LITMIR.BIZ

       CHAPTER TWO

      OUT OF THE frying pan, into the fire.

      Scarlett had escaped Blaise, but at what price?

      For the last hour, she’d tried to calm the fearful beat of her heart as she sat in a faded floral chair next to a window overlooking a private garden. Vin had brought her to the private sitting room in the rectory behind the cathedral and told her to wait while he sorted things out. A kindly old lady—a housekeeper of some sort?—had pushed a hot cup of tea into her trembling hand.

      But the tea had grown cold. She set the china cup into the saucer with a clatter.

      Scarlett didn’t know which scared her more. The memory of Blaise’s snarling face. Or the fear of what Vin Borgia might do now to take over her future—and her baby’s.

      She should run.

      She should run now.

      Running was the only way to ensure their freedom.

      Growing up, Scarlett had lived in over twenty different places, tiny towns hidden in forests and mountains, sometimes in shacks without electricity or running water. She’d rarely been able to go to school, and when she did, she’d had to dye her red hair brown and use a different name. Things that normal kids took for granted, such as having a real home, friends, going to the same school for a whole year, were luxuries Scarlett had only dreamed of. She’d never played sports, or sung in the school choir, or gone to prom. She’d never even gone on a real date.

      Until she was twenty-four. The day she’d met Vin Borgia, she’d been weak, emotional, vulnerable. And he’d caught her up like a butterfly in a net.

      She looked out the window with its view of the back garden, full of roses and ivy. A secret garden, surrounded by New York skyscrapers. A strangely calm, verdant place that seemed miles from the noisy traffic and honking cabs of Fifth Avenue. Rising to her feet, she started to pace.

      A frosty gray afternoon last February, she’d been picking up a medicine prescription for Mrs. Falkner when she received a text from an old Boston friend of her father’s with news that had staggered her.

      Alan Berry had just died in an inconsequential knife fight in a Southie bar. The man who’d betrayed her father seventeen years before, who’d cut a deal for his own freedom and forced Harry Ravenwood to go on the run with his sick wife and young daughter, had died a meaningless death after a meaningless life. All for nothing.

      Standing in the drugstore, Scarlett’s knees had gone weak. She’d felt sick.

      Five minutes later, she’d found herself at a dive bar across the street, ordering her first drink. The sharp pungent taste had made her cough.

      “Let me guess.” A low, amused voice had spoken from the red leather banquette in the corner. “It’s your first time.”

      She’d turned. The man came out of the shadows slowly. Black eyes. Dark hair. Powerful broad shoulders. A black suit. Hard edges everywhere. Five-o’clock shadow. He was like a hero—or a handsome villain—from a movie, so masculine and powerful and handsome that he’d affected her even more than the vodka shot.

      “I had a...bad day.” Her voice trembled.

      An ironic smile lifted the corners of his cruel, sensual mouth. “Why else would you be drinking in the afternoon?”

      She wiped her eyes with a laugh. “For fun?”

      “Fun. That’s an idea.” The man had come close enough to see her red-rimmed eyes and tear-streaked cheeks in the shadowy dive bar. She’d braced herself for questions, but he just slid onto the bar stool beside her and raised his hand to the bartender. “Let’s see if the second shot goes down easier.”

      In spite of what she knew about him now, Vin Borgia still affected her like that. When Scarlett had seen him standing at the altar with his beautiful bride, all the memories had come back of their night together in February, when he’d taken her back to his elegant, Spartan, wildly expensive penthouse. He’d seduced her easily, claiming her virginity as if he owned it. He’d made her life explode with color and joy.

      She’d known Vin’s name, since his doorman had greeted him with the utmost respect as “Mr. Borgia.” But she’d never told Vin her last name. Some habits were hard to break.

      A phone call from Mrs. Falkner’s nurse had woken Scarlett when Vin still slept. Only her sense of duty had forced her to wrench herself from the warmth of his bed. She’d returned to the Falkner mansion and handed over the prescription, then dreamily looked up her one and only lover online.

      That had woken her up fast. She’d been horrified by what she found.

      Vincenzo Borgia was a ruthless airline billionaire who’d risen from nothing and didn’t give a damn who got hurt in his pursuit of world domination. She couldn’t imagine why a man like that had seduced her, when he usually had liaisons with socialites and supermodels. But she was grateful she hadn’t given him her last name. She wouldn’t give him the chance to hurt her.

      Later, when she’d discovered she was pregnant, she’d wondered whether she’d made the right decision. But seeing Vin’s engagement announcement in the paper had clinched it.

      Scarlett had never expected to see Vin again. She’d planned to raise her baby alone.

      She wasn’t scared to be alone. She’d grown up on the run, and her fugitive father had secretly taught her skills after her mother got too sick to notice. How to pick pockets. How to pick locks. And most of all, how to be invisible and survive on almost nothing.

      Compared to what she’d already lived through, raising a child as a single parent would be easy. She wasn’t a fugitive. She’d never committed any crimes. She had a marketable skill as a nurse’s aide. She’d even saved some money. She no longer had to hide.

      Or did she?

      Scarlett stopped pacing the thick rug of the cathedral rectory, staring blankly at the faded floral furniture. Did she really want to take the chance that Vin Borgia, the man she’d read

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