Maybe that’s why his features looked as though they had been set askew? His mouth was…not right. His upper lip was uneven and the claw marks drew lines through his unkempt stubble all the way down into his neck.
That was dangerously close to his jugular! Dear God, he had nearly been killed.
She grasped at the edge of the sink, trying to stay on her feet while she grew so light-headed at the thought of him dying that she feared she would faint.
The ravages of his attack weren’t what made him look so forbidding and grim, though, she computed through her haze of panic and anguish. No. The contemptuous glare in his one eye was for her. For this.
He flicked another outraged glance at her middle.
“I thought we were meeting in the boardroom.” His voice sounded gravelly. Damaged as well? Or was that simply his true feelings toward her now? Deadly and completely devoid of any of the sensual admiration she’d sometimes heard in his tone.
Not that he’d ever been particularly warm toward her. He’d been aloof, indifferent, irritated, impatient, explosively passionate. Generous in the giving of pleasure. Of compliments. Then cold as she left. Disapproving. Malevolent.
Damningly silent.
And now he was…what? Ignoring that she was as big as a barn?
Her arteries were on fire with straight adrenaline, her heart pounding and her brain spinning with the way she was having to switch gears so fast. Her eyes were hot and her throat tight. Everything in her wanted to scream Help me, but she’d been in enough tight spots to know this was all on her. Everything was always on her. She fought to keep her head and get through the next few minutes before she moved on to the next challenge.
Which was just a tiny trial called childbirth, but she would worry about that when she got to the hospital.
As the tingle of a fresh contraction began to pang in her lower back, she tightened her grip on the edge of the sink and gritted her teeth, trying to ignore the coming pain and hang on to what dregs of dignity she had left.
“I’m in labor,” she said tightly. “It’s yours.”
Fresh shock flickered over his scarred face, and his gaze dropped to her middle again. “I’m supposed to believe that?”
“My water broke. It’s a textbook sign.”
“You know what I mean.” His aggressive stance didn’t soften, but a tiny shadow flickered in his eye as he watched her draw in a long breath.
She was trying to bear the growing intensity of her contractions without a grimace, but it wasn’t working.
“Is it my father’s?”
“No!” She should have expected that, she supposed. Pretty much everyone believed she was more than Niko’s long-suffering PA. She closed her eyes, wincing in both physical and emotional anguish as the pain peaked. “I don’t have time for a lot of explanations.” She tried for calm when her voice was still tight from the fading contraction. “Whether you believe this baby is yours by my word or after a DNA test doesn’t matter.” It mattered. She hated that he was so skeptical of her. It ground what little self-esteem she possessed well into the dust. “I have to go to the hospital, but I wanted to be the one to tell you that this is your baby. That’s what you would have learned in today’s meeting, along with the fact that…”
He would never forgive her. She had known it even as she was staring at the positive test. Even as she was telling Niko and watching his eyes narrow with calculation. Even as she had sat in meetings that secured her baby’s future and her own.
Even before she told Javiero what Niko had done with his will, she could see stiff resistance taking hold in Javiero’s expression. He would never forgive her for any of this, including abiding by Niko’s wish that she hide her entire pregnancy from him. She hadn’t wanted to, but Niko had been dying at the time. She had agreed to delay telling Javiero because revealing her pregnancy would have caused the sort of war that Niko wouldn’t have been able to handle in his weakened condition. She had known that everything would come out now, after his death, anyway.
So what was one more secret kept for nearly three years?
It was one more. When it came to Niko’s relationship with his two sons and the two women who had birthed them, every misdeed was a blow against someone. Getting between them meant getting knocked around herself.
It was going to hurt no matter what, so she waded in.
“You won’t inherit anything,” she said bluntly. “Exactly as you wished. Instead, Niko has split his fortune equally between his grandchildren.”
“Grandchildren.” It was strange to see his brows rise unevenly, one broken by the claw mark, the other still perfect and endearingly familiar. “Plural.”
“Yes. He has a granddaughter. Aurelia.” Who was adorable, not that Scarlett could say so. “She’s Val’s.”
Javiero’s gaze turned icy at the mention of his half-brother. “Since when does Val have a daughter?”
“Since her mother, Kiara, gave birth to her two years ago. They’ve been living on the island with us since the middle of her pregnancy.”
“That’s not possible.” Javiero spoke with the cynical confidence of a lifetime of dealing with his father’s other family. “Evelina would have used a baby to influence Dad. You haven’t shown up with any equal opportunity checks for Mother.”
“Evelina doesn’t know about Aurelia.” Scarlett didn’t bother explaining how Evelina had dropped the rattle and Niko had picked it up. “Val doesn’t know, either. Niko didn’t want any of you to know. It would have caused fresh battles and he was too sick to weather them. Evelina and Paloma will each receive one million euros and the rest goes to Aurelia and…” She set her hand on her belly, willing the tingle in her back not to manifest into a fresh contraction.
“Well, isn’t that darling,” Javiero
