Her mouth had gone as dry as the Sahara. ‘You’re insane.’
‘No. What I am is ruthless. I’ve had too many things taken from me, cara, and I am done with it. What’s mine stays mine, and that includes Simon.’
‘Matilda is not yours to take, though.’ Henry’s tone was still mild.
Enzo whipped round to face him. ‘What? You think I want her as a lover? That I would touch another man’s wife?’ He made it sound as if he’d never heard of anything so ridiculous. ‘I think not. No, all I require is a month or two of her presence, just enough to settle Simon in his new home.’
A burst of anger pierced Matilda’s shock. The sheer, damn arrogance of him. Talking about her as if she wasn’t there, as if she was a piece of property he could keep or dispose of as he wished.
And, more than anything else, the assumption that her presence wouldn’t be required after Simon had ‘settled in’.
‘I am his mother,’ she said icily. ‘And I will be his mother for ever. A month or two of my presence will not be enough.’
Enzo turned again, his attention focused on her once more. ‘Then stay. I have no objections. The only requirement I have is that Simon lives with me. You can come and go as you please.’
She took an unsteady breath. ‘So you’re basically saying I have to uproot my life in England and move to...wherever you are. Just like that.’
‘Why not? You decided not to tell me I had a son. Just like that.’
‘You make it sound as if it that was an easy decision.’
‘And wasn’t it? As easy as simply deciding not to pick up that phone and make a second call.’
Emotion choked her, shame, regret and a whole lot of other things all tangling and knotting inside her.
So many mistakes. So many things she had to make up for. But why should her child suffer for everything she’d done wrong? And why should Henry suffer too?
She shot her husband a glance. He’d poured himself another large glass of brandy and met her gaze with a certain sympathy. ‘You should have told me, Mattie,’ he said quietly. ‘Especially considering I invited him here.’
The sense of shame grew larger. Yes, she knew she should have. But she hadn’t. She’d thought she could avoid the situation entirely.
Stupid. She’d been stupid.
Her eyes pricked with tears, but she swallowed them back.
No, she wouldn’t cry, and certainly not while Enzo was staring at her, judging her.
‘I’m sorry, Henry.’ She tried to ignore the man standing in front of her, though that was impossible with the room so full of his restless intensity. ‘I know I should have. I just...’ She stopped.
Henry was too understanding. Too kind. She didn’t deserve him and she knew it.
‘Well?’ Enzo demanded, ignoring Henry, his gaze on her as if she was the only other thing in the universe. ‘What’s it to be? Will you come with me to Milan tomorrow or not?’
She tried a last-ditch protest. ‘If you take Simon, I’ll call the police.’
‘No, you won’t.’ It was Henry, sounding tired.
Matilda blinked, staring at her husband, conscious of Enzo’s gaze on her. ‘What do you mean, no?’
‘You think Cardinali here will go without a fight?’ Henry gestured at Enzo with his brandy glass. ‘He won’t and you know it.’
‘Then I’ll fight back,’ she insisted, not quite sure why Henry would give in like that.
‘Try, cara,’ Enzo murmured, his voice low enough that only she heard it, and full of sensual threat. ‘See how far you get.’
‘Think of the scandal.’ Henry shook his head. ‘It’ll be all over the gossip sites, all over the web within hours. I don’t want that and I certainly don’t want that for Simon. Do you?’
No. She didn’t. And it made sense. The news that Henry St George’s child wasn’t actually his and was, in fact, the child of billionaire property developer Enzo Cardinali would keep the scandal sheets going for months.
And they wouldn’t only be all over her like flies on spilled food, they’d be all over Simon as well. He would be starting school in a year. People’s memories were short, but the Internet was for ever.
‘No,’ she said thickly, feeling her control of the situation start to slip from her fingers. ‘I don’t want that.’
‘They’ll find out eventually,’ Henry murmured, ‘But at least let Simon have a couple of weeks without the paparazzi in his face.’
