Page 29 of Modern Romance March 2025 (5-8)

Shehadleaked her background, invited a heap of scorn and disgust and judgment from not only the people in her life but across the internet.

“Do you have any idea what you’ve unleashed?” he demanded, fear for her making his words sharp.

“I do. The vitriol online is…as nasty as ever,” she said with a violent shiver. “I wish people would see that we were victims of his actions too. We lost both parents and any security we ever had.”

It was the most she’d betrayed about her family and that time. Adriano took her hand and pulled her to the sitting lounge. Her hand was clammy in his, the bright red of her lips emphasizing the paleness of her usually golden skin.

Needing something to do—other than just lifting her into his lap and holding her tight—he pulled out a bottle of water and handed it to her. With a murmuredgrazie, she finished it. His gaze lingered over the long column of her throat and the smooth expanse of skin below, revealing white lace below the cardigan.

A soft thread of desire, laced with something like longing, uncoiled in his stomach. But even the sight of her, here in his boardroom, couldn’t distract him for once.

“Why, Nyra?”

She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, smearing the lipstick in the process. As if the new clothes and the makeup and the attitude were all nothing but a fragile mask. Her eyes wide, her shoulders bowed, she reminded him of the waitress he’d met in Vegas. All sharp angles and dark shadows, but with a brave innocence that shone through nonetheless.

“Won’t you sit down?” she said. The fact that she was bracing herself to face this with him made his chest tight. “This might take a while.”

He sat on the coffee table, caging her between his thighs. Her throat bobbed up and down.

Her eyes were wide in her face when she looked up. “I…I thought it was better this way. With the truth out in the open.”

“You intended to test me,” he said, with a growl. Not that he could blame her for her lack of trust.

In another surprising move, she took his hand in hers. Her fingers were long and slender around his thick ones. The splash of pink on her nails, instead of the usually bitten ones, was as much as a shock as all the rest of her. Neither could he remember the last time she’d actively sought his touch.

“Test us both, I think,” she said, squeezing his hand tight. As if afraid that he might pull away. Not just from her touch but her.

Dios mío, did she still have no grasp of the power she held over him? He didn’t understand it at all either, but it was there. As real as his heart pounding with concern and pride and lust for her.

“I didn’t want it hanging over us, over our future like some sword. So many years of my life, I spent them hiding, ashamed, as if it was my fault that he cheated so many innocent people out of their life savings. I ran so fast, so far that I buried myself in the bowels of Vegas when I was barely eighteen.”

He jerked his head up. “You started working in Vegas at eighteen?”

She shrugged.

“When did you start dancing?”

Another flush claimed her cheeks but she bravely held his gaze. “Nineteen. I got a fake ID. It paid way more than anything else.”

“But you were waitressing at the poker game,” he said, wondering at how late his questions, this discussion, was.

“Just for those few nights. There was a high-paying client that was…fond of me and he requested me personally. The floor manager didn’t give me a choice.”

“Is that why you pretended we were together that first night?”

She nodded. “You were the only one in the group who intimidated him.”

“And if I turned out to be worse than him?Madre del Mio, Nyra! What if I—”

“You weren’t anything like him, Adriano,” she said, a clarity to her voice he hadn’t heard before. “When you survive in a place like that, you learn to read people well. Especially powerful men. I knew I could trust you.”

He shook his head, the very thought of her caught in a dangerous situation with some power-drunk asshole sending fear skittering through him. Something almost like fate had brought them together, but he couldn’t stand how out of his control the entire concept was.

She’s here, he reminded himself.Healthy and swelling with his babies.

“I could say I’m sorry for doing this, but it would be a lie. I needed to…face this, Adriano. Not just for me, but for the babies.”

So that’s what the new resolve was about. He should be happy, even ecstatic, that Nyra was nothing like his mother. But he only felt a hollowness.

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