Modern Romance March 2021 Book 5-8 Carol Marinelli (ebook reader computer txt) 📖

other threat. She lifted a brow. “And you can try to separate me from this baby. But I wouldn’t advise it.”

The sun had dropped almost to the sea then. The sky was bathed in golds and reds, a commotion of flame and fury, just like Kendra.

He hated that he’d made that connection.

“Perhaps you are laboring under some misapprehension,” he said softly. “I am Balthazar Skalas and we are in Greece. There is no court in the land that would concern itself with your position should I make mine clear.”

To his surprise, all she did was laugh. “All these threats. Is this how you’re used to interacting with the world? Is this what it’s like to be your mistress? No wonder you go through them like tissues.”

“This is nothing like being one of my mistresses,” he replied silkily, because this was steadier ground. “As that role is far more...active.”

Kendra leaned forward and propped her elbows on the table, very much as if she thought she was in a classroom of some kind. “Tell me more about this active mistress lifestyle of yours. Is this going to be a part of my humiliation at your hands? Will I sit, tucked away in this or that luxurious prison, while you prance around with your various women in public places?”

She did not look particularly upset at that possibility, which Balthazar found he disliked. Intensely. “What business is that of yours?”

“I don’t ask for myself,” Kendra said, aiming that cool smile at him that he remembered too well from his office. “It’s your child who concerns me. Then again, perhaps you are not concerned that she will grow up loathing you. Detesting the way you treat her mother and worse, how you humiliate your family in public. But then, wasn’t your father that kind of man? Perhaps your child can hope for no better.”

It was such a kill shot, aimed so perfectly and with such lethal accuracy, that Balthazar almost laughed. He hadn’t seen it coming. In truth, he hadn’t imagined she’d had it in her. That was what he got for assuming she was nothing but a pawn.

He found himself sitting back in his chair, tempted to check to see if he was bleeding.

And as he did, she carried on eating, as if she hadn’t a single care in the world.

As if she hadn’t lacerated him like that.

“Both of my parents had affairs,” he said, eventually.

It was true enough, though it was not an accurate summation of his parents’ marriage. Much less what had become of it.

“Demetrius Skalas did not have affairs.” Kendra sounded almost placid. Matter-of-fact. “An affair suggests that there were some attempts to keep the behavior undercover. Your father preferred to parade around with a new woman on his arm whenever possible, publicly and horribly. When your mother responded in kind, he divorced her.”

“Thank you for reciting facts about which you know nothing,” Balthazar managed to grit out, while his pulse pounded at him.

“These are not my facts.” She smiled at him, a little more edgily that her calm tone would suggest. “Panagiota may have banned me from the internet, but it turns out that the family housekeeper has a great many facts at her disposal. And is only too happy to share them.”

Balthazar shook his head. And tamped down on the urge in him to lash out. Because she wasn’t any old adversary. She wasn’t her own father, that despicable man. She was the mother of his child, whether he liked it or not. And he was still trying to decide how best to come to terms with that.

“My father was a man of absolutes,” he said when the silence between them grew too heavy again. “I do not expect you to understand, but he had strict expectations. And should anyone fall short of those expectations, the consequences were severe. Anyone who knew him knew this.”

“Are you saying that your mother earned her humiliation?” Kendra made a face. “I suppose I’d better watch my step.”

“I am not my father.”

And Balthazar was surprised at how...raw that sounded.

“Are you not?” Kendra sat back, one hand moving to cover her belly. He wanted to decry the theatrics, but he had the strangest notion that it was an unconscious gesture.

Again, he was struck by the fact that his son was in there. That his son would be out in this same world in a matter of months, calling Balthazar father. Maybe that was why he did not reply to Kendra in the thunderous manner he could have.

The way he should have.

“My brother and I were born in quick succession,” he told her instead, because that was also true. “And my mother... After my brother came, I am told, she disappeared. She left us in the care of our nannies and never left her rooms. After that had gone on for some time, my father had her admitted to a private hospital in Austria, where she was better cared for. But she did not return to us for several years.”

“And you think that is...evidence against her?”

“It is simply what happened.”

“It sounds like you’re describing postpartum depression, Balthazar. It wasn’t her choice.” Kendra studied his face for a moment. “You know that, don’t you?”

“What I know is that my father could not abide weakness,” Balthazar told her, his voice rough. “In anyone.”

Kendra was sitting much too still, that hand still resting on her belly. “So what you’re telling me is that your poor mother suffered from a terrible depression and your father took it upon himself to punish her for a chemical and hormonal imbalance that wasn’t her fault.”

“He was an unforgiving man.”

“And what about you?” Kendra asked quietly. “Are you forgiving?”

This was the right time to tell her the rest of it, to see once and for all what she knew and what game she was playing. But somehow, Balthazar couldn’t bring himself to do it.

He couldn’t stop thinking of a small boy with his eyes, looking at him the way he’d tried to implore