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“We’re already man and wife.”
“Bullshit.”
He gazes down at me with an intensity that makes my skin break out in goosebumps.
“What does that look mean?”
“We’re legally married.”
“When?”
“Remember our date at the casino?”
My nostrils flare. “A half-finished taster menu and a few glasses of wine does not equal a marriage, even if it ends in bondage and anal sex.”
“It happened when we checked into the hotel,” he says.
I close my eyes, trying to remember what happened that night. Things got intense during the meal and Roman called for the hotel manager to make us sign the registration form…
WAIT.
My heart drops into my stomach, and all I can taste is acid. This is Roman Montesano, the man who can rob a woman blind while dazzling her with false love. The crook who will purchase a painting for twenty-five thousand dollars to get back a casino. He’s capable of anything, including turning a stay in a hotel into a wedding.
Blood roars between my ears, and my veins flood with cold adrenaline. My nervous system kicks into top gear and prepares my muscles to fight.
“Are you saying you tricked me into signing yet another unfavorable contract?” I ask, my voice shaking, my fingers clenching around the soup bowl.
The backs of my eyes sting with betrayal, and the pain travels down my sinuses, into my lungs, and infuses my heart with poison.
He did it again.
Roman slipped beneath my defenses, bypassed my paranoia, and skirted around my common sense. He got me thinking he was a man too blinded by righteous anger to realize that he was hurting the woman he loved.
I was thinking of running away until that little speech about loving another man’s baby. Then I allowed him to get too close. Just when I thought he was truly sorry and had confessed every underhanded machination, he reveals that he also tricked me into marriage.
“What else?” I ask, my voice hoarse.
“What do you mean?”
“You engineered our meeting, imprisoned me in your mafia fortress, swindled me into signing over an inheritance from a father I never knew, tricked me into marriage… This is your last chance to confess anything else you did.”
“Emberly.” He sighs as though I’m the one being unreasonable.
“If I find out you’ve done anything else?—”
“Alright,” he says. “We made VIP fliers to get you into the Phoenix.”
I nod. “Anything else?”
Roman hesitates. “It didn’t work.”
“What didn’t work?” I ask through clenched teeth.
“I tampered with the birth control because I wanted you pregnant. That time in the Dolce Vita, I poked holes in the condoms.”
My arms tremble. I stare into my bowl of soup, my vision blurring with tears. Marrying me was inexcusable, but getting me pregnant is unforgivable. He fucked with my body, my hormones, my health, and exposed me to all the risks that come with unprotected sex.
I want to leap off the sofa and kick the shit out of him, but I’d only hurt myself and the baby.
