At the Count's Bidding(67)

                “Why are you talking to me like I planned this?” she cried. “No one forced you to have sex with me! And no one forced you to do it without a condom!”

                “You’re good,” he said, still in that horrible way that curled inside of her, oily and thick. “I’ll give you that. I never saw this coming. I thought I was being too hard on you. I was falling in love with you all over again, but in the end, you’re just like her. You always have been. I’m such an idiot.”

                “For all you know I have no intention of keeping it,” she threw at him, desperate to make him look at her like a person again, not like a scam with two legs. Exactly the way he had ten years ago, when he’d waved that magazine in the air outside her apartment and she’d almost wished he’d thrown it at her—because that would be better, she’d thought then, and less violent than that look on his face in that moment before he’d turned and walked away.

                But the look of contempt he gave her now was not an improvement.

                And his words finally penetrated. I was falling in love with you.

                “Am I to understand that this is your threat?” he asked in that low, lethal way of his that made her shudder. That made that hollow thing inside of her grow wide and grow teeth. That made it perfectly clear any love he might have felt for her was very much past tense. “I applaud you, Nicola,” and that name was worse than acid. If he’d hauled off and hit her, he couldn’t have hurt her more. “Most women would dance around the issue. But you, as ever, go right to the heart of it.”

                “I’m not threatening you,” she said wildly, only realizing when her cheeks felt cool in the breeze that tears were running down her face. “This wasn’t planned. I don’t know why you insist on thinking the worst of me—”

                “Stop.” It was a command, harsh and cold. “I’m not doing this with you again. I’m not pretending it matters what you say. You’ll do what you like, Nicola. You always do. And like a cockroach I have no doubt you’ll survive whatever happens and come back even stronger. Violet’s protégé in more ways than I realized.”

                “Why would I force a child on you?” she demanded. “Why?”

                “Perhaps you thought your payday last time wasn’t enough,” he bit out. “Perhaps you want to make certain you really will make it into Violet’s will. Perhaps you’re looking forward to selling as many tabloid stories as you can. It wouldn’t take much effort to position yourself as one of those celebrities for no apparent reason, not with Violet’s grandchild in your clutches. To say nothing of the Alessi estate. You must know by now I’d never keep my heritage from my own child.” He was nearly white with fury. “Which are only a few of the reasons I never wanted one.”

                “Giancarlo—”

                But he straightened, his expression changed, and it was as if he disappeared, right there in front of her. As if the man she knew was simply...gone.

                “If you decide to have the baby, inform my lawyers,” he told her with a hideous finality that shuddered through her like an earthquake. There was none of that bright gold fury in his eyes any longer when he looked at her. There was only emptiness. A dark, cold nothing that made everything inside her twist into blackness. “I will pay whatever child support you deem necessary, and I will pay more if you honor my wish for privacy and keep my name to yourself. But I don’t expect that’s in your nature, is it? How can you leverage my privacy to your best advantage?”

                “Please,” she said, pleading with him now, unable to stop the sobs that poured out of her, worse, perhaps, because she’d always known this was coming. But not today. Not like this. She still wasn’t ready. “You can’t—”