LITMIR.BIZ

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straightened her shoulders and told herself to spit it out. To get it over with. To do what was right because it was right.

      Because none of this was about her. It was about Damian.

      “I’m delighted to hear you’re so unsentimental,” she said, and her only possible defense was to keep her voice as ice cold as she could. To act like she was a glacier, the way she had as a girl, because feigned, icy indifference was the only way she could get her parents to leave her out of their daily target practice. So that was exactly what she did now. It was almost alarming, how easy it was to slip back into old patterns. “Maybe this conversation doesn’t have to be as unpleasant as I feared it would be.”

      He didn’t actually sneer. Not quite. “This conversation is already unpleasant.”

      “Then what I’m about to tell you is unlikely to improve it.”

      Anais held that harsh blue gaze of his. She reminded herself this was the right thing to do, no matter how it felt.

      Be cold straight through, she told herself. Feel nothing but ice until you become it.

      She didn’t look away. “You have a son.”

      * * *

      “I beg your pardon?”

      Dario felt bolted to the stones beneath his feet. Pierced straight through. His heart stopped beating, then kicked at him hard, while his entire gut seemed to drop down to the ground and stay there.

      And Anais only stood before him, as calm and unbothered and untouched as ever, damn her.

      “You have a son.” She didn’t seem surprised she had to repeat that. “We do, I suppose. Biologically speaking. His name is Damian.”

      He didn’t think he could breathe. “Tell me this is one of your jokes.”

      “Because I’m renowned for my stand-up routine?” she asked tartly, and he recognized that sharp tone. He remembered it. On some level, it was much better than unbothered—but he couldn’t process that at the moment. “No. I’m not joking about my child.”

      He continued to stare at her, like an idiot, while his head spun. As if she’d anticipated that reaction—and of course she had, he told himself bitterly, because she’d known he was coming today, hadn’t she?—she reached into the other pocket of that long, flowing dress and pulled out something. It took him a moment to understand it was a slightly bent photograph, and then she was sliding it onto the table before him.

      Dario didn’t want to look. Looking would be admitting...something. But he couldn’t help himself.

      A small boy with black hair and his mother’s eyes laughed in the sunlight. He was kneeling on a beach, his little body sturdy and perfectly formed. Ten fingers covered in sand, stretched toward the camera. And aside from those eyes Dario knew all too well came straight from Anais, every other part of his face could have been lifted from the pictures Dario had seen of himself and Dante at the same age.

      There had been exactly one other time in his life when he’d wanted to deny the truth in front of him this much. When he’d felt precisely this sleepless and out of his depth and furiously incapable of processing what was happening. And this, six years later, was worse. Much worse. The world went white around the edges. Or maybe he did.

      “How?” he heard himself grit out, not looking at her. He didn’t touch that photograph and he didn’t trust himself to look at her. Every muscle in his body was so tense he thought he might rupture something where he stood. There was a storm building inside of him and he thought it might simply blow him to pieces right here—a thousand jagged, broken shards of him, until neither one of them was left standing.

      It took him a minute to recognize that storm for what it was.

      Fury.

      Pure and undiluted and directed straight at this woman and her betrayal of him.

      Again.

      “I’m sure that if you think about it, you can figure out how,” Anais was saying. He wouldn’t call that tone of hers amused, exactly. It was far too crisp and pointed, and she still managed to sound so distant besides. That made it all worse. “I’ll give you a hint. It wasn’t a stork.”

      He was still reeling. Dario pushed back in the chair and onto his feet, leaving the photo where it sat as if it was poisonous. He raked his hair back with both hands, and then he got a hold of himself.

      It was painful.

      “And how,” he asked, his voice rough and his gaze probably a lot worse than that as he finally looked at her again, “do I know this is my child and not Dante’s? We’re identical. I can’t even take a DNA test to find out the truth.”

      She stiffened as if he’d struck her. Then her dark eyes blazed—and damn him, he preferred that over the chilliness.

      “Then I suppose it will have to remain a mystery,” she threw at him. “What a shame. Damian and I will have to continue doing just fine without you, you incredible jackass.”

      He didn’t process what was happening until she was almost through the great, open doorway that was the length of the pulled-back wall. That she had thrown that bomb at him and was now walking away as if it didn’t matter.

      “Where the hell are you going?” he demanded. “After dropping that kind of thing on me?”

      Anais stopped walking, and the stiffness of her back told him that was a battle. She turned slowly. Very slowly. He thought she looked pale, and her lips were thin, and he didn’t understand why he even noticed that. Why he cared at all.

      You do not care about her, he snapped at himself. You care about this lie she’s telling.

      “I’m going to carry on with my life,” she told him when she faced him fully, in that overly precise way of hers that indicated the raging temper inside of her. He remembered that, too. He could even see the faint hint of it in her eyes. “What did you expect me to do? Stand here and cry? Beg you to believe me? I’ve already been down that road. I’m well aware it’s a dead end.”

      “Then why bother with this conversation at all?” he gritted out. “Unless you just wanted to throw a few grenades around. For fun.”

      That smile of hers was much too sharp. One more blade stuck deep in his gut, a match for all the rest.

      “The only difference this conversation makes to me is that I no longer feel any sense of responsibility about the fact you’re too much of a sulking child to have picked up the phone and found this out years ago.” She leaned forward slightly, as if some unseen hand was keeping her from hurling herself at him, holding her back from attacking him with those fists he could see bunched up at her sides. “Thank you, Dario. Truly. I needed the reminder that you’re absolutely useless. And, worse than that, cruel.”

      She turned to walk away again, and he should have let her. He should have cheered her on. He couldn’t have a child. He couldn’t have a child. Not him. He’d never wanted one, not after his own disastrous childhood, and he certainly didn’t want to test that theory with the woman who had betrayed him so horribly with his own brother.

      This can’t be happening.

      Maybe that was why he found himself across the patio without knowing he meant to move, wrapping his hand around her smooth upper arm to pull her back around to face him.

      “Don’t walk away from me.”

      And it was a mistake to have touched her. It was a terrible mistake, because touching her was what had caused all of this in the first place. His uncharacteristic loss of control when he’d first met her. His astonishing decision to marry her—and who cared if he’d lied to himself and told himself it was to secure her a visa to stay in New York? That wild, nearly ungovernable fury when he’d discovered her deceit. He knew better. It had all been about this.

      This touch. Her skin. The wildfire he was horrified

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