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‘I need to know who you are,’ she repeated. ‘I need to know the facts.Now.’
‘I have no problem telling you who I am. You were the one who wished not to know my name—’
‘I was wrong,’ she admitted. ‘The truth is that this is real—whether or not I want to acknowledge it. I can’t hide from it because here we are...’
She raised her hands and gesticulated to the view. To the sea surrounding them at every turn.
‘I want to find out if I’m pregnant knowing all the facts.Realfacts. I want to rip off the blindfold that’s been obscuring the view my whole life and go into this with my eyes wide open. I owe it to any potential child to know who I might’ve made it with.’ She sucked in a breath. ‘And don’t we owe it to ourselves?’
‘Of course,’ he agreed. ‘We deserve to have each other’s names.’
‘Then tell me yours.’
‘I am Raffaele Russo. CEO of Russo Renovations. Sicilian born and bred. Multi-billionaire.’
He closed the distance even between them and, his mouth a whisper’s breadth from her own, said, ‘I am the father of the potential baby who potentially grows inside you.’
Desire pulsed between them even now, throwing her the absurd image of herself leaning in and pressing her mouth to his.
She shook it off.
‘Billionaire?’ she repeated, and pulled back enough so that she couldn’t taste the warmth of his breath on her lips.
‘Multi-billionaire,’ he corrected.
‘But you said you grew up in the middle of nowhere. That your mother couldn’t afford heating. How did you make so much money?’
Eyes hooded, he asked, ‘Does it matter?’
‘Of course it does. Why didn’t you tell me you were rich?’
‘You never asked.’
Of course she hadn’t. How could she ever have imagined herself to exist in the same world as a billionaire? To be desired by a billionaire? How could she ever have imagined that a billionaire wanted her? A woman who had no idea where she really came from...
‘And you never thought to say?’ she asked,
What did this mean? For her? For her potential child?
Raffaele shrugged. ‘I’m comfortable with the man I am. There is no need to flaunt my existence.’
There was more to it—she could tell by the casual way he threw the comment out into the world. There was no time to dwell on that. But was Flora comfortable with it?
‘Tell me how you became a billionaire?’ she asked.
‘I won’t romanticise the past. It was hard. Scarlata is small.’
‘Scarlata?’
‘My village. Only a hundred people. It didn’t have access to many things, but it had access to the outside world. A connection to the internet. For the posting of the kind of pretty pictures people like to post on social media.’
‘What do pretty pictures on social media have to do with anything?’
‘Pretty pictures make money.’
Her brain couldn’t connect the dots. ‘I don’t understand...’
He smiled, but his eyes didn’t. Shadows played inside them and she couldn’t make out their shape.
