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‘What kind of dancer?’ Ella asked the man lost to memories of his childhood.
‘Ballet. Before she met my father and Vladimir disowned her, Tatiana was the principal ballerina at the Utonchennyy Ballet Company.’
Ella’s shock must have shown on her face because Roman looked up and smiled, proud of his mother’s incredible achievement. A pride that was both contagious and shocking. Shocking because, for just a moment, she caught a glimpse of the fiancé who had courted her, who had—at the time—appeared proud of her.
‘But after Vladimir and her lover abandoned her she was alone, Ella. She had no one and no help. She worked herself to the bone and it didn’t seem to matter how much she did, or how much she tried to love me, she never felt it was enough.
‘So hear me now, Ella. My child will know me. They will bear my name and they will want for nothing in this world. They will never have to beg for anything, from either parent.’
That vehemence in his tone she understood. The need to protect she felt beat strongly within her own heart. Her own loss, melding with his, made her determined to find a way for them both through this. But she’d meant what she’d said when she’d proclaimed herself no longer naïve. And that forced the next words to her lips.
‘I have some conditions.’ He caught her gaze and gestured for her to proceed. ‘I need to know who you are. I married out of deceit—I will not continue that way. Neither will I blindly sign my life and my child’s life away to a man who has broken every single piece of trust I had. You cannot lie to me again.’
He nodded.
‘I mean it, Roman. I will not live like that.’
‘I understand.’
‘And I also need to know that you are done with your plans of revenge. Which means that I need to know that you’re not taking down the company.’ She wavered on the edge of a precipice, half hoping and half fearing that he would agree. But she needed him to understand. ‘That company might have been Vladimir’s, but it was just as much my father’s. It is a part of our child’s history.’
‘A history that you would own? How on earth do you plan to explain that to our child?’ he demanded, anger vibrating within his words. ‘That company was more important to Vladimir than his own daughter and even you. How can you want anything to do with it?’
* * *
Everything he’d ever done, every single achievement, every single motivation, goal and broken thing within him, had been about bringing the destruction of Vladimir’s company and now she wanted him to keep it? His heart rent in two, half denying her request and half ready to do whatever she wanted.
‘It is the only thing I have left of my father. A father I barely remember. And, like you, that is not something I want my child to experience. So I would very much like you to agree to my conditions. But know this—if, at the end of the next five months I don’t want to be in a relationship with you, then you will buy my shares from me, give me a divorce and let me go.’
‘Why would I buy your shares?’
‘Because if I don’t want to be married to you, then I don’t want any kind of relationship with you, professional or personal.’
‘And the child?’
‘You will grant me sole custody.’
He nearly laughed. A choking bitter laugh that caught in his throat and burned. Because, no matter what she thought, in this moment he had no intention of letting either her or their child go. And if she thought he’d let his plans for Vladimir’s company go, then she was sorely mistaken about the kind of man he was. Nothing would stop him from either goal, not her conditions, and certainly not her feeble attempt to coerce him into breaking the promise he’d made to his mother on her deathbed. The promise to dismantle every single piece of that damned company.
But Roman also knew that simply giving in to her demands would appear too easy—and although he had once thought his wife naïve and innocent, she was most definitely not stupid.
‘If you have conditions, then so do I. If I travel for work, then I want you with me.’
‘And if I travel for work? I have a fledging business that will require a lot of international travel.’
‘What is this business?’
‘Do you need to know?’
‘In so much as you seem to need to know about most of my reasoning.’
‘It’s the one I told you about before,’ she said, not having to explain what ‘before’ meant to either of them. Before they were married, before Ella had become pregnant. Before he had revealed his true self.
‘You’ve done it?’
‘Yes. Well...started to,’ and Roman couldn’t help but respond to the spark of pride and excitement in Ella’s eyes. He recognised it, had seen it in his mother’s eyes when she would sometimes dance for him, beneath the stars in the night sky. ‘Célia is at the offices now—they’re being set up as we speak,’ Ella pressed on, drawing him back from memories of the past. ‘So I will need to be in Paris.’
‘And I will need to be in Moscow,’ he growled, chafing against the demand in her tone.
