Chapter 7 #2
He didn’t hear me. His hand landed on my belly, over the fabric of my blazer. His palm was large, warm, and covered the entire curve.
The baby kicked again, right into his hand.
I saw Marco’s face crack. The mask of the ruthless billionaire, of the phantom, all dissolved. His eyes filled with tears, and a broken sound—a sob—escaped his throat.
“Mio…” he whispered.
The sight of him touching my belly, claiming my child with a single word, shattered the last barrier of my sanity.
“GET YOUR HANDS OFF ME!”
With a strength I didn’t know I had, I shoved him back. He stumbled, shocked by my violence.
I was gasping for breath, my chest heaving, shaking with rage and shock.
“You don’t touch me!” I screamed, angry tears streaming down my face. “You don’t touch him! You lost that right at the Duomo!”
He stared at me, his face a mask of pain, guilt, and a terrifying determination that told me he wasn’t going anywhere.
The battle for my empire was over, but the battle for my son was just beginning.
“Bianca, we need to talk.” His voice was low, hoarse, and rough in the charged conference room.
A sound—something between a snort of contempt and a humorless laugh—escaped me. Fury swept through me.
“No.” My voice came out deathly calm. Each syllable was a shard, perfectly shaped to cut. “We have nothing to discuss, Signor Valenti.”
I used his last name as a blow, a way to demote him from lover to a mere stranger, an intruder.
I turned away, giving him my back, in a calculated gesture of power. I couldn’t let him see my hands shake. I walked to the other side of the mahogany table, desperately needing to put a physical barrier between us.
“This is my company,” I hissed, shaking with pent-up hatred. “You’ve lost every right to be here. Get out!”
I pointed toward the shattered door, but my finger betrayed me with a visible tremor.
“No!”
He took a step forward, deliberately stepping on the shards of glass. The sound of his expensive shoes crushing the glass was the only sound in the room.
“You don’t understand, Bianca,” he said, suddenly filled with an agony that caught me off guard. “I didn’t know…”
“You didn’t know?” My composure shattered. Heat surged through me, swift and dangerous. “Or didn’t you care? You left me standing there at the altar! In front of six hundred people! You made a fool of me!”
My voice rose, shattering my CEO facade and revealing the humiliated woman beneath. I felt the baby kick—the same sharp protest I’d felt when I first saw him—and my hand flew to my belly in an instinctive, protective gesture.
Marco’s eyes followed my movement. The pain on his face intensified, becoming almost unbearable to watch.
“Bianca…” he insisted, taking another step forward.
“I don’t care about your excuses!” I shouted. “You’re a coward!”
“I’m not going to run away this time.”
He was close now. Close enough for me to smell him—that familiar masculine scent that every treacherous instinct recognized instantly.
“Get out of my office,” I repeated in a hoarse whisper; the fury had drained away, leaving only exhaustion.
“No!”
He stopped at an insurmountable distance. The whole world seemed to have shrunk down to just the two of us, surrounded by broken glass and shattered promises.
“You can throw every decanter in this building at me, Bianca; you can call security; you can even station the Italian army at the door.”
He took a deep breath, and the vulnerability on his face was replaced by a steely resolve I’d never seen before.
“I’m not going anywhere. Not again.”
The air was heavy. I could smell the acrid scent of whiskey spilled on the marble and the metallic tang of fear.
Marco was still there.
He didn’t move; he stayed where he was, a shadowy figure against the light from the hallway, his chest rising and falling rapidly. His suit was wrinkled, and he looked as if he’d gone through hell to get here.
Good, I thought, with cold cruelty. Welcome to the hell you created.
“The show’s over, Marco.” My voice was surprisingly steady. “Now get out!”
I turned away, putting my back to him again. My finger hovered over the intercom button, ready to call security and have him dragged out of the building.
“Bianca, wait!”
The sound of his shoes crushing the shards of the decanter on the floor made me stiffen. He was moving. Coming toward me.
“Don’t take another step,” I warned, without turning around.
I turned to face him, deliberately slowly. Marco was a meter away, close enough for me to see the genuine guilt on his face, and for some reason, the sight only fueled my anger.
“You think that’s an apology?” I sneered. “You think ‘I was deceived’ erases the Duomo? Erases the humiliation of facing an empty altar? Erases my name being dragged through every gossip tabloid from Milan to New York?”
“I didn’t…”
“I don’t care!” I slammed my open palm down on the table. My anger surged, hot and pulsing, making my heart race. “I don’t care why you did it. You did it.”
I was gasping for breath, my structured blazer suddenly too tight across my stomach.
