My Shocking Monte Carlo Confession

by Heidi Rice

  I bit into my lip, determined not to let the inevitable endorphin-rush distract me. And found myself drowning in those mossy eyes when our gazes met, the way I had all those years ago.

  Damn it, Galanti, snap out of it. She’s an actress and a gold-digger.

  But with her face devoid of make-up she looked so young, as young as she had been that night, still a teenager, and it was harder to make myself believe it. I could see the sprinkle of freckles across her nose, could remember her sweet sighs as I kissed every one of them before devouring those plump lips which had tasted of cherry cola and eagerness.

  ‘Once you have the proof you need, what do you intend to do?’ she asked.

  I frowned at the direct question, the guilelessness of it disturbing me. Until I got a grip.

  It’s just an act. She looks artless, innocent, but she’s playing you. No one is ever really honest. There’s always an agenda. Once you’ve found out exactly what her agenda is, you’ll be back on solid ground again.

  Obviously it made no sense that she would keep the boy’s existence a secret from me for five years, and had never contacted me for the severance cheque, if this was a simple case of extortion.

  But maybe her agenda was more sophisticated than that. Was she playing a longer game, to get more? And why did I really care anyway? As long as I took control of the situation, it didn’t matter what her agenda was, because my agenda was the one that would prevail.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I replied, even though I knew what I wanted was likely to conflict with what she wanted.

  Never show your hand until you are ready to play your cards.

  It was a motto I had lived by for a long time. It had won me considerable amounts at the high-stakes game in my friend Dante Allegri’s casino and had also been a guiding principle in my business and personal life.

  ‘I wasn’t expecting to find out I had a four-year-old son today,’ I said.

  Or that Remy had one, I added silently to myself, even though that strange yearning for the boy to be mine was still pulsing in my chest. I’d figure that out later too. ‘Once I have the information, I’ll be in touch.’

  Whatever the outcome of the DNA test, I planned to claim the child as a Galanti. And punish her for not having told me of the boy’s existence a lot sooner. I also planned to have her thoroughly investigated.

  Is she sleeping with Renzo?

  The question popped into my head as something wholly unfamiliar tore through my insides. Something visceral and indiscriminate. I had to curl my fingers into fists to stop me from acting on the sudden urge to capture her face in my hands and claim those lush lips with my own—driving my tongue into the recesses of her mouth until she clung to me the way she had before and I plunged deep into her....

  I tensed and shoved my fists into the pockets of my jeans, shocked by the direction of my thoughts.

  Dio, I needed to get laid. Clearly the shock of seeing the child, of seeing her again, had had an unpredictable effect not just on my emotional equilibrium but on my libido.

  I was off-kilter, not a condition I was used to, which explained this forceful and inexplicable reaction.

  She nodded, apparently taking my answer at face value.

  ‘I... I understand,’ she said.

  No, you don’t, but you will.

  Whatever the result of the DNA test, she had kept the child’s existence from me for five years. And for that she would pay.

  ‘I should go,’ she said, strangely polite. ‘Cai is waiting for me. Let me know what you need and when for the test. I think it’s just a swab. I can make it into a game to explain it to Cai.’ She huffed out a breath to stop the babble of information, but her nervousness was visible in her trembling fingers as she pushed the shock of ruddy curls away from her face.

  This was not an act. But then, if she had any idea what I was thinking, she had a lot to be nervous about.

  ‘I’ll... I’ll speak to you again about Cai, when you’re ready,’ she said.

  Walking over to the sofa, she picked up a large bag, rummaged inside and produced a card. ‘This is my work number. I’ll...we’ll...be back in the UK by tomorrow night. And you can contact me there most week days between nine and five. Or my PA will take a message.’

  She handed me the card and our fingers brushed. I managed to stifle the sudden jolt of reaction. Her, not so much.

  Why did that make me want to smile, despite everything?

  The tug of amusement died, though, as I read the address on her business card and recognised the location of Camaro’s R&D headquarters in London.

