AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Which Seve blatantly ignored with a shrug. ‘I reserve the right not to incriminate myself.’
She continued staring at him as her curiosity mounted. ‘Will I have to fight you on names too when the time comes?’
The mood altered a touch, his gaze growing cool when he answered, ‘I’m not one of those men who insists on their child taking their name to perpetuate some lofty idea of worthiness or virility.’
She sat up against the half a dozen cushions laid out for her comfort, tugging the light blanket around herself. ‘You’re named after your father.’ She’d discovered as much in her research but not much beyond that. ‘It’s not a stretch to believe your reasoning stems from this.’
He stiffened and once again Genie suspected she’d strayed onto a red zone. But while she mourned the loss of their easy conversation and laughter of minutes ago, a newly discovered yearning wanted to keep transiting through this danger and discomfort. This...roller coaster.
Dr Douglas would call this progress. And hadn’t Seve himself claimed that roller coasters eventually ended, leaving abiding feeling?
Her abiding feeling before she’d stepped on the path was that she wanted to know him more. She’d bared herself to him against every self-preserving caution.
‘If there was ever a blatant example of a man using his offspring to over-inflate his ego, then I was it for my father. Hell, both my parents.’
The words were tossed out with icy contempt but Genie suspected he wasn’t even aware of the bitterness coating his voice. His gaze was trapped in the middle distance, his languid pose replaced by pure tension.
‘Lita doesn’t seem like the kind of woman who would sit by and let you be treated that way.’
His face hardened further, as if this truth was even more caustic. ‘She isn’t. Which was why they cut her out of their lives and by extension mine until I went to find her when I turned eighteen.’
‘They deliberately kept you two apart?’
One corner of his mouth lifted but his expression was humourless. ‘She didn’t hesitate to make her feelings known about how her son and daughter-in-law were mistreating her grandson, only bringing him out to display him to their guests when it benefitted them to play the parental role. At some point, she begged them to let me live with her permanently. They refused of course. It didn’t suit my father to be seen as a neglectful parent, even though he fitted the label. And once he passed, my mother attempted to pick up where he’d left off. I’d made my first ten million and she felt it was time to leverage her son’s accomplishments for social elevation. I hear she still does with her Z-list friends in Buenos Aires.’
Genie gasped. ‘Your mother is alive?’
‘Very much so. But since the only use she had for me were bragging rights she could gain from having a billionaire son, we parted ways a long time ago.’
Silence reined over their picnic, Genie fighting the strong urge to reach out.
She’d gone with her instincts far too much lately. And these raw emotions were too potent to trust. For all she knew, it was the wrong social cue.
Screw logic. Just feel.
‘I don’t know if those traits attracted them to one another or whether she was corrupted by my father later, all I know is that family was secondary to him. His primary raison d’être was to elevate himself first and foremost, by whatever means necessary. Fully endorsed by my uncle.’
A jolt went through her at his volunteering this morsel. ‘Lorenzo?’
Chilling bleakness entered his eyes. ‘I don’t know who influenced whom about my upbringing but the worst of it came from him.’
Her mouth dried. ‘What did he do?’
Tense moments ticked by when he said nothing, his mouth a thin, forbidding line. When his fingers tightened, she wanted to reach out, to lay her hands over his in reassurance. But she held still, gave him the space he needed.
‘He couldn’t father children of his own, so I became his surrogate son with my father’s blessing. He was rich and influential enough to sway my parents to his thinking about my upbringing.’ His tension ratcheted up until she feared he would snap from the force of it. ‘Including administering routine corporal punishment when I was deemed to have misbehaved.’
Genie gasped. ‘No.’ She didn’t realise her hand had shot out to cover his clenched fists until he looked down.
For an eternity they remained still, then his nostrils flared in a loud exhale. ‘Oh, yes. They believed being belted on a regular basis would make me a proper man.’ The words crackled with bitterness.
Something in her chest cracked as puzzle pieces slotted into place. ‘Is that...is that why you didn’t want a child of your own?’ she ventured softly.
Shadowed eyes rose to meet hers. ‘Lita is the only family I trust. But she’s not going to be around for ever.’ He shrugged. ‘The human psyche is a labyrinth. Some things are worth the risk. I didn’t think bringing a child into a family plagued by dysfunction and abuse was one of them.’
Her heart lurched. ‘Do you still think that?’
His features darkened further. A muscle ticked in his jaw and his gaze lowered to the blanket. ‘Like you, I don’t accept failure as an option,’ he said, his voice driven with purpose. Perhaps even a determination to prove he could succeed where his father and uncle had failed?
