The disillusioned note in his voice almost made her sympathize, but she resented his blind belief at the same time.
“That’s why I trusted him,” she said. His misjudgment had shaken her belief in him and thus her belief in herself. She’d never had much faith in her parents beyond the expectation that they would keep her fed and physically safe, but Alessandro had seemed to offer more than that. Then he had delivered...this.
She never should have counted on him. But she had.
“Did you trust him? Because you told the paramedics you didn’t want him near you or the baby,” he said pointedly.
“It seemed paranoid when I said it.” She was reluctant even now to admit how much a victim she’d come to feel around Primo. He’d been downright sinister catching her in those first contractions and saying with such concern, “Go lie down. I’ll call the hospital.” Who imagined anyone would lie about something like that? It was only as things had progressed, as fear for her life and her baby’s had gripped her, that she’d started to suspect he was deliberately delaying things.
“What could he possibly have thought to gain by doing something like this?” The magnitude of the crime kept striking like aftershocks from a quake.
“It wasn’t something he planned,” he said with grim cast to his hard features. “The opportunity presented and he acted. He admitted that much. A paternity question down the road would have caused us a great deal of suffering and could have opened doors to his own heir taking control over my false one. That’s as far as he got with thinking it through.”
“Mio Dio,” she breathed, sliding her arm up over her eyes, hiding from the thought of Alessandro questioning her faithfulness a year from now, when they might have discovered the baby wasn’t his.
Suddenly Alessandro’s voice was right beside her. “He was behind some death threats I received earlier this year.”
“What?” she gasped, dropping her arm.
“I didn’t tell you because you were already anxious about the pregnancy. I wanted you near the specialists here in London anyway, but it seemed safer for you to be out of Naples. That’s why I haven’t brought you home, even to visit.” His jaw looked carved from marble.
“All this because he’s jealous? No, he was punishing me,” she said with an appalled crack in her voice.
“He wasn’t happy about our marriage, that’s true. Had he married you and been given control of your father’s fortune, he would have been in a better position to challenge me over controlling the family company. When I married you, I became untouchable. There really was no other way for him to bring me down except to attack my personal life.”
“That’s sick,” she said, recoiling. “Did you know that? That his reasons for talking with my father were more about making a strategic move against you than wanting a wife?”
A very brief pause, then, “I was aware there could be certain challenges if he bettered his position,” he said carefully. Too carefully.
“You married me to prevent him from gaining an advantage,” she breathed. She hadn’t thought she could be any more shocked, but she was. All those tiny details she’d recalled from that first evening took on new meaning. His initial air of disapproval— “You were planning to stop it, one way or another.” His question about whether she wanted a love match... “You wanted to talk me out of it, but you proposed instead. It was a calculated move to keep him in his place.”
“It was a precaution,” he said. “I wanted to marry eventually, and you and I were well suited.”
“No, we weren’t! Not if this was the real reason you proposed!”
“Don’t get upset—”
“I am upset!” she said in such a burst, her stomach hurt.
“Octavia, calm down.” He sounded so patronizing she wanted to smack him. “Today was very stressful and you’ve just had surgery. Let it all sink in and tomorrow you’ll have a clearer view.”
“He tried to take our baby because you took the wife he wanted,” she stressed. “Why aren’t you upset?”
“I am.” The words snapped like a flag in a stiff breeze, but he didn’t look or sound upset. But then, this was a man who had approached marriage so cold-bloodedly, she couldn’t even let herself think of it yet. “But you don’t have to worry about him ever again. The police have taken him for further questioning. The hospital is pressing charges for interfering with the baby tags and I will make a formal complaint when we get back to Naples for the death threats. He will be too tied up in legal proceedings to bother us and certainly won’t have a place in our lives or any sort of position in the corporation. We’ll put all of this behind us very quickly.”