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‘For colluding with my cousin to rob me.’ He nodded. ‘I remember it so well. Luca made some big mistakes in his life but that one got him caught and thrown out of the family. You were only thrown out of a job.’
And your life, Freya tagged on silently. ‘Without a good reference from you I was virtually unemployable.’
He just lifted his drink to his mouth and drank. Indifferent, uncaring, cold, arrogant…
She was back to those adjectives, she realised and heaved in a deep breath. ‘I didn’t do it. He set me up. I caught him with his fingers in your safe and threatened to tell the police.’
‘Only threatened?’ A sleek eyebrow arched cynically.
And that, Freya thought, had been her downfall. Luca was family. She’d worked and lived with Enrico long enough to know that you did not shop family to anyone, especially to the police.
Or thought she knew it.
‘I decided that it was up to you to make that decision. So I went back to the apartment to wait for you to get home. He arrived drunk as a skunk. I’d just got out of the bath. He had a key he said you’d given him so he could let himself in. He was standing there in our bedroom stark naked and l-laughing at me, telling me that you’d handed me over to him because—’
‘You know I don’t want to hear this, so why are you saying it?’ Enrico cut in coldly.
‘One reason,’ she said, cramming the rest of that ugly scene back down inside her. ‘I have as much right as the next person to defend myself against the slur you Ranieris placed on my character.’
‘But I did not listen to you then, so why do you think I will listen now?’
‘Because you want something from me that you are not going to get without giving me a fair hearing and then reparation for what you and your rotten cousin did to me.’
‘Are we talking about my son?’
‘He isn’t your son.’
The tension was heating up again. Enrico stiffened infinitesimally. ‘He is my son,’ he insisted.
‘I want proof of that.’
‘Perdono?’ He stared at her. ‘Isn’t that my line?’
Freya crossed her arms more tightly and refused to rise to his sarcasm. ‘I don’t need to prove anything,’ she bluffed. ‘And since I don’t want you to be Nicky’s father I am contesting your claim. If you’re that sure of yourself then prove it,’ she challenged. ‘I want DNA proof.’
‘Is this your idea of a joke?’ he demanded.
Not so she’d noticed. Freya gave a small shrug. ‘I’m the woman you believe tripped like a butterfly from Ranieri to Ranieri—’
‘Will you stop saying my name as if it is an insult?’ he ground out.
But the name was an insult to her. ‘If what you believe about me is true, then even this man-tripping butterfly would not know if you are my son’s father. So I demand proof before I let you near Nicky,’ she repeated.
‘But anyone with eyes can tell that he belongs to me!’ Enrico bit out.
‘Or Luca,’ she said, and watched with grim satisfaction as his handsome face locked up. ‘Unless, of course, what you believe about me is just a pack of wicked lies you enjoyed swallowing…’
‘I did not enjoy it,’ he answered stiffly.
‘Then in my place,’ she continued, undeterred by the interruption, ‘no caring mother would want a man who can believe such bad things about her to have anything to do with her child. Your cynical view of me would inevitably rub off on him and poison his mind about the mother he loves.’
‘I would not do that.’
‘I don’t believe you. So I repeat, you prove Nicky is your son because I am not going to help you.’
He turned on her then, slamming the glass down. ‘But you know he’s my son!’
‘Do I?’
