Page 19 of Driving the Billionaire Wild

Apollo’s jaw tightened, knowing that the same thought had plagued him for the past few days as well. It didn’t make sense; even with privacy laws, any decent private investigator would have been able to discover who had been renting the penthouse in the Venice hotel that night. He remembered how Allegra had mentioned Luca at the track and the nugget of suspicion in his gut grew further. He knew there were more questions he needed to ask.

‘My father’s family don’t have the best track record when it comes to honesty,’ he said bitterly, noting Astrid’s immediate wince at his unintentional pun.

‘That’s an understatement.’

‘I’d like to think that their tricks and underhanded dealings are strictly reserved for racing…but perhaps not.’

‘The timing is a little too perfect for coincidence. Coming at it from a PR perspective, if I were Allegra Accardi right now, and I had any kind of information that would discredit you, overwhelming you with bad press would be a great way to try and get control of a team that’s already in flux, no?’

Apollo nodded, hearing what she said and knowing she was right. If Enzo had known how ruthless his only granddaughter could truly be, maybe he would have left her the team instead.

Apollo had put his entire reputation on the line only to find out that his grandfather had been cheating and that his first and only drivers’ championship win had been sullied by the revelation of espionage against another team. The realisation had shattered many of his illusions abouthimself and the family who had raised him, and spurred him to distance himself from them entirely. He would never know if he’d still have beaten Grayson Koh in that championship without Enzo’s meddling, but it didn’t matter, because that win was worthless to him as a result.

He’d spent as much time as he could here on the island since he’d walked away from Elite One, building this villa and the surrounding nature reserve with his own two hands and reconnecting with his mother. He’d still flown round the world to try his hand at various motor sports, just to prove to himself that it wasn’t just his grandfather’s influence that had made him a success. He’d then focused on growing his ‘Apollo’ sports brand, which had succeeded beyond his wildest expectations.

To think, during all of that time, Astrid had been growing their son, giving birth to him alone and figuring out how to raise him. He’d missed so many of those first moments a father was supposed to be present for. Thanks to a love of parties and a penchant for sleeping with his co-stars, Santo Accardi had been inconsistent at best during the tumultuous years of Apollo’s childhood. When it came to choosing between fame or parenting moments, his father had always preferred the spotlight and accolades.

He turned away, scowling out at the horizon.

His plan to spend his time here getting to know his son and exploring his chemistry with Astrid had seemed so simple at the start. Then, he’d decided that there was only one logical solution to their secret love-child dilemma: for he and Astrid to marry. He’d seen her ground rules as a challenge and prepared himself to regroup and begin again from a different angle. He was no strangerto changing tactics and starting over with a fresh plan of action in the face of difficulty…

But, as he stared down at Astrid’s worried face, he suddenly saw all of this from her perspective. Her life was in chaos, and the world she’d built as a single mother for her young son was being threatened. He had barely known of his son’s existence for more than twenty-four hours before he’d essentially caused their orderly life to implode.

He had grown up indoctrinated into the importance of what it meant to be an Accardi. Did he really believe it was the best course of action to have his son become one too? Or was that simply his own selfish nature and arrogance at play?

‘Apollo?’

Astrid’s worried tone jolted him from his thoughts and he tried to remember what they’d been discussing. ‘Let me handle Falco Roux and Allegra. I brought you here to let you regroup in privacy, not monopolise your PR skills.’

‘My skills are currently useless, considering Tristan Falco has essentially put me on suspension.’

Apollo stilled. ‘He didwhat?’

‘Not as a punishment or anything; it’s more that my ability to quell any media storm is only useful to the team when I myself am not a large moving piece of the scandal.’

Apollo narrowed his eyes. He’d avoided Falco’s calls thus far out of necessity, on advice from his legal team, but perhaps he needed to remind his ex-boss of a few choice facts.

He might not have had anything to do with the media storm they found themselves in, but he hadn’t been proactive enough in ensuring his son’s existence was kept secret. One thing was for sure, his desire to connect withhis son could not come before his duty to protect him from harm—protect Astrid too. He’d allowed his judgement to become clouded with idealism and the desire to put the past seven years to rights, but he hadn’t considered that perhaps Luca’s distance from the tangled web of the Accardi family had been a gift in itself.

‘You didn’t cause this scandal, Astrid. I will not allow you or Luca to be punished because of my family’s machinations.’ He took a deep breath and turned, disappearing back into his study and closing the door firmly behind him.

Chapter Nine

ASTRID SAWAPOLLOagain the following morning when they spent time with Luca at the pool. He was keeping his distance from her, avoiding all talk of Falco Roux and his dealings with Accardi, which she supposed she should be grateful for, considering she was clearly biased in wanting him to remain in his current contract. She heard his voice raised in the afternoon as he took various online meetings.

She hadn’t spent the day moping, of course; she’d thrown herself into making memories with Luca—building sandcastles on the beach and trying to spot turtles in the bay. Her son’s boundless energy was well suited to island life, with the ample sunshine and nature providing the perfect environment in which he could be his wild, curious self.

Apollo’s mother returned the next day to apologise for the unpleasant altercation during their first meeting. She asked to meet Luca, introducing herself simply as Leona and asking him if he would like to play chess. Every young boy should play chess, she had declared, sweeping him over to an ornate table in the corner of their dining room and proceeding to spend an hour explaining the game in detail over and over, at Luca’s request. She and Apollo had watched from the sofa and Astrid had jokedthat it seemed Luca had got his competitive streak from both of them. That made a strange smile cross Apollo’s face before he promptly remembered he had a call to make and excused himself.

Leona had returned each day for the rest of the week, spending her afternoons with them as though she couldn’t quite stay away. The look of adoration on the older woman’s face as she interacted with Luca, never wavering in her patience, made tears come to Astrid’s eyes on more than one occasion. She surprised the older woman with a virtual baby album she kept saved in her cloud storage, and held Leona’s hand as the tears fell from both of their eyes.

‘I would have liked to hold my grandson as a baby, to watch him grow,’ Leona said sadly. ‘But you did a beautiful job of it all by yourself. Well done, darling.’

The hug that followed was so real, so all-consuming, that Astrid had to excuse herself to the bathroom and quietly weep. She had never truly grieved the loss of her own parents’ support as she’d become a mother and raised Luca all alone. Their traditional beliefs had formed a barrier in their relationship, long before their cruel abandonment of her after she’d become pregnant had estranged them for good. Her own mother would never have hugged her, or complimented her; she just hadn’t been a warm, loving person. Hearing such maternal words of affirmation and recognition from a woman she admired… It struck something within her.

By some strange twist of fate, they discovered that Luca’s seventh birthday fell on the same day as Apollo’s, a fact that made Leona’s eyes tear up as she asked if she might throw her grandson a birthday party.

Astrid didn’t usually over-indulge her son, preferring to keep his gifts simple. But when she found that Apollo had collected a small mountain of perfectly wrapped gifts in his study, she felt panicked at her own lack of preparation. She told him this when he quizzed her sudden apprehension, and within an hour he had arranged for a driver to take the three of them into the city of St George for a quick shopping trip.