AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Stop it,” she said angrily, and desperately. Panic had turned the blood in her veins to ice. The idea of what he was proposing made her want to throw herself on the floor and curl into a ball. “Just stop.”
“I will not stop,” he was relentless. “I will take him and I will keep him until your debt is repaid.”
“He’s not a pawn!” She shouted, and she reached behind her for something to hold onto, her fingers curving around the handle of the fridge. “He’s our son!”
“Yours and mine! My flesh and blood that you concealed and would have continued to conceal! My God, how can you live with what you’ve done?”
She was shaking all over.
“You think it does not matter? That it is not such a big deal? Then see how you like it.”
“Stop threatening me,” she demanded, lifting a hand and rubbing it over her eyes as though she could somehow erase this visage from her eyes. It didn’t work.
“This is no threat,” he said. “It is a promise. I will take our son from you and on his sixth birthday, we will discuss opportunities for shared custody. Understood?”
“No,” she shook her head from side to side, her body weakening. “Do you wonder why I kept him a secret? Look at the kind of man you are! It was bad enough when I knew you to be someone who would sleep with a woman while engaged to another, who would willingly engage in random affairs. But this? What you’re saying? You’re a ruthless, cold bastard and I hate you with all that I am!”
His eyes flared. “Hate me or not, it changes none of the facts.” His cold acceptance of her disdain and grief made everything so much worse. He was impenetrable, impervious to the emotions she was feeling and incapable of expressing sympathy or understanding. “Nor what I am capable of in the face of this, Elizabeth.”
She couldn’t stop the shivering now. It overtook her body. She squeezed her eyes shut as breath strained in her lungs.
“I want you to leave,” she whispered.
Silence fell, heavy in the room, and eventually, it emboldened her. She opened her eyes warily, to find him staring at her, a look on his face she couldn’t comprehend. But it was dark and angry, full of emotions that hurt to see.
“You have two options.” He spoke slowly, enunciating each word with a bite of derision. “Accept that it is your turn to lose our son for three long years…”
She sucked in a painful gulp of air and vomit burned her insides.
“Or marry me and raise him as my wife.”
The pain didn’t recede. She could hardly breathe. She was suffocating. “I can’t…”
He held a hand up to silence her. “You may choose what you can and can’t make your peace with. One of those two scenarios will play out though, Elizabeth. Decide which it is to be. I’ll come back at five to meet my son and hear your answer.”
And with that, he was gone.
Joshua returned from nursery school with a fever. His skin was pale, his eyes heavy, and he let Ellie cuddle him the whole way home – highly unusual for an independent little munchkin like him.
And she soaked up his clinginess, because after a day of angsting, she needed his hugs and love. She needed his sweetness and the reassurance of holding him close. But even as she did so, she knew one thing for absolute certain. She couldn’t lose him. Not for three years, not even for three days.
Letting him be raised by someone else was anathema to her, and she didn’t doubt Xavier Salbatore would do everything he’d threatened.
Oh, she’d fight him, but at what cost? Taking him to court would result in too high a price. Not financial, but emotional. What would it do to Joshua to know how deep his parents’ hatred raged?
What would Xavier say about her in court to discredit her? How would she fight back?
“I’m so-oo tired,” Joshua complained, and she kissed his curls and nodded, unlocking the door to their townhouse. It no longer felt like the lovely, homely sanctuary it always had.
She bathed him and administered some paracetamol, then attempted to get him to eat some toast and honey, and when that failed, she put him to bed with a tepid cup of chamomile tea.
But he took only two sips before snuggling down into his pillow and shutting his dark, heavy eyes.
“Oh, darling,” Ellie murmured, stroking his soft, damp curls, marveling at the face that was so like Xavier’s. She pressed a kiss to his brow and then snuggled his favourite toy, a panda bear, in the crook of his arm. Emotions swirled through her.
She bit down on her lip and left the room, throwing one last glance over her shoulder at the son she’d made with a man she couldn’t stand.
She pulled the door to Joshua’s room closed softly and then padded down the stairs to the kitchen, her eyes shifting to the clock on the oven.
