Page 131 of Modern Romance December 2025 1-4

She blinks at the name and her perfect mouth goes soft. But then she takes a step back. ‘No, no. You can’t just come back here acting as if—’

‘I know you’re pregnant,’ I interrupt, my remaining patience abruptly slipping. ‘Four months, to be exact, which makes me the father of your child. So, I’ll ask again. Get in the car or I will put you in it.’

She pales at my tone, yet her chin juts mutinously. I remember that steel in her. I only caught a glimpse of it four months ago, but it’s on full display now.

I think she’s not going to do it and I don’t want to have to carry out my threat, but I will if I have to. Then she lets out an angry breath and gets into the back seat of the car. I slide in beside her, shut the door, and give my driver the okay to go.

‘Wait.’ Olympia looks around a little wildly as the car pulls into the street. ‘Where are we going?’ This time when her eyes meet mine, they’re full of golden sparks. ‘What are you doing, Rafael? I thought we were just going to talk.’

I sit back in the seat next to her. ‘We will. When we get to my home in Sicily.’

‘What?’ She stares at me in shock. ‘I’m not going to Sicily with you. Are you completely mad?’

‘No.’ I turn to look at her, pinning her with my gaze. ‘Why didn’t you tell me about the pregnancy?’

Sparks glitter in her eyes for a moment, then she looks away out the window of the car as we weave through the traffic and the back streets, heading towards the motorway that will take us out of the city to the airport where my jet is ready to leave. Her hands twist in her lap. I want to pull aside her coat, see the swell of her belly where my child lies. Cold confirmation by phone is one thing, but I want to see the evidence for myself.

‘Stop the car,’ she says. ‘Let me out.’

I reach for her chin, gripping it and turning her face towards me. ‘Answer the question, Olympia. You owe me that at least.’

Her gaze is furious, but she makes no move to pull away. ‘I haven’t told anyone, if you must know. Not even my brother.’

Protective rage presses against my throat. ‘Why not? Will he hurt you? Did he do—?’

‘Of course not.’ She jerks her chin out of my grip. ‘Why the hell would you think that?’

I shouldn’t be talking about her brother. I’m not supposed to know anything about him or how he keeps her, yet anger and a powerful, inexplicable jealousy are choking me. ‘He keeps you a prisoner, doesn’t he?’ I demand. ‘Were you afraid to tell him? Is that why you didn’t?’ I’m crossing my own self-imposed boundaries and yet I can’t seem to stop. ‘Were you afraid he’d hurt our child?’

Her eyes widen, shock flickering through the amber depths. She says nothing, staring blankly at me, but I can see her brain working furiously behind her eyes. This woman might have complained about her idiocy four months ago, but there is nothing idiotic about her, nothing at all.

‘What do you mean he keeps me prisoner?’ she asks.

Goddamn. She’s going to guess my motives and I know it. So much for her being sheltered and, by her own admission, coddled and cosseted. That might be true, but it doesn’t mean she’s not smart. In fact, I would hazard a guess that she’s far too smart for her own good and most certainly for mine.

‘The rumours,’ I say, attempting to be dismissive. ‘You’ve never been seen out of the house and you’re never photographed anywhere. People talk.’

She stares at me as if she’s never seen me before in her entire life. ‘Who are you?’ There’s a trace of panic in her voice. ‘What do you want?’

I don’t want to scare her, that’s the last thing I want to do, but she keeps seeing more than I want her to. She can sense there’s more to me than a man she slept with once four months ago.

My muscles are rigid, my hands wanting to reach across the gap between us and pull her close, silence her and her questions with my mouth. I don’t understand why I’m so reluctant to tell her the truth. What does it matter if she knows? She can’t run from me, not now I have her. Do I really care about how she sees me? It doesn’t matter now surely?

I meet her gaze. ‘You know who I am, dragonfly. I’m Rafael Santangelo. I own Atlas Construction. And now I own you.’

CHAPTER SIX

Olympia

Panic threatens, but Ipush it away as I stare at the man sitting bare inches from me. He’s all in black and when he appeared outside the taverna, striding towards me after I was nearly knocked over by some drunken idiot, he seemed like some evil force out of a fantasy novel with his black coat flaring out behind him. A storm crow or Dracula ready to claim a victim.

Rafael Santangelo. The man I lost my virginity to four months ago in Singapore. The father of my child.

My mouth is dry as the desert, my heartbeat racing.

When I got his call a couple of hours ago, I was shocked to the core. Back in Singapore, his unrestrained passion, the hunger he had for me made me feel stronger than I had in years. Only for all of that to then break apart when he sent me away. I didn’t want to feel broken afterwards—he was a stranger after all so why should I let him matter?—yet a part of me did. A part of me wondered if I was really as strong as I thought I was if a mere stranger could hurt me so badly.

But I wasn’t going to give in to those doubts, not after how I’d battled my way through the darkness of my past for so many years, and so I was determined to forget him, to chalk him up to experience. I refused to acknowledge that he’d hurt me. I refused to let him slide under my skin and stay there like the barb he was.