  The surge of possessiveness was as visceral as that strange pulse of jealousy and lust, but I explained it to myself as I watched her sling her purse over her shoulder.

  I might be unclear at the moment about how much of a father—or an uncle—I was capable of being to this child. But he would need to live in Monaco, to understand his Galanti heritage. And that would mean his mother would have to come too.

  It would be no hardship offering her a position in our R&D operation, if her credentials were as good as Freddie had suggested, and I did still need a reserve driver. That situation hadn’t changed from when I’d first walked into this room. Even if everything else had.

  ‘Goodbye, Alexi,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry...’ She paused, her regret looking surprisingly genuine. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about Cai sooner. That was wrong of me. Call me when you’re ready.’

  I nodded as the emotion I’d been keeping so carefully at bay swelled against my ribs.

  I watched her disappear back into the changing area, probably to collect her racing suit. I strode out of the lounge area. The emotion threatened to choke me as I headed towards the track’s parking lot and away from the car hangars where the boy was with his babysitter.

  You need to take stock, to know exactly what you’re dealing with before you proceed.

  But, even as the mantra ran through my head, all the conflicting emotions churned in my stomach: grief, longing, desire, anger, confusion. My fingers shook as I fished my key out of my pocket and clicked the fob.

  As I climbed into the car, fired up the engine and drove away, I knew my whole life had changed in the space of one afternoon. The reality of that fact was reinforced by the tug of something vivid and inescapable—was it lust, regret, longing or grief? Who the hell knew?

  But the force of it was dragging me back into the past harder than the G-force in the driver’s seat of our newest model when it hit two hundred miles per hour.

  I had been running from myself, and my sins against Remy, for five years, maybe longer, and now the truth of what I’d done, what we’d both done to him, had caught up with me.

  In the shape of one boisterous little boy and a woman I had never been able to forget—unlike any other, even my own mother—even though I had tried.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Belle

  Dear Mlle Simpson

  The results of the test carried out on May 20th by The Royal Harley Street Clinic on the DNA of your son, Cai Remy Simpson, and Mr Alexi Gustavo Galanti show a 99.98 percentage probability that he is the father of your child.

  As a result of this information, Mr Galanti has asked me to inform you that he has arranged for you to fly out to Monaco on his private jet on May 23rd for a meeting with him, myself and the rest of his legal team at Villa Galanti so we can outline how he plans to proceed.

  I enclose details of the travel arrangements and your overnight stay at the villa.

  A car will collect you at your home address at ten that morning.

  Salutations distinguées,

  Etienne Severo, avocat

  I READ THE email from Alexi’s lawyer which had arrived while I’d been busy packing Cai’s lunch box and trying to cajole him into putting on his shoes that morning.

  I hadn’t had time
to panic about it then, but I had lots of time to panic about it now as I read it for the five-thousandth time.

  I hadn’t done any work this morning. My fear at the curt demand choked me. Alexi expected me to drop everything and come to Monaco to find out how he planned to proceed in two days’ time. And to stay overnight at Villa Galanti. He’d given me virtually no time to arrange leave or childcare, and there had been little mention of Cai. While I was grateful he hadn’t asked me to bring Cai, the impersonal nature of the solicitor’s letter, and the laying down of battle lines contained within it, disturbed me.

  I had expected Alexi’s high-handed, dictatorial approach. Of course he mistrusted me. I’d kept his son’s existence from him, and what evidence did he have I would ever have told him but for a chance encounter? But in the last few days I had hoped that, once Cai’s parenthood was established, he would contact me personally—that his first priority would be getting to know the innocent four-year-old child at the centre of this situation.

  I read the email again, scanning it for any evidence of warmth or empathy towards his son. Even if I didn’t deserve any sympathy, surely Cai did? But the words remained as cold and compassionless as when I’d first read them.

  A prickle of anger burned under my breastbone, which made an unfortunate bedfellow for the panic which had consumed me all morning.

  Part of me wanted to refuse his demand. I didn’t want to go to the Galanti mansion—there were so many memories there waiting to hijack me—and demanding I go alone and stay the night at the villa could only be a ploy to unsettle and unnerve me.

