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‘I made sure you didn’t.’
He scoffed.
She raised an eyebrow and he got worried.
‘How?’ he demanded.
‘They hid it well enough, but I knew what to look for and I erased or covered the things they hadn’t managed to hide.’
‘You falsified documents?’
‘Yes.’
He shook his head in disbelief. They would never have found it. She could have got away with it, and the damage to the Aurora project—the knock-on effect for not only that project’s contracts, but their finance repayments, the partnerships, their reputation—it could have bankrupted them. He struggled to fight back the wave of poisonous anger.
‘Does anyone else in the company know? Do you have anyone else in the company working with you?’
‘No and no,’ she replied clearly and without hesitation.
‘You did all this on your own?’
‘Mostly,’ she admitted with some reluctance.
‘Your sister,’ he realised. ‘And what does she have to do with it?’
‘She was to distract Gianni and keep him away until the Aurora project contracts are signed. We knew that were the two of you together it was likely you’d uncover something to bring our plan crashing down.’ Amelia looked away, unable to meet his gaze.
‘Issy doesn’t know,’ she confessed, guilt and shame eating at her. ‘Anything she does...it’s...she’s innocent.’
Alessandro looked down on her, disgust pouring from him, and it was nothing she didn’t deserve.
‘Why?’
Amelia could have pretended to misunderstand his question. Remind him she was getting vengeance for her father, but that wasn’t what he was asking. Alessandro valued loyalty above all else, it was clear from his work ethics and his relationship with Gianni. She had shamed herself by lying to her sister and involving her in the first place and Alessandro wanted to know why.
A jagged breath tore through her lungs. Could she admit to him thathewas the reason? That ever since whatever madness had taken over them in Hong Kong, she’d not been able to sleep without dreaming of him? That she’d walk through The Ruby in London, her skin a hair’s breadth from fire every single day because she might round a corner and see him? That her heart was constantly running too fast or too slow, depending on whether she had a meeting with him? That after ten years of wanting his destruction, all she wanted was his touch?
She was about to answer but he cut her off with a huff of bitterness. ‘Would it even matter if you did answer? I have no idea which Amelia I’d get.’
A frown cracked through the mask she was trying to hastily adopt but his quick gaze snagged on it.
‘The perfect employee? The traitor?’ he clarified unnecessarily.
But he was wrong. Issy was the one who had adopted a persona, who had made herself into exactly what Gianni liked—half starving herself into a smaller physique, wearing heels for his desired height, dying her hair to his preferred blonde. But Amelia? She had been herself. She hadn’t had to change at all because she’d enjoyed her work. Deep down, she could admit to herself that she’d even been thrilled by it. The cut and thrust of it. The success of projects washersuccess. The pleasure she took from impressing the powerful figures in Rossi Industries. No. Deep down, one of the most painful regrets would be that she would actually miss it when she was no longer there.
‘The seducer?’ Alessandro’s question burst through her thoughts.
‘No.’ The denial rose to her lips before she could call it back. She deserved his scepticism, but their child deserved more. Their baby that was little more than a few cells held together by hope and possibility. A hope that seemed to pour from her soul in an endless stream. ‘No,’ she repeated, this time with more strength and meeting the storm in his eyes. ‘I told you before, that was nothing to do with the plan.’
‘And you expect me to believe that?’ he all but spat.
‘Frankly, I don’t expect you to believe anything that comes out of my mouth ever again,’ she admitted and seemed to have shocked him. ‘But you have a situation that onlyIcan resolve.’
Alessandro went deadly still, his eyes going from stormy to horrified before passing to shock, sending her headlong into an ocean of emotion that she hadn’t expected.
‘No!’ she exclaimed, her hands flying to her abdomen as if to physically protect their child. ‘No,’ she said, pushing away from the table, the chair screeching against the floor painfully. She walked along the window line to the far end of the table, looking out at the meadow. She knew that there were many options out there and that this wasn’t a decision that should be made lightly. But she also knew the truth of her heart, so she turned back to Alessandro and said, ‘I’m sorry if I hadn’t made that clear but I’m keeping the baby. Whether you’re a part of their life or not, I am having this baby.’
He stared at her, his gaze again unfathomable, his silence absolute. It was as if he were giving her all the rope he could in the hope that she might somehow hang herself with it.