He was right. Of course he was right. Yet...
They’d never been a true husband and wife, only good friends. And they’d had a good few years together. But he wasn’t even arguing with Enzo. He seemed prepared simply to let her go. Both her and Simon. Without even a protest.
Did he even care? Did they even matter to him?
‘Well, I’ll leave you two to sort it out between yourselves.’ Henry put his brandy glass down and moved towards the door as if everything had been decided already. ‘Try not to destroy my study in the process.’ The door shut behind him, the sound of the click echoing inside Matilda like the sound of a tomb closing.
The silence in the room was deafening.
Enzo was standing near the fireplace. He hadn’t moved, but the intentness of his focus made her feel as though all the air had been sucked out of the room.
She didn’t want to meet his relentless golden stare. Didn’t want to know what he thought of her husband surrendering her without a single protest.
It was humiliating.
‘And so,’ he said at last, softly. ‘Your decision has been made for you, I think.’
So you made a mistake. Deal with it. This is for Simon, remember?
Yes, it was. And, if there was one thing she’d come to realise about a man like Enzo Cardinali, it was that like all predators he’d exploit any weakness he could find in order to get a kill. Which meant that if she was going to survive this she couldn’t give him any.
She had to armour herself and armour herself well.
Matilda steeled her spine, lifted her head and looked at him.
There was triumph in his gaze, which she’d expected. But also something else that she hadn’t. A heat that had burned her to ashes back on the island. The same heat that had nearly incinerated her where she’d stood in the hallway.
Not just you, remember? He burned too.
No, she hadn’t forgotten. Not about the power that had been hers in the hot, scented night. A power that might still be hers, if she had the courage to wield it.
‘Don’t get ahead of yourself,’ she said, holding his gaze. ‘I haven’t said yes yet.’
He smiled, a hungry, dark kind of smile, as if he knew something she didn’t. ‘But you will, cara. Most certainly you will. Now, you should go pack for yourself and Simon. We’ll leave for Milan first thing in the morning.’
CHAPTER FOUR
ENZO SAT IN the comfort of his private jet and regarded the small boy sitting opposite him, who was watching him in turn with equal seriousness.
The child’s black hair was spiked up, his Cardinali golden eyes large. He had his mother’s freckles sprinkled across his nose, and her chin too, angled right now with the same determination.
A fine-looking boy. But that was no surprise; he had the Cardinali royal genes.
You’d better hope he has none of the royal flaws.
Enzo ignored the thought, aware of Matilda sitting beside her son, pale and silent. She hadn’t said a word to Enzo the entire morning.
He didn’t like it. It reminded him too much of his mother’s pointed silences. Then again, pressing would make it look as if he cared and he didn’t. No, this wouldn’t be easy for her, but then spending four whole years not knowing he had a son wasn’t easy for him either.
‘I don’t like you,’ his son said with finality after a moment.
Matilda stiffened. ‘Simon, don’t say—’
‘It’s fine.’ Enzo wasn’t bothered. He didn’t expect instant love from the boy, especially given he was a complete stranger to him. ‘You don’t have to like me,’ he went on, addressing the child. ‘But I’m still your father.’
Simon had taken in his stride the news that his father had turned up out of the blue and was intent on taking him and his mother to Italy. As long as there was a swimming pool, he’d said, he didn’t mind.
The boy frowned and for a second Enzo saw his own father in him, which wasn’t a comfortable thought. ‘Why didn’t you come before?’
Enzo didn’t have to ask what Simon meant and for a second he caught Matilda’s grey stare. Colour flushed her cheekbones, a pretty stain of pink.
She was lovely this morning, even in another jeans and T-shirt outfit, with her hair pulled back from her face, the rest of it tumbling over her shoulders in a riot of red.
Desire shifted inside him, lean and hungry as a starving leopard, but he ignored it the way he ignored the anger that shifted along with it.