  I closed the email app on my phone as the anger fizzled out.

  Whatever Alexi’s agenda was, and however scared I was about the outcome of this ‘meeting’, I couldn’t keep running away from the confrontation I had avoided for so long. I had hoped Alexi would be reasonable. Clearly that wasn’t going to happen, but I owed it to my son to hear what his father had to say.

  I could feel Alexi’s anger with me in the lawyer’s words. And I had to face that in order to move forward now.

  Because I’d seen how confused, how emotional, Alexi had been when I’d revealed Cai’s identity to him nearly a week ago. Even though he’d tried exceptionally hard to hide it, I had blindsided him.

  And I had to accept he had a right to be angry with me.

  I dialled Jessie’s number. My cousin picked up on the first ring.

  ‘Hey, Belle,’ she said, her warm voice already helping to release the pressure which had been strangling me ever since my fateful meeting with Alexi—a pressure which had become unbearable ever since his lawyer’s email had arrived.

  ‘Hi, Jess. I need to go to Monaco day after tomorrow and stay overnight... Could you look after Cai while I’m gone? I know it’s super-short notice and I—’

  ‘Don’t be daft,’ Jessie interrupted. ‘You know I love to look after him. What time do you need me there?’

  I rattled off the details.

  Cai hadn’t done anything wrong, even if I had. Cai’s welfare always came first—and if Alexi’s ‘plans’ for me and our son turned out to be not in Cai’s best interests I would tell him so.

  I didn’t like the implication in the lawyer’s email that Alexi planned to tell me how he was going to handle this situation and I would just be expected to follow his orders. But it shouldn’t surprise me.

  Alexi had always been pushy and, well, frankly domineering and determined to get his own way. He’d been like that ever since I’d first known him as a teenager on the rare occasions when he’d deigned to notice the housekeeper’s infatuated daughter, so it was no surprise he was even more of a dictator now.

  I had toyed with the idea of hiring a lawyer to accompany me to Villa Galanti but had decided against it. Why make this even more confrontational than it already was? I would not be signing anything at this meeting, and he couldn’t force me to do so, because I was now the opposite of that infatuated teenager.

  So I would go to Monaco, to his meeting, listen politely to what he had to say, deal with his anger, his enmity and his legal team and then, once I returned to the UK, I would hire my own lawyer to thrash out the child custody arrangements.

  The anxiety thrummed under my breastbone again.

  I earned a very good salary from Camaro. But I still had student loans to pay, not to mention Cai’s childcare and a large mortgage for our tiny flat in west London. I wouldn’t be able to afford a legal team anywhere near as fancy as Alexi’s... I took a steadying breath.

  Don’t go getting ahead of yourself.

  I didn’t even know yet what he wanted to do. It was quite possible he wouldn’t even want any custody. He hadn’t exactly seemed overjoyed at the news he had a son. Just stunned, wary and then angry. I might well be panicking about nothing. Perhaps this meeting was simply to punish me for not telling him about his child.

  ‘Why are you going to Monaco? Is it a work thing?’ Jessie’s calming voice drew me back to the present before the panic started to choke me again.

  ‘Sort of,’ I attempted to lie, but my response didn’t sound convincing even to me. I had always been a terrible liar.

  ‘It’s not to do with Alexi Galanti, then?’ Jessie’s question had my belly knotting.

  ‘How do you know about him?’ I rasped.

  ‘I looked him up after he freaked you out so much in Barcelona.’

  ‘Right,’ I said. I thought I’d managed to hide that from Jessie. ‘So you noticed that, huh?’

  ‘Yes, I noticed that, Belle. I also noticed his resemblance to Cai. Is he his father?’ She’d never asked me the question before, and I’d been pathetically grateful for that over the years, but I could see now that was just more evidence of what a coward I’d been. Jessie had a right to know. She’d helped me get back on my feet when I’d turned up on her doorstep pregnant, destitute and distraught.

  ‘Yes, he is,’ I said.

