Page 4 of Pregnant Behind the Veil (Brides for Greek Brothers #3)

She blinks. Her full lips part. I shove away the brief flash of disappointment and steel myself for her demands.

“I don’t want you around my child. I don’t want to ever see you again.”

I stare at her, waiting for the punchline. But it doesn’t come. No, instead her words stab into me. The conviction in her voice, the certainty that she would be perfectly content to banish me from her life and our child’s, is a hit I never saw coming.

“Our last two encounters haven’t been cordial,” I finally say, “but for good reason.”

A harsh laugh escapes her lips. The brittleness of it crawls over my skin.

“Cordial? No, cruel. Petty. Hurtful.”

She spits the words out like machine gun fire.

“I had a right—”

“To be suspicious. To ask questions. To request a meeting with me, even with my bosses. Not to accuse me of being a conniving seductress or your father’s lackey.”

Her voice darkens on the word father . My eyes narrow as an uncomfortable suspicion forms. One I never suspected because I had been too fixated on my own anger.

“Did he force you into this? Hurt you?”

She blinks, surprised by the change in conversation. “Why would you care?”

I run a frustrated hand through my hair. “I’m not a monster, Alessandra. Yes, I’m angry. But that doesn’t mean I want harm to come to you.”

Her shoulders slowly drop down. “No,” she says softly. “He didn’t hurt me. He didn’t pressure me. Into anything ,” she adds with such ferocity I almost believe her. “But as a client, he wasn’t kind.”

Perhaps the nicest way I’ve heard him described as the bastard he is.

The man emotionally and mentally abused my mother for the first ten years of my life.

On his death, instead of righting the wrongs he did to her, he tied the one thing he left her in his will to my fulfilling his wish of getting married.

“Why work for him?”

“Because he requested me. It was the biggest account I’d ever been assigned to, and I wasn’t going to turn down an opportunity like that. And while he wasn’t the kindest of men in the beginning, I didn’t get to see his true face until the morning after I met you.”

My fingers curl into fists. “What did he do?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

I stalk forward and plant my hands on her desk. “Tell me, Alessandra.”

“Attorney-client privilege,” she fires back. “And even if I did tell you, you wouldn’t believe me.”

“Try me.”

She stands slowly, defiance and confidence written in the determined set of her chin and the thin line of her lips.

“I owe you nothing, Mr. Sullivan. Now, I’m tired. It’s late.”

I want to argue. I want to demand that we stay as late as we need to and sort this mess out. Starting with why she was in Santorini and how she came to be in that cliffside bar.

But my current tactics aren’t working. I switch my approach. “How are you getting home?”

“The same way I always do.”

I ran plenty of calls in New York’s metro system during my first years on patrol as a police officer. There’s no way in hell I’m letting the pregnant mother of my child hop a subway train this late at night.

“I’ll drive you.”

“No. Thank you.”

She grabs her purse off the desk then winces slightly, her hand drifting to her temple. Alarmed, I start to circle around to her.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” She steps back. “Just tired.”

I follow her out of her office and down the hall. The earthy red tones in her dark brown hair catch the light. My eyes drift down to the sway of her hips, the curve of her backside beneath her dress. Blood pumps through my veins as desire stirs.

Five months. Five months of waking up with my body hard and the memory of throaty moans echoing in my ears. Even after learning who Alessandra was and realizing that she had most likely been in Santorini on Lucifer’s orders hadn’t dimmed my lust.

We walk into the lobby of Kingston Estate Law: white walls, gray wood floors glinting beneath the lights of a domed ceiling. Donnie sits off to the side at a curved desk in front of a bank of monitors. He glares at me before his eyes dart to Alessandra.

“I’m headed out, Donnie.”

“Don’t know if you saw on the metro app, Miss Wright, but your subway line is down.”

Alessandra stops so quickly I nearly run into her.

“What?” Her voice pitches up.

“Mechanical issue.”

