Page 38 of His Secretly Pregnant Cinderella

CHAPTER FIVE

“I AMMARRYINGHER.”

“Are you?” his father asked, a chuckle in his voice.

“How else will we have the children in our family to our satisfaction?”

“I take it she did not wish to sell them.”

“No, she did not,” Constantine said.

And he bit back his commentary on the fact that not everyone saw children as tradable commodities. And not everyone prized a good time over their children, either.

Their recent behavior was triggered by the loss of Alex, he knew that. The increase again, in their partying.

They had changed their parenting after Athena’s death. Their relationship to Alex especially standing as a testament to that.

However, when it came to Constantine...

He knew what they saw when they looked at him.

It was the same thing he saw when he looked at them.

Their failure.

Although, more and more, Constantine saw his own.

His grandfather had driven into him the need to change. To become harder. To distance himself from his parents and their hedonistic ways.

And he had tried.

His grandfather would likely tell him to feel no guilt or sorrow for Alex, since his excess was the cause of his death.

A man must have control at all times...

He had succeeded, until Morgan.

“She is beautiful,” his father said. “It is not a bad idea to take her for your own. You shall enjoy having her in your bed, I should think. Keep her with us, we’ve lost enough. Let us keep the family together.”

He gritted his teeth. “It is to be a marriage in name only. This is strictly for Alex, his legacy, his children.” He would not touch her again.

Alex would have called him a martyr. And right then he felt like one. As if flames were burning him alive.

Was that the truth of it?

He had punished himself with a measure of isolation for the loss of Athena. Had promised himself he would not have certain things his sister would never grow up to have. Had wrapped it all in the harsh but necessary lessons his grandfather had given him.

But in the end perhaps what he really wanted was to make himself suffer for being the one to survive.

“Why must you be so exhaustively noble?” his father asked with a laugh. “You could do both. You could protect your brother’s legacy, and taste of her beauty.”

“Marriage does not appeal to me,” he said. “Not in that sense.”

“Marriage to the right woman can be wonderful,” his father said.

“I prefer variety.”

His father laughed. “Did anyone say you cannot have variety while married? It simply depends on the arrangements that you make with your wife.”

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