Marco took another step forward, his face a mask of agony.
“It wasn’t like that. Silvio… he made it all seem so real. The pregnancy…”
My blood ran cold. The roar in my ears stopped at once.
He stumbled a step backward, leaning against the wall. The man who had stormed into my office full of determination now looked devastated.
“It’s mine,” he stated—not a question, but a horrified realization. “The baby… Bianca, it’s mine.”
The secret was out. My last shield—the only thing that was purely mine in this catastrophe—had shattered.
Anger gave way to blind panic.
“Get out,” I said, my voice suddenly empty, hollow.
“Bianca, please…” He straightened up, despair taking the place of shock, and came toward me quickly.
“NO!” I screamed, backing away, but he was faster.
He cornered me between the table and the glass wall overlooking Milan.
His hands grabbed my arms. His touch was like an electric shock.
Attraction…
What the hell! How could this still exist?
My instincts, filthy traitors, reacted instantly. The heat of his skin burned through my clothes. His scent flooded my lungs, making me dizzy. My heart wasn’t pounding with anger; it was pounding with desire, and I hated myself for it.
The tension between us was unbearable. A magnetic field of hatred and need.
“You’re not going to take this away from me!” I pounded on his chest, but it was like punching marble. “You abandoned me! You have no right!”
“I’m not going anywhere!” he roared back and shook me lightly, his fingers gripping my arms tightly. “I won’t abandon you again! I was crazy, blind, but I won’t…”
His voice trailed off. Our faces were inches apart.
His hot, ragged breath brushed on my face, and he could see every tremor in me.
His green eyes drifted down to my mouth. The atmosphere in the room grew thick, making it hard to breathe. The whole world boiled down to the three centimeters of charged space between our lips.
“I hate you,” I whispered, but it sounded like an invitation.
“I know,” he murmured.
Then he kissed me.
It wasn’t a kiss of forgiveness; it was an explosion… the collision of six months of anger, guilt, humiliation, and a desperate desire that had been festering beneath the surface.
His mouth was brutal, hungry, crushing mine. It tasted of whiskey, regret, and power.
I struggled for a second, pressing my hands against his chest, then my fingers clenched, gripping the expensive fabric of his shirt. I arched against him, responding with an equal hunger.
I hate you. My brain screamed. I need this. Instinct replied.
His hands left my arms to cup my face, his fingers tangling in my hair, tilting my head so he could take more. His other hand slid down my waist, over my blazer, and settled with a firm grip on the curve of my hip.
The kiss was chaos, a punishment for both of us.
It was shock, hatred, fear, and the unbearable attraction, all melted into a single desperate act.
I was letting him in… The thought hit me with the force of a slap.
No!
With the last bit of strength I had left, I summoned my anger and pushed him away. The sound of our mouths parting was loud and obscene through the room.
We were both panting, our lips red and swollen, our eyes wide.
“Stop,” I gasped, my voice unsteady with the effort of not pulling him back. “Get out of my office!”
I ran to the intercom and pressed the button with an unsteady finger.
“Security.”
“Bianca, don’t do this. Please… it’s my son, we…” Marco took a step toward me, his hand outstretched.
“Security!” I screamed into the intercom, overcome by fury and panic. “Remove Mr. Valenti from the top floor. Now!”
“Bianca!” he roared, desperation taking over his voice. He didn’t try to kiss me again, but he tried to grab my arm, to force me to listen to him. “You can’t kick me out! Not now!”
The massive office doors, already smashed open by his entry, were flung wide open.
However, it wasn’t security who entered first. It was Enzo, and right behind him, Matteo.
Time stood still.
My brothers stopped at the doorway. Their eyes took in the scene in a millisecond.
The shattered decanter. The crushed shards of glass on the floor. Me, gasping for breath, with swollen lips and disheveled hair, and Marco Valenti, the ghost, in his rumpled suit, his hands outstretched toward me.
“What the hell is going on here?” Enzo’s voice was a low growl, the warning of a man defending his family.
Two uniformed security guards entered right behind them, finally responding to my call, but they stopped, intimidated by the presence of my brothers.
Marco ignored me. He ignored Enzo and Matteo. He was in his own personal hell.
“Bianca,” he pleaded, revealing a vulnerability I never thought possible in him. “I didn’t know. I swear to God, I didn’t know about the pregnancy…”
No one answered; even the air conditioner’s click sounded unnaturally loud.
Pregnancy…
The word hung in the air, raw and horrible.
I saw Enzo’s eyes narrow. I saw Matteo’s head tilt slowly, his narrowed eyes shifting from Marco’s devastated face to mine.