  ‘And I’m assuming he knows that too, if he’s an observant man.’

  Alexi was certainly that. ‘He insisted on a DNA test.’ His mistrust still stung, but I was trying to make that not about me.

  Alexi had never really trusted anyone, especially not women, not since his mother had run away and left his brother and him alone to deal with their alcoholic father.

  ‘The results came through from his lawyer this morning,’ I continued. ‘He’s arranged for me to fly to Monaco to talk about his plans.’

  ‘His plans?’ Jessie asked. ‘That sounds arrogant.’

  ‘You have no idea,’ I murmured. ‘I’m scared. I have no idea what he’s planning to tell me, but I doubt it will be pleasant. I’m scared he’s so angry with me he might try to use Cai to get back at me,’ I added, finally voicing my real fear.

  Alexi still believed I was a gold-digger and a whore, a woman who had cheated on his brother and lied to protect herself. Who got ahead by using men and then discarding them. A woman who had no loyalty, no honour and no morals. Given that I’d only ever slept with him, his low opinion of me would almost be funny if it weren’t so damning and... I swallowed sharply, finally forced to admit something else...hurtful. It shamed me to realise Alexi’s low opinion still had the power to hurt me when Cai’s feelings were the only thing that mattered now.

  ‘What makes you think he’ll do that?’ Jessie asked, sounding shocked and a little scared too. If she’d investigated Alexi at all she had to know how rich he was, and how powerful.

  ‘Well, mostly the fact that he demanded to see me, but not Cai. I’m not even sure if he wants to be a father. He hardly mentions Cai in the letter.’

  ‘Okay.’ Jessie sighed, sounding relieved. ‘Perhaps that’s not all that surprising, though.’

  ‘How so?’ I asked.

  ‘He’s a billionaire playboy who seems to have a revolving-door policy with girlfriends.’ Okay, so Jessie had really checked h
im out. ‘What does he know about the needs of a four-year-old? Or being a father, for that matter? He’s clearly super-arrogant but he doesn’t strike me as a stupid man. Perhaps he’s simply asked to see you alone first so he can get a better handle on being a dad.’ She coughed. ‘As well as give you hell for keeping Cai a secret for so long...’ Jessie’s voice trailed off into silence, but I could hear the soft note of censure. She’d never asked me about the circumstances of Cai’s parentage, because I’d always made it clear to her I didn’t want to discuss it, but I could hear the question in her tone now even if she hadn’t asked it.

  Why had I done it?

  ‘Belle, you’re not scared of him for any other reason, are you?’ she asked gently. ‘He didn’t hurt you, did he? Force you in any way? That isn’t why you ran, is it? Why you didn’t want him to know about his son?’

  ‘God, no!’ I rasped as the shame cascaded through me.

  ‘Are you sure?’ she probed again.

  ‘Yes, it wasn’t like that,’ I said, but the tightening in my throat made it hard for me to speak as every detail of our encounter flooded back—hot, febrile and exciting, but never frightening.

  And I finally had the real answer why I was so scared to return to Villa Galanti and face Alexi alone. It wasn’t just because of the hostile reception I knew I would face from him. It wasn’t fear of what plans he might have for Cai’s custody or even his motivations behind them. It was the harsh truth that my desire for him had never died and spending two days and one night in his company—at the location of my original downfall—had the potential to bring all those needs and wants hurtling back.

  It was terrifying to realise the girl I thought had been lost long ago might still be lurking inside me somewhere, still yearning for Alexi’s touch...and his affection.

  * * *

  As the helicopter circled Villa Galanti, the emotions rushing towards me were as strong, if not stronger, than the downdraft from the blades.

  Nothing could have prepared me for the hard hit of grief as the big black machine drifted over the estate’s private beach and the landscaped gardens. The marble statues and elegant follies, the enchanting water features and ancient woods, the beds overflowing with shrubs and flowers, all morphed into pirate ships, cowboy forts and haunted hideouts in my mind’s eye as I imagined Remy and I running through them together as children and then teenagers.