Page 