“Yes. Leave. Come back when you’ve found your manners,” Mario said patronizingly.
“Why on earth would I ever come back?” Octavia cried. “I married the man you chose for me— No! I married a man better than the one you chose for me, and you’ve never so much as said, ‘Thank you.’ Now I deliver an heir and you turn your nose up. Do you think I want my son near a man incapable of showing either of us a shred of affection or respect? No. I don’t. Mamma may come and see Lorenzo anytime she likes, but you will never see me or my son again. You have nothing I want, especially your precious money. Give it to Sandro, spend it, throw it in the bay. Do whatever will make you happy with it because it’s obviously the only thing that ever will.”
“Buonanotte,” Sandro said, gathering his wife and shuffling her out of the room.
“Don’t act like I’m the one behaving badly. He deserves to hear this. Or are you worried I’m ruining your secret backdoor deals?” She pulled away from him as they reached the front door.
“There is nothing secret about any of it,” he stated, not liking her accusation. “You never asked.” He dropped her coat on her shoulders and pressed her outside.
She shoved her hands into the sleeves and folded the edges over herself before throwing herself into the back of the car.
He went around the other side and climbed in, regretting they didn’t have a privacy window. “We talked about having three or four children before we married,” he reminded.
“Pregnancies,” she snapped.
“Si. You’re right. I take the hopeful view that all of your pregnancies will be successful. Sue me for being an optimist. And the gender doesn’t matter. Your father wanted to make it a condition they be boys, but I struck that. I begin the takeover with the birth of our first child and assume majority control with our second. We needed a trigger of some kind for these things. In the unlikely event we had no children, he very rightly made provisions to maintain control and leave his fortune to his family through his estate.”
“It’s all just business,” she jeered.
“Yes,” he bit out. “It was.”
* * *
Octavia fumed at him across the peaceful baby sleeping between them. Their trigger.
Her mother, at least, had held Lorenzo. Her expression had even softened a bit. While Octavia had stood there waiting for her father to say something like, Good job. Thank you. I’m so proud of you. So pleased for you.
But there’d been nothing.
She’d spent the next hour realizing what a tremendous fool she’d been for ever imagining she could earn something from him beyond a flickering glance of disappointment. When he had dismissed her son as something he didn’t want to see for years, she had reached her limit.
The fact that Sandro had hustled her out of there before she really told her father what she thought of him was infuriating. She had nearly a quarter century of resentment stockpiled and was eager to let it out.
“I have a right to be angry,” she told him when she entered their suite after tucking Lorenzo into the proper nursery they’d had fashioned for him across the hall.
“Because I signed contracts a year ago that you don’t like?” He set aside his phone with a rattle onto the night table and shrugged out of his jacket, tossing it over the back of the nearest chair.
“Because you won’t let me be angry!” She kicked off her shoes in the middle of the floor and began pulling out her earrings, dropping them into the dish on the vanity table. “I don’t care about the stupid contracts and how you and my father planned to transfer control of his all-important fortune. All I ever wanted was to make my father proud.” Her necklace went into the dish and she picked up her hairbrush, waving it wildly as she railed, “He wanted a son and I couldn’t turn into one, but I gave him a boy and all he said was, ‘Give me another one.’ I had a right to tell him to go to hell, Sandro. Why can’t you see that? Why can’t you let me be angry?”
Her arm shot straight in punctuation and the hairbrush slid out of her grip. It skittered across the bedroom floor, landing near her shoes.
His mouth tightened as he stared at it. With a jerky nod, he said, “Si. He is insufferable. You were right to tell him you won’t see him again.” He pulled his tie loose and unbuttoned his collar, something flashing in his eyes that was both keen and sharp. Dangerous. “Come here, then.”
She stayed where she was, suddenly wary. “Why?”
“I’m not going to have you tossing lamps and smashing mirrors, cara. If you’re angry, come here. Take it out on me.”