Chapter Five
“W hat’re you doing here ?”
Raquel shuddered at the steel in his voice, tarrying at the door, reluctant to step further inside the room.
Alexandre reminded her of a lion—regal and magnificent, all leashed power and pure animal magnetism. That night at the club, he’d been charming and indulgent. However today, he was anything but, with a glower marring his face and spearing her with a dark, enigmatic stare.
A tremor shook her as her core clenched with need.
He was breathtakingly handsome with his hair pulled back away from his face, thick brows shielding dark eyes which glittered dangerously.
She’d forgotten how tall he was, and how broad his shoulders were.
She remembered holding onto those massive shoulders as he thrust into her, remembered how he held her as she rode the wave of intense pleasure that had shattered her.
A night of intense pleasure and passion she would never forget.
A night that had resulted in...
Her eyes flew to meet his eyes, gulping when she caught him watching her intently. Fear snaked down her spine, and Raquel steeled herself for what was about to come. Be brave , she whispered to herself. She had to be brave—it was not just her life that was hanging in the balance, but her...
“How did you find me, Raquel?” His words reeked with suspicion, and she forced herself to stand up straight, and not slouch as was her habit.
Living with three ambitious and overachieving women—her mother and sisters—she’d often failed to be seen or heard. Being inconspicuous had become second nature to her, but today she couldn’t just melt into the background.
“I wasn’t sure how to find you,” she began, her words petering out when he scowled at her.
“Why were you trying to find me?”
She didn’t like his tone—not one bit. “I...” Her eyes slipped away from his face as she struggled for the right words. “There’s... something I need to tell you.”
He stood still, watching her like a hawk, noticing every move she made—her wandering eyes, her quickened breathing and her wringing hands.
Raquel colored when he raised an eyebrow in question, clearly believing that she was invoking drama by prevaricating, while her struggle was real.
Her hands were clammy, and she felt dizzy as blood roared in her ears.
It would be a blessed relief if she fainted now, she thought, but it would only delay the inevitable.
“Then tell me.”
“I’m pregnant.”
A deafening silence filled the room as Alexandre stared back at her.
“What did you just say?” he growled, his voice low and menacing, making her blanch.
Yes, her news was shocking but the fury on his face frightened her, and she leaned back against the wall as spots began to dance before her eyes.
Angry eyes nailed her to the wall behind her, and Raquel felt helpless as she watched him transform into a veritable stranger in front of her very eyes—a very angry stranger at that.
Alexandre was too stunned to talk, and neither noticed the person lingering behind the door.
“How do I know it’s mine?”
She flinched as his question ripped into her. Tears sprang from her eyes as her arms wrapped around her waist, as if to protect the life within. It was the very first time she acknowledged the child in her womb.
Since learning about the pregnancy, she’d functioned on autopilot—her only thought had been about locating Alexandre and telling him the news. She hadn’t paused to acknowledge that there was a baby growing inside her.
Thinking of it as a pregnancy had staved off accepting the truth—she was having a baby!
Disbelief and horror rushed across Alexandre’s face, and at that moment Raquel knew that she’d lost the fight even before it began.
****
A lexandre’s blood froze in his veins as the words echoed in his ears.
I’m pregnant.
His immediate response was to question her claim that he had fathered her child. But when she sagged against the wall like a wilted flower, he had his answer. She was telling the truth, but he struggled to believe her.
“I used protection,” he snarled with unrestrained anger.
His lifestyle to an extent was debauched, but he’d always been careful. Not wanting to repeat his father’s mistake, Alexandre was adamant on using protection—always, even when his lovers insisted they were on the pill and were protected.
He didn’t, not even by accident, want to bring a child into this world. No child should have to suffer like he had—unloved and tossed about like unwanted baggage, only remembered when funds ran low, and his mother needed money.
Alexandre still remembered the first time Liza took him to meet his father—Rico. Seeing him, Rico had flown into a rage, accusing Liza of deliberately trying to trap him and extort money from him.
“No,” Alexandre bit out like his father had all those years ago. “It’s not possible.”
Tears sprang from Raquel’s eyes, but he stood firm in his belief. Water works didn’t faze him.
“I was a virgin, Alexandre,” she said, one trembling hand clutching the lapels of her blue dress. “You’re the only man I’ve ever been with. This is your child.” Her hand fell to her belly, shaking as it lay over the place where her child lay.
Something tightened in his chest at that gesture. A previously unknown feeling burst inside him and spread throughout his body. The urge to reach out and touch her belly was so strong that he almost took a step toward her.
But a voice from his past yanked him back. A voice—his father’s—accusing his mother.
“How dare you!” Rico had yelled, stabbing a finger at Liza.
Alexandre remembered shivering beside his mother, hiding in the folds of her skirt.
“I told you to get rid of it!”
To this day, he felt the pain those words had inflicted.
His father hadn’t wanted him. Rico had paid Liza to destroy Alexandre in the womb itself, but his mother, manipulative that she was, had seen him as her golden ticket out of poverty. She’d foolishly believed that Rico would marry her and instate her in his palatial home.
But that never happened. Rico remained with his wife, and never publicly acknowledged Alexandre as his son.
When Liza understood that Rico couldn’t be extorted, she went to Carlos and threatened to expose the truth about Alexandre’s birth.
Carlos, on the other hand, had been easy to extort. He paid Liza handsomely for her silence. For years, money exchanged hands till one day, Carlos had enough and decided to adopt Alexandre.
He’d thought it would appease Liza, but it hadn’t.
Alexandre was her bargaining chip, and she wasn’t willing to let go of him. She haggled for more money, and when she realized that Carlos wouldn’t bow to her demands, she went to the press.
He vividly remembered the furor kicked up by the damning newspaper article. It made him instantly famous, and his mother had milked the attention for all it was worth.
To this day, Alexandre didn’t know what had compelled Carlos to adopt him, but it had saved him from his avaricious mother.
If he thought life away from Liza would be better, he was proven wrong because not one person had cared about him.
He’d lived like a poor cousin in the Monteiro mansion, eating with the servants and wearing his half-brother’s castoffs, always confined to the shadows because he was a bastard, an ugly reminder of his father’s infidelity—a permanent stain on the Monteiro name.
“She should have gotten rid of you,” he remembered Rico yelling at him one day when he accidentally ran into his father in the living room of the palatial mansion. Those words rang loudly in his ears and Alexandre flinched as the words tore into him.
“Get rid of it.”
The words echoed in his head, spilled from his lips as he struggled to free himself from horrific clutches of his past. That one sentence had been flung at him every time Rico took out his anger on him, and Alexandre shuddered as old wounds tore open, and he began to bleed anew.
He was so caught up in his own misery that he didn’t hear Raquel’s pained gasp or see her stumble out of the room with her hand covering her mouth.
How long he struggled with the pain lashing his insides, he didn’t know but when he yanked himself back to the present, Raquel was gone.