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‘Exactly,’ Raffaele interposed. ‘And all sorts of complications have arisen since with the company, particularly now that they have a dearth of Parisi talent to run it. It’s going downhill and I want to acquire it.’

Maya glanced up, still mulling over the tangled tale he had spun. ‘But you can’t acquire it,’ she said. ‘Not without marrying and producing a child.’

‘The mathematician can put two and two together.’ Raffaele shifted his cup in a mocking congratulatory gesture. ‘That’s why you’re here. You’re my chance to buy.’

Maya was frowning, her incredulity rising in a great tide so that she set down her coffee cup and stood up, all flustered and defensive. ‘And that’s why you wanted to catch a look at me in the club,’ she realised out loud. ‘But I’mnotyour chance to buy the company... I couldn’t marry you and have a child with you!’

‘Never say never, Maya,’ Raffaele advised with inhuman calm. ‘Once you think it through, you’ll realise that I’m offering you an unbeatable deal. Sit down again.’

‘There’s no reason for me to sit down again when I wouldn’t even consider something so barbaric!’ she exclaimed. ‘And only a man very far removed from reality could label conceiving a child as an unbeatabledeal!’

Raffaele angled his dark arrogant head back and smiled, startling her. ‘There’s the sentimental flaw coming out.’

‘Don’t you haveanysense of decency?’ Maya hissed down at him.

‘Probably not but I do know that, while some women and men casually conceive kids on one-night stands, asking you to marry mefirstand have a child, whom I will fully support, is not that barbaric a request in today’s world,’ Raffaele maintained smoothly. ‘If I have a child with you, it will probably be the only child I ever have and my heir, so you would be raising a child with every possible advantage and privilege from birth.’

‘Money doesn’t come into this equation. Right and wrongdo!’ Maya slammed back at him. ‘Where’s your conscience?’

‘Where this issue is concerned it is as quiet as the grave,’ Raffaele countered levelly. ‘Your family is one step away from being put out on the street with a disabled child.’

‘No, you really don’t have a conscience,’ Maya decided, shocked by that reminder and trembling with the force of her emotions.

‘Where has conscience got you dealing with your irresponsible father?’ Raffaele enquired silkily. ‘As a bonus, I would sort him out for you as well. He needs a job, not another business he can’t cope with. You need to be realistic about the future. You can’t save them from the consequences of their own stupidity all on your own. Youneedmy money.Ineed a Parisi descendant as a wife and to have a child with.’

‘You really are the most hateful man!’ Maya slung at him wrathfully.

‘And there’s flaw number two,’ Raffaele enumerated coolly. ‘You’re an emotional drama queen. I’m not an emotional person.’

‘That’s good,’ Maya told him with a razor-edged smile as she snatched up the cream jug on the tray and doused him with what remained of the contents.

Raffaele vaulted upright, towering over her, his lean, devastatingly handsome features still calm and controlled as he shook himself as casually as a dog that had run through a puddle. ‘Did that make you feel better, Maya?’

‘Yes!’ she yelled back at him as she stalked towards the door.

‘But it hasn’t changed the situation you’re in, has it? So, you have some thinking to do,’ Raffaele told her with infuriating cool. ‘Walk round the block to dissipate the rage. Thinksensiblyabout what I’m offering. I’m offering you your life back because I will free you from all responsibility for your family. All their debts will finally be settled. Their lives will only change for the better and so will yours because you won’t have to worry about them any more.’

‘Dear heaven, who did you take your lessons off? Svengali?’ Maya gasped, her heart hammering, her head awash with murderous impulses she had never experienced in her life before. She was so enraged that she was shaking all over.

‘I’m more Machiavellian in outlook,’ Raffaele paused to tell her gravely. ‘You need to take a deep breath and count to ten before you try to deal with me because losing your temper will back you into a corner and ensure that you lose every time.’

‘I would soonerdiethan be married to a monster like you!’ Maya shouted at him.

‘I don’t think so, Maya. I think you’ll be back here within the hour with a different attitude because I’m the only option you have right now,’ Raffaele forecast with a satisfaction that blazed like a neon sign in his scorching dark golden eyes.

Just when she had decided he was a sociopath he’d revealed an emotion, only not the right kind of emotion, while he had reduced her to a mindless state of rage. Had she ever pictured herself burying a knife in a man’s chest before? She didn’t think so. In a daze she stalked back out and into the lift. She couldn’t think straight.

Raffaele immediately got on the phone to Sal to instruct that one of his bodyguards should tail her.

‘Why?’ Sal asked baldly.

‘She’s in shock. I don’t want her stepping out in front of a bus...or something,’ Raffaele murmured. ‘Not when she’s going to be my wife.’

‘Sheagreed?’ Sal demanded.

‘She will,’ Raffaele confirmed with unblemished confidence.

Without any idea where she was going, Maya marched down the street as though she was on a mission. Her brain was awash with conflicting thoughts laced with a depth of anger she hadn’t known she had the ability to feel. He had asked her to conceive a baby as part of a businessdeal, apparently quite content to create his own flesh and blood purely in the name of profit, recognising nothing wrong in such behaviour. What a poor little mite that child would be! He was immoral, unscrupulous and totally free of normal civilised constraints, as if he had been reared in a jungle well away from the rest of the human race. She had never met anyone that avant-garde before and he had shocked her to her conservative core. When her feet began to ache in her cheap but presentable black medium-heel shoes she walked into a café and bought a cup of tea.

Source: www.allfreenovel.com
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