He would never let himself be at the mercy of his emotions or his baser desires. Not again.
‘I didn’t come before because I didn’t know I had a son,’ he said, because why should he spare her feelings when she hadn’t spared his? ‘Not until your mother told me last night.’
The boy’s frown deepened. ‘And will you be my father for ever?’
‘Yes,’ he said, meeting his son’s gaze. ‘I will be your father for ever.’
Simon chewed his bottom lip. ‘Okay. But I already have a daddy. I can’t call you Daddy too.’
Enzo’s anger twisted, though it wasn’t directed at his son. Because, of course, the boy was presumably talking about St George, which was understandable, given that St George was the only father figure he’d ever known.
Enzo didn’t look at Matilda, though he could feel the distress radiating from her. He didn’t feel sorry for her, not one single iota.
She was the one who’d created this situation. She could deal with it.
‘Of course not,’ Enzo agreed. ‘You’re part Italian. You will call me Papa.’
‘Papa,’ the boy echoed, copying Enzo’s accent. Then he shrugged as if he had no feeling about it one way or the other. ‘Can I play on your phone, Mummy?’
Enzo reached for his own phone before realising belatedly that the child probably wouldn’t want it since there were no games on it.
But Matilda had already taken hers out and had given it to her son, who took it happily. ‘Go and sit over there, Simon,’ she murmured, indicating a long, low couch on the other side of the cabin. ‘I need to talk to Mr Cardinali.’
‘I think you mean “Papa”,’ Enzo corrected, because he did not want her forgetting, not for one second, who the boy’s father was.
Something flashed in Matilda’s eyes, but she didn’t say anything, shooing the boy away to the couch where he could play his games in peace.
Once the child had settled, she said, ‘I think it’s time you told me what the plan is.’
Enzo sat back in his seat, staring at her. Oh, yes, she was certainly beautiful today. Her T-shirt was grey, deepening the storm-cloud colour of her eyes. She wore no make-up and when she’d met him in the car that morning, although she’d brought plenty of luggage for Simon she’d brought only a small bag with her.
Obviously she was driving home the point that she wasn’t making an effort for him, nor was she intending to stay very long.
Unfortunately for her, he was going to ensure that she stayed as long as Simon needed her to, regardless of how she felt about it. Because when he’d said he would take her last night, he’d meant it.
He wouldn’t leave his son without something familiar. And she was that something familiar. At least, until the boy had got to know him, naturally enough.
The satisfaction of the night before returned, settling the coal of anger that smouldered inside him. Yes, taking the boy and Matilda too had been the right decision. The only decision.
He’d met with St George that morning before they’d left and had made an offer on Isola Sacra, doubling his previous offer, because he didn’t want to mess around now he had his son. St George had taken it without argument, the same way he’d accepted Enzo’s insistence on Matilda coming with him the night before.
It had puzzled Enzo a little that the man had made no protest, especially considering that he and St George’s wife had once been lovers. Enzo himself wouldn’t have been so accepting if the positions had been reversed, after all. But he hadn’t thought about it in any depth at the time, too pleased with how everything had turned out with so little fuss.
However, reflecting on it now, St George’s lack of protest was...odd.
‘Plan?’ Enzo murmured, studying her. ‘What plan?’
Her lovely mouth tightened. ‘You know what I’m talking about. You haven’t told me a thing about what’s going to happen when we get to Milan.’
‘I haven’t told you anything because you haven’t asked.’
The colour in her cheeks intensified, anger glittering in her eyes.
Well, that was better than silence. Oh, yes, a lot better. Strong women had always appealed to him, which made it a great pity that she was someone else’s. Because, now that he thought about it, he wouldn’t mind revisiting a few old memories. It was only sex. And perhaps he would be the one to leave her with nothing but an empty bed and cold sheets.
‘Well,’ Matilda said tightly, folding her hands in her lap. ‘Now I’m asking.’
