‘Don’t act the innocent. You and your sister were playing for very high stakes and you got away with the cash. But pause and consider your predicament for a moment. I have never allowed anyone to get away with cheating me,’ Sergei informed her softly.
A quiver of cold alarm was trickling down Alissa’s tense spine while anger was beginning to spark inside her. ‘There was never any intention of cheating you—’
‘Then how come I paid and got an impostor and a liar who expects me to believe that she doesn’t even know what was in the contract her sister signed in her name?’ Sergei angled harshly at her.
‘I never got the chance to see the contract!’ Alissa slammed back at him defensively.
In answer, Sergei swept up the laptop on the chest near the bed and hit several buttons on the keyboard before angling it in her direction. ‘Here…your recommended bedtime reading. It’s the contract. If you’re telling me the truth, which I doubt,’ he said coldly, ‘don’t you think that neglecting to read what you were signing up for was very foolish?’
‘But I didn’t sign up for it originally…’
‘Who got the cash?’
‘Alexa used it to help Mum keep her home and business and pay off Dad’s claim on them.’
‘What a saint of a daughter!’ Sergei derided. ‘Are you planning to play the same violins for my benefit? Save your breath. Sob stories leave me cold.’
Clutching at the laptop, Alissa lifted her chin. ‘I’ve none to tell you. But Alexa was totally honest. If she hadn’t been pregnant she would have gone ahead and married you!’
‘Try some joined-up thinking,’ Sergei advised with stinging scorn.
‘And what’s that supposed to mean?’ Alissa shot back at him.
‘According to what you’ve told me your sister used your name from the outset in this scam,’ Sergei reminded her very drily. ‘Obviously there was no way that she could ever have planned to marry me when she was masquerading under your name! That would have been a legal impossibility.’
In receipt of that shrewd and contemptuous assurance, Alissa dealt him a fuming appraisal, infuriated by his insinuations. Just then she was in the grip of shock and it was beyond her capability to compute that fact and doubt her sister’s intentions when her own actions had always been powered by family loyalty. ‘You’ve said enough—’
Sergei flung open the communicating door to her bedroom in a blunt invitation for her to leave. ‘I’ve only just begun.’
‘What are you going to do…now that you know?’ Alissa asked nervously.
‘I’m not about to be the loser in this scenario,’ Sergei drawled, smooth as silk. ‘Be assured of that. I may well prosecute you and your sister for fraud.’
Alissa twisted her hands together. ‘Sergei…nobody meant to do you any harm. It was just the way things happened and Alexa was in a complete panic—’
His lean, darkly handsome face was cold and set, his dark eyes merciless. ‘If you’re not prepared to fulfil that contract in her place, I’ve been cheated and I won’t accept that. I’ll tell you what I intend to do tomorrow.’
That last assurance made her blood run cold but there was one question she just had to ask. ‘Did Alexa really agree to have a baby with you?’ she framed unevenly.
‘Not so much with me, as for me. Study the contract,’ Sergei instructed flatly. ‘You’re very lucky I’m not throwing you out on the street right now! As far as I’m concerned you’re a lying, cheating con artist.’
That judgement hit Alissa hard. As the door snapped shut in her face she backed over to the bed and sat down to focus on the contract on the screen. It was very long and involved and by the time she had finished rereading the more complex clauses she was ashen pale and shattered by the lies and omissions her twin had employed to lure her into taking her place.
On one very telling issue Sergei had been hatefully accurate. Alexa had walked away with a fantastic sum of cash, far, far more than Alissa could ever have estimated. Furthermore it would only have taken less than a quarter of that money to settle their mother’s financial problems, so Alexa had enriched herself considerably by signing that contract in her sister’s name.
Alissa was in deep shock and questions she had never dreamt she might ask about her sister were now tormenting her. Had Alexa planned to use Alissa as a dupe from the outset? What else was she supposed to think? Trust Sergei to pick up on the fact that, having used Alissa’s name to begin with, Alexa could never have followed through on the contract she had signed.
Devastating as that possibility was, Alissa was a good deal more appalled by the actual content of the contract. Sergei hadn’t only wanted a wife to please his grandmother, he had wanted a child as well and, having spelt out those terms in advance, he was expecting the bride he had hired for the purpose to supply him with one. Where did that leave them both? She could not even countenance the idea of having a child with him, never mind giving that same child up wholly into his care. She curled up in her cold bed and shivered. How on earth could she have got herself into such a mess? All those years of stepping up to save Alexa from herself had clearly addled her wits, for they were no longer children and she had ignored the gravity of exchanging identities as adults and the threat of legal repercussions. She was filled with horror at the idea that she might have inadvertently broken the law.
It hurt even more, though, to accept that her sister had known all along about the baby issue and had deliberately concealed that aspect because she had known that Alissa would never agree to it. Obviously, Alexa had done it for the money, that extraordinary pile of cash that had tempted and finally persuaded Alexa into deceiving her own flesh and blood for the sake of profit.
While Alissa succumbed to exhaustion and tossed and turned her way through uneasy dreams for what remained of the night, Sergei was thinking. The fire of his anger, chilled and steadied by several hours of frustrating consultation with his lawyers, was still liberally laced with outrage. He had begun to believe in Alissa, he registered in sardonic disbelief. He, who had not trusted a woman since Rozalina and who had countless experiences of female greed and dishonesty, had nevertheless mysteriously warmed to Alissa’s girl-next-door warmth and seeming innocence. And yet she was clearly a fake, a lying, cheating little fake whose dazzling sex appeal just so happened to have stopped him dead in his tracks.
Her sins and his oversights had come home to roost and he had to forge a new path to his goal or he would lose everything. Losing was never an option for Sergei. He could not even contemplate such a demeaning conclusion. He studied his bruised knuckles with hard dark eyes. Some time during the night, when the endless wrangling of the lawyers during conference calls had breached his tolerance level, he had punched the wall in frustration, but now ice-cold logic was ruling him once again. He had no plans to lose anything, least of all the right to keep his ravishingly sexy wife in the marital bed.
When the maid entered the room and opened the curtains the next morning to let wintry daylight flood in, Alissa came awake immediately. She had a headache and a jarring jumpy sense of stress that was new to her. The very first thing she did was text Alexa, warning her twin that Sergei knew the truth and that they needed to talk urgently. Breakfast was served to her while she sat frozen in place against the pillows, recalling that ghastly confrontation with Sergei during the night.
A bitter laugh bubbled in her throat when she remembered her dizzy introspection during that candlelit