“I see.”

Her tight tone has me biting back a smile.

“I’ll splurge on a taxi.”

My eyes narrow on her back.

“Good idea,” Donnie says with an encouraging nod to her and another scowl in my direction. “You have a good night now.”

I follow her into the elevator, ignoring her pointed movement to the farthest side of the car. Donnie’s staring daggers at me. I waggle my fingers at him as the doors close.

Alessandra sighs. “You do like to needle people.”

“I perfected it in elementary school.”

Neither one of us speaks for the next ten floors. It doesn’t bother me. During my time in NYPD’s Special Crimes Division, I spent countless nights on stakeouts, in interrogations waiting for a criminal to crack under the weight of silence.

What does bother me, however, is her scent.

I’d forgotten it. But now, enclosed in this tight space, the faint traces of her perfume are stirring memories I’ve been trying to suppress and setting my blood on fire.

Jasmine, rich and sweet, reminds me of how her fingers tangled in my hair as I slid into her wet heat.

Rose, gentle and floral, reminds me of how she woke me with a kiss when the moon was full in the sky before moving down my body and taking me in her mouth.

And that faint whisper of amber reminds me of holding her in my arms, tracing my fingers up and down the curve of her back, as we both shared small pieces of the pains that had driven us to Santorini.

Focus . My brain listens to the order, but other parts of my anatomy are slower to respond.

“My car’s right outside. We can talk on the way back to your house.”

“Pointless since there’s nothing to talk about.”

I face her, wait until she’s looking at me so she can see my determination, feel the weight of my intention.

“That’s where you’re wrong. I meant what I said before. If it’s mine, I will be involved. If you try to keep my child from me, I’ll take you to court. I will win.”

She holds my gaze even as her pulse pounds at the base of her neck. I don’t want her to be afraid. But if that’s what it takes to get her to accept that I’m not going anywhere, so be it.

“I won’t have my son or daughter growing up thinking their father didn’t want them.”

She’s so still it’s as if she’s turned to stone. Then, at last, she exhales.

“It’s a boy.”

Reality shifts, morphs into something more. Something far more important than my existence.

A boy. My son.

Her hand drifts down to her stomach again, pressing her skirt against her body. The possessiveness that reared its head in her office now coils my muscles into tight springs. I tell myself to slow down, to wait for the results of the paternity tests.

“A boy,” I echo.

“Yes.” The elevator slows. A moment later, the doors slide open. Her other hand curls into a fist at her side as she raises her chin. “And I don’t want him to be hurt.”

Anger edges out some of the joy and adds heat to my next words. “Why do you automatically assume I’m going to hurt him?”

Pain darkens her eyes. “Because all you’ve done is hurt me.”

Stunned, I stand where I am, rooted to the spot as she walks out of the elevator.

Guilt burrows deeper into my skin as I watch her, shoulders thrown back, her movements confident and her pace steady.

But I also see other signs: the clenched fist at her side, the rigid set of her shoulders, the slight tilt of her head as if she’s resisting the urge to glance back.

I’m not the kind of man to question, to hesitate. But for a second, I wonder if I need to walk away. If Alessandra does relent, am I capable of being the man a child would need me to be? Will I hurt the baby as she claims I’ve hurt her?

I’m capable of inflicting such pain. I’ve done it before.

The elevator doors start to close. I slam my arm against the metal to stop their progress and step out.

Even if I’m not capable in this moment, I will do anything to become the father a child deserves.

My past actions were selfish but, unlike Lucifer’s, unintentional.

I’ve spent years locking away my emotions to ensure I never harm anyone again.

And if I’ve hurt Alessandra, I’ll make it up to her.

Show her I’m the man she and the baby can depend on.

But there are questions that need to be answered first, tangled threads to unweave about the past five months. There is no way in hell I’m letting Alessandra slip through my fingers until I know the truth about everything, starting with the paternity of the child she’s carrying.