LITMIR.BIZ

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nearly sputtered in surprise. “You know perfectly well what I’ve come to discuss. It’s barbaric. Inhumane. You don’t gamble with people’s lives, much less children’s lives.”

      He slowed his pace as they reached the low velvet couches upholstered in royal shades of purple, red and blue. “I don’t gamble with lives. I prefer cash. Stocks. Real estate. Unfortunately your husband had just you left so he offered you up.”

      “You didn’t have to be unscrupulous, Mr. Bartolo! You could have taken the higher, moral ground.”

      Cristiano’s eyebrows lifted, one black eyebrow arching slightly higher than the other, and Sam thought he looked exactly the way the devil would, if the devil played cards. “And why would I want to do that, Baroness?”

      Samantha’s breath caught in her throat as she stared into Cristiano’s face. He was tall, big, broad. Taut. He’d walked with a long even step, his arms loose at his sides, apparently at ease, but she was far from relaxed. His very ease unnerved her. “Because you’re a gentleman, Mr. Bartolo.”

      The corner of his mouth curved, a brief mocking smile. “You shouldn’t make assumptions. They’re usually wrong.”

      Then he sat down, a slow drop into the low upholstered sofa. Sam remained where she stood, her mouth open with disbelief. He was mad, she thought, nearly as mad as Johann. “And what about Gabriela? What about her?”

      He shrugged, stretched a long arm out over the back of the sofa. “What about her?”

      “She can’t be left with Johann. He’s not a fit parent.”

      “Then surely she has another relative who could take her, someone better suited to parenting a young child?”

      “She might, but I don’t know of anyone. I think her mother’s family wanted her once, there was going to be a custody trial, but that was years ago. I don’t even know where to find her mother’s family now.”

      He studied her for a long moment, hazel gaze assessing. “Why didn’t her mother’s family win the custody battle?”

      Sam swallowed, plagued by guilt even two and a half years later. “I married Johann. To give Gabby—and prove to the court that she had—a stable, loving family.”

      “Even though you knew it was a lie?”

      Sam ducked her head, didn’t answer. She knotted and unknotted her fingers before finally sitting down in a chair opposite him. “I did it for Gabby, to protect her. The court did award us custody, and Gabby trusts me, Mr. Bartolo. She depends on me. I can’t let her down.”

      “She’s not even your daughter and yet you’re so very protective of her.”

      “I have to be. Someone has to be.”

      Cristiano’s eyes narrowed as he studied her tight expression. “You love her.”

      Without a doubt. “Yes.”

      “And your husband. Do you love him this much, too?”

      Sam’s eyes closed and she sagged inwardly, exhausted, overwhelmed. She’d never loved Johann even though she’d tried initially. She’d thought maybe her kindness, her compassion might save him…that her love could maybe make them a family but she’d been wrong. Naïve.

      Opening her eyes, the fatigue weighed even more heavily on her. She felt as if she’d been battling to save Johann for far too many years now. She didn’t know how to keep fighting for him, for the family, for security any longer. The task had become too great, the toll too much. Living with Johann had drained her. “I’ve done my best to protect him.”

      “And is that the same thing as love?”

      Her lips curved grimly. “It is what it is, Mr. Bartolo.”

      Cristiano’s expression didn’t change, and yet Sam felt something shift—her? Him?—and when he spoke again, the mood somehow was different. “I don’t like your husband,” he said. “I have never liked your husband, but I like him even less now.”

      “Because he wagered me?”

      “And then tried to sell his child, the very child he refused to give to her family.”

      Her mouth went dry and she felt like a marionette doll, odd, gangly, all wooden arms and legs. “He wouldn’t sell Gabby.”

      “He tried. It wasn’t enough he’d settled his debts with you. He thought perhaps he’d buy back some of his lost property, an even exchange, the town villa for his daughter.”

      “No.”

      “Yes, indeed.”

      Sam looked past Cristiano to the creamy marble columns supporting the ornate stained-glass dome. “And what did you say?” she whispered, her mouth so dry, her throat scratchy.

      “I don’t buy children, Baroness.”

      She shook her head, shocked. She knew Johann was selfish and a drunkard, a gambler, and a player—but this…it was repulsive. “Do you see why I can’t leave her there? Do you see why I must protect her?”

      “Baroness, I have no authority over her. I can’t take her. Only the courts—”

      “But I can!” Sam clasped her hands together, leaned towards Cristiano, hands pressed as if in prayer. “I’m still her stepmother.”

      “Johann won’t allow it. Not if he thinks he can get me to pay for her.”

      “How much?” Sam whispered. “How much does he want?”

      “Three million. The price of his town villa.”

      Her eyes burned and she smiled bitterly to hide her pain. “I was ten million and his child was only three?”

      “My thoughts exactly.”

      Sam ground her teeth together, panic growing on the inside. Panic at the future, the present, panic that she was losing her grip on reality, panic that it seemed she was going to lose Gabby.

      “Sit back,” Cristiano said. “Breathe. You look as if you’re going to faint.”

      She shook her head, woozy and nauseous all over again, and struggled to speak, but couldn’t find her voice, couldn’t even shape her lips. Her face felt stiff, frozen. Her whole body trembled.

      Cristiano reached out, touched her arm. “Do you need water?”

      She shook her head again. “No,” she croaked, but she did feel terrible. Terrible, horrible, devastated. It was as if her world had been a little snow globe and it had been dropped, shattered.

      For a moment Sam did nothing but concentrate on breathing, in and out she breathed, deep slow breaths to ease the pain inside her. But just breathing didn’t help. If she breathed in, it hurt. If she exhaled, it hurt. Nothing would change the pain.

      “She’s not your child,” Cristiano said quietly.

      Anger rolled through Sam, hot and wild, cutting through her fog. “But she feels like my child, and I’ll protect her like my child, and I will worry about her, and I will worry for her. You can be selfish and cold but I won’t be.”

      “No, I know you won’t be. That’s why I wanted you. That’s why I played hard for you. You didn’t fall into my hands by chance.”

      If he hoped to reassure her, he was failing, miserably. Every word he spoke only heightened her unease and the sense that everything was changing—quickly, dramatically, drastically—and Samantha resisted change, particularly if it was beyond her control. “You wanted this?”

      “Very much so.”

      “You can’t take another man’s wife.”

      One of his strong black eyebrows lifted quizzically. “You do if she’s neglected.”

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