‘What will happen?’ he echoed. ‘Simon will stay in my villa until Isola Sacra, the island I’ve just purchased from your husband, is ready for guests. And then I will take him there.’
She blinked, her lashes glinting red in the sun coming through the plane’s windows. He remembered that rusty colour, the same glint as when she’d lain back on the blanket he’d put down on the sand and looked up at him, smiling as she’d idly stroked his bare shoulder...
‘Island?’ Matilda’s voice was sharp. ‘What island?’
Enzo controlled the heat that curled through him at the memory, ignoring the small tug of something that felt uncomfortably like pain. ‘The island your husband refused to sell to me unless I attended his ridiculous house party.’ He kept his voice cold. ‘Luckily, whatever scruples he had about selling it were easily dispensed with when I doubled the price.’
She looked away, as if something about his statement had bothered her. ‘And what about me?’
‘What about you?’ He couldn’t quite drag his gaze away from her profile, fixating on the shape of her mouth. It was full, the bottom lip sulky. He remembered biting on that bottom lip and making her shiver.
She didn’t appear to notice his stare, too busy gazing out of the window. ‘Presumably you want me to stay with Simon?’
‘Of course I want you to stay with Simon. That’s the whole reason you’re here, after all.’ He also wanted to reach out, take her chin in his fingers and tilt her head back so he could look into her stormy grey eyes. See what she was thinking, though why he wanted to do that he had no idea.
Very suddenly, she turned her head and her gaze met his head-on, and the challenge glowing deep in it hit him like a punch to the gut. ‘Simon and I can find our own accommodation,’ she said, as if she were throwing down a gauntlet. ‘We don’t need to stay with you.’
He went still as the hot coal in his gut flared into life.
Dio, did she really think that challenging him about this was a good idea? Now? After what she’d done to him? And not only him, but her son too. Because, yes, in depriving Enzo of Simon she’d also deprived Simon of Enzo.
A boy needed his father.
Pity yours was never there for you when you needed him.
The small flame of anger burned higher.
No, of course his father hadn’t been there for Enzo. He’d been too full of rage and blame at the change of their circumstances, shouting and railing at his wife. Shouting and railing at Enzo and Dante too. It had been like water off a duck’s back for Dante, but not for Enzo. He was the oldest son. He was the heir. He was responsible.
Quite literally.
A shiver of ice snaked down his spine but he shoved the thought from his head before it could form.
His father had been a terror after he’d lost his throne, and after his wife had left him he’d been even worse. He’d simply pretended Enzo didn’t exist.
But you deserved that.
Yes, well, maybe he had. He and his father deserved each other, at least that was what his mother had flung at him after she’d discovered he’d emptied down the sink all the bottles of wine she’d had stashed away. He’d only been trying to help her, but she hadn’t seen it that way.
‘How dare you?’ she’d shouted at him. ‘So selfish and judgmental and controlling. Just like your father.’
Whatever... Right now, Simon didn’t deserve it, and Simon was what mattered. He would make sure he’d never treat his son the way his father had treated him. Or his mother, for that matter.
‘No,’ Enzo said with finality. ‘He will not be staying anywhere but with me. And so will you.’
Anger glittered in her eyes, like small shards of lightning. ‘Have you really thought about what having a child around is like? Four-year-olds aren’t exactly quiet. They have no concept of—’
‘I don’t care. You both will remain with me and that is final.’
Her chin adopted a mutinous slant and he found himself almost hoping she would push him further, harder, so he could...
So you can what?
Enzo shifted in his seat, annoyed with himself. He was letting her get under his skin, which was stupid in the extreme. Four years ago he’d let her do more than that; he’d let her almost find her way to his soul and he would never allow that to happen again. Most especially given that she was someone else’s.
Demanding His Hidden Heir (Mills & Boon Modern) (Secret Heirs of Billionaires, Book 26) Page 5