruin and for my own, and since he took my family from me, I’m going to take his from him. ’
A long, cold, barbed thread of shock winds through me and pulls tight.
My brother is a ruthless man and I know this.
I also know that he too worked for a local crime family, in Athens, making contacts and earning the money he needed to rescue me.
He didn’t stop after I was rescued, though.
He kept on making contacts and earning money, building Vulcan Energy, building his power so he could keep us both safe.
I never ask him about what he did in the bad old days in Athens and he never talks about it. But I know what those crime families get up to, and I can only imagine it’s the same in Sicily.
I want to tell him that it couldn’t have been Ulysses who ruined his family, but I can’t. My brother wants what he wants and he’ll go to any lengths to get it, and if that means swallowing some small family company then that’s what he’ll do.
I swallow, my mouth dry. ‘So, what? You’re taking me from him? I’m your revenge?’
He doesn’t hesitate. ‘Yes. I’d initially planned—’
‘Wait,’ I interrupt, that cold thread of shock pulling tighter. ‘You were planning this? How long, Rafael?’
The lines of his face have hardened, the fierce heat that burned in his black eyes now stone cold. ‘Since before Singapore.’
The needle of hurt that slid between my ribs that night in his hotel suite slides in again, even sharper, even deeper. ‘You approached me intentionally at the gala?’
Again, there is no hesitation. ‘My intent was to make a connection with you and then gradually get closer to you.’
I can’t seem to catch my breath. ‘And that night, in your hotel room…’
Only now does his gaze flicker. ‘That was…unexpected. I didn’t plan on that happening.’
I feel winded, as if he’s punched me in the gut. ‘But you decided to sleep with me anyway.’
‘Yes.’ He bites off the word.
So why did he send you away afterwards?
I fight through the remaining shreds of orgasm clouding my brain, because if that night had been as calculated as he said, then surely having me stay the night would further his cause more than making me leave?
Or am I just clutching at straws? At anything to make me feel less used? Less of a victim?
‘So why didn’t you make me stay?’ I ask.
He is silent and for a moment I don’t think he’s going to answer. Then he says, ‘Because you were not what I expected, nor was my response to you. You were innocent, dragonfly, and I found I had more of a conscience than I thought.’
I shiver. That should make me feel better, yet it doesn’t. He still used me. I’m still the innocent, sheltered victim, too stupid to know what he was doing.
‘So why am I standing here in your house, then?’ I ask, struggling to understand. ‘Clearly you have less of a conscience than you thought.’
‘I remembered that I hadn’t used a condom and so I wanted to be sure you weren’t pregnant. But…you were. And I am not a man who disregards an opportunity when it falls into his lap.’
I understand then, what he wants, what he’s trying to do, and it feels as if a bucket of ice water has been emptied over my head. ‘You want to marry me because I’m Ulysses’s heir,’ I say and it’s not a question. ‘And then our child will be yours, with the potential to take over Vulcan Energy.’
He says nothing, but doesn’t look away, and I can see the truth in his eyes. Yes, that’s exactly what he intends, and it makes sense. Ulysses is an infamous bachelor. He’s sworn never to marry and never to have children and everyone knows that.
Rafael told you that he is a bad man, remember?
I turn away from him then, the feeling of being punched in the gut getting stronger.
Ulysses told me that there was a reason I had a security detail whenever I went out of the house.
A reason why he was always so concerned with my safety.
He had enemies and I was a chink in his armour that had to be protected at all costs.
I thought he was being too over-protective, that he was suffocating me, preventing me from living my life, and I’d pleaded with him to let me go to Singapore because I was tired of my life in the villa at home. I wanted to see different things, meet different people, and he’d agreed.
I was so happy, so thrilled, and when I’d escaped my security to go to Rafael’s hotel suite, I’d felt so pleased with myself, thinking I was a woman of the world.
But I was stupid. I’d let myself be taken advantage of, just the way Ulysses had feared, and now here I am, a prisoner.
A tool to be used by Rafael to take my brother down.
‘So that’s all I am to you?’ I ask into the suffocating quiet, staring at the white wall in front of me.
‘An “opportunity”?’ I don’t know why this is so painful.
Rafael shouldn’t matter to me in any way, because, as he’s already pointed out more than once, he’s a stranger to me.
And what we’d shared that night was only sex, nothing more, and yet…
You were a sop to your brother’s guilt and now you’re a tool for his demise.
My voice sounds weak, the questions pathetic, and suddenly I’m tired of all of this. Tired of being used by the men in my life, tired of being Ulysses’s china doll, and tired of being a tool for Rafael’s revenge.
He can’t make me marry him and I won’t let him. I won’t let him use our child as a threat to hold over Ulysses’s head either.
‘Yes,’ he says implacably. ‘You’re a means to an end, Olympia. But I can make things comfortable for you. I can make you—’
‘You can’t make me do anything,’ I interrupt sharply, turning around to face him. ‘And you’re right. This conversation is at an end. Now show me where I’m to sleep tonight.’