“I remember you,” he said.
For an insane moment she thought he might really kiss her. With a soft curse, he moved away, unstrapping the sword as he walked. It clattered to the floor beside the chair with the rest of his gear before he spun and fixed her with a glare.
“I remember that we met in Jackson Square when a pickpocket tried to steal your purse. I remember meeting you for three nights in a row in front of the cathedral. But most of all, I remember the last night. Mardi Gras. You were still a virgin.”
Lily didn’t care if she had permission or not. She moved to a plush couch and sank down on it, aware that she hadn’t showered since yesterday and that she probably smelled as musty as the dungeon. But her legs wouldn’t hold her up any longer.
“But when you came to the prison…” Her voice trailed off as she thought about how cold and cruel he would have to be to put her through that ordeal. This was not a man to lose her head over, not a fairytale prince on a white stallion. This was a petty, privileged man who didn’t care about anything but his own pleasure.
Even if he had seemed more concerned with hers on the night she’d given him her virginity. What had she been thinking?
Easy. She’d been thinking that he was the handsomest, most interesting man she’d ever met. She’d been thinking they had a connection that ran deep despite their only knowing each other a short time. She’d been thinking of romance and fairy tales. Her head had been in the clouds, and she’d paid for it in the end.
She would not make that mistake again.
“This is what you will do now,” he continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “You will call your friend Carla and have her bring the boy to the airport. She will turn him over to a woman in my employ. Her name is Gisela—”
“No!” Lily shot to her feet as shock reverberated through her. “I’m not telling Carla to give my son to a stranger—”
“Our son, is he not, Lily?”
Her heart battered her ribs. She would not lose her baby to this man. Not ever. “Surely you can’t be prepared to take my word on it,” she flung at him with far more bravado than she felt. “Let me go home and you’ll never hear another thing from me, I swear.”
“That I cannot do, signorina.” Irritation crossed his features as he stalked toward her again. “And I already know the truth. Our son was born nearly seventeen months ago, on November the twenty-fifth, in a small hospital in Port Pierre, Louisiana. You were in labor for twenty-two hours, and the only person at your bedside was Carla Breaux.”
Lily sank onto the couch again as her legs gave way. He knew the truth. Of course he did. His resources were vast compared to hers. Compared to most, she would imagine. “Why did you ask me if he was yours if you know so much?”
“Because I wanted to hear you say it.”
Lily felt as if she were collapsing in on herself. Her body folded over, slowly, until her head was nearly between her knees. Fury and fear mingled in her gut, bubbled into a great howl of rage that erupted from her throat, astonishing her.
Astonishing Nico too, if the alarm on his face was any indication.
“You are not taking my baby away from me,” she vowed. “I’ll go back to that cell and stay there, but I will not tell Carla to hand over Danny to you.”
He went to the bar set against one wall and poured a measure of caramel-colored liquid into a glass. Then he returned and held the cut crystal out to her. “Drink this.”
“No.”
“You are overwrought. This will help.”
She gripped the glass in both hands, more to make him go away than anything. When he stood so close, her head felt fuzzy. Thankfully, he retreated a few steps. He picked up a phone, issued what she assumed were a set of orders since whoever was on the other end never had time to speak before he hung up again.
“You will call your friend Carla and tell her to bring Daniele to the airport tomorrow morning.”
“I won’t,” she said quietly, resenting the way he so easily Italianized her son’s name. Daniel sounded exotic when he said it.
“Indeed you will,” Nico replied. “You can make this easy, or you can make it hard. Should you not cooperate, you might never see Daniele again. Because you will not leave Montebianco. He could grow up motherless, and alone.”
Numbness crept over her. “You would do that to your own son? You would make him an orphan?”
She didn’t miss the nearly imperceptible clenching of his jaw. “I will do what it takes to make you see reason, cara. If you cooperate, this will not have to happen, si?”
“How can you be so cruel?”
He shrugged an elegant shoulder, and Lily saw red. The spoiled bastard! The glass she held tumbled to the floor and shattered against the tile as she lunged for him. Nico was faster, however. He swept her high into his arms and carried her across the room as she kicked and struggled.
“Dio, woman, you are wearing sandals. Do you want to slice your feet to ribbons?”
Lily didn’t care. She simply didn’t care about anything any longer. This man, this cold evil man, was trying to take away the one person in the world who meant the most to her. It was her greatest fear come to life. She would not allow it.
She twisted in his iron grip, throwing him off balance so that he stumbled. Lily pressed her advantage and they fell to the thick Oriental carpet together, Nico taking the brunt of the impact. A moment later, he flipped her and she found herself on her back, Nico’s hard form pressing into her, breast to belly to hip.
“Stop fighting me, cara,” he said harshly. “It changes nothing.”
Lily wiggled beneath him, trying to shake him off. His solid form didn’t budge. The point of a star-shaped medal dug into her ribs. “Why are you doing this to me?” she cried. “You have dozens of children with your mistresses, so why do you care about mine?”
Rage, disbelief, frustration—they chased across his face in equal measure. “I have one child, Liliana. One. And you have kept him from me.”
“I don’t believe you,” she gasped out.
Nico shifted and the medal’s point thankfully stopped pricking her. He gripped her arms, forced them above her head. He seemed to hover on the edge of control. “Have you never thought that gossip magazines might lie?”
“They can’t all be lies.” There had to be a grain of truth, right? Perhaps they exaggerated, but there must be something to it. Not one of the reporters she knew at the Register would dare write something so patently false.
Nico’s laugh was short and bitter. “You have obviously never been on the receiving end of these carrion. They feed on outrage and misdirection. There’s hardly a single thing they print about me that is true.”
“Now I know you’re lying. I’ve seen photos of you with lots of women—”
“I have had many mistresses,” he said, cutting her off. “This is to be expected—”
“Why? Because you’re some kind of God’s gift—”
“Basta! You seek to exasperate me, signorina, and you succeed. Nevertheless, I have one child.”
Lily’s chest heaved in frustration as she stared up at him. But her eyes closed as the truth of his words sank in. Gossip magazines thrived on scandal. She knew that. But she didn’t want to believe he spoke the truth. Because if he did, so much she’d thought about him would be wrong. The blood drained from her head as the implications of what he said sank in.