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“It’s not your business,” Esme said. “My sex life is my business. And this isn’t your business either, Adonis. You didn’t want to continue the relationship, and I assumed that you really wouldn’t want a child.”

“You did not assume correctly,” Adonis said, his whole body feeling stiff. “It was not your decision to make.”

“It is my decision to make,” she said. “It is my decision to make because it is my body that is giving this child life. I was the one who was going to have to face questions about pregnancy. I am the one who’s going to have to weather scrutiny about who the father might be. That means it is absolutely my choice. I decided not to involve you because if you don’t want anything to do with me then you don’t need to have anything to do with the baby. If you can’t care for the mother of the child then why would I expect you to care for the child?”

“How did this happen?” Alex asked.

Both she and Adonis shot him a deadly glare. “I don’t actually think you want the answer to that,” Esme said.

“You’re right,” Alex said. “I really don’t think I do.”

“Then perhaps you should excuse yourself while he and I talk.”

“We were going to have a business meeting,” Alex growled.

“And now we aren’t,” she said. “Well done, Alex. This really backfired on you.”

“It never occurred to me that you’d fucked him,” he said.

“You underestimate us both,” Adonis said.

“I don’t even know what to make of this,” Alex said, shaking his head and walking out of the room. He paused for a moment in the doorway. “I swear to God, if you hurt my sister I will put you in an early grave.”

“And I would deserve it,” Adonis said. There was nothing else to say. The truth was, he had handled Esme badly, and the evidence of how careless he was was right in front of all of them. He hadn’t used a condom. With Esme. Of all people. This woman that he had known since she was a girl. This woman whose life and trauma he understood, and he had been that careless with her.

He deserved every last bit of scorn that could be heaped upon him.

“There’s nothing to say,” she said. “You can go right back to whatever you were doing, or whoever you were doing before my brother summoned you here.”

“He really didn’t know?”

“No. He didn’t. And it certainly didn’t occur to me that he was going to rope you into a business deal. He was furious at you. I would never have thought that he would willingly join up with you again.”

He really wasn’t sure whether that made him feel better or worse. That he was such a pariah in Alexander’s eyes—or had been over the last few months—that she had thought it was likely Alex would never want to speak to him again.

That she could keep this from him…forever. After everything they had been through. After…everything.

And yes, he was fucking furious about it. Because he might have left her after the two of them slept together, but she should have known that with something like this, he would need to be told. She should’ve known that it was essential to him that…

Fathers meant nothing to him. His own had used him for all he could and abandoned him to his own devices. But the responsibility that a person should feel for the child that they created, that did not mean nothing to him. Because every single one of the children that had been abandoned to a life on the streets with him, with Alex and with Esme, was there because their parents had failed to take responsibility for them. They had been there because their parents had loved drugs more than their own children. Because they loved money more than they loved their own children. They had cared for themselves above all else.

Adonis didn’t know if he had the capacity to love. But what he did have the capacity for was protection. Fierce protection. He had given it to Alex and Esme for as long as he had known them. He had let his guard down that night with her. And the end result was this.

A grave mistake. Something he never would have done to her if he would’ve been…

You have no excuse. You have no excuse at all. This is the consequence of your actions. And he thought about turning around and walking away. He really did, for just a moment. Because she had chosen not to tell him, and perhaps it was something he should listen to. He was poison in their lives; he knew it. It was why he’d walked away from the company, from them.

Maybe it was a sign that he also didn’t need to poison the life of this child.

But he couldn’t do that. He couldn’t walk away. He couldn’t leave.

He simply couldn’t.

Not when he knew.

“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me.”

Her mouth dropped open. “Really? You can’t believe that I didn’t tell you? After the way that you…threw me out of your apartment unceremoniously, like I was a stranger that you picked up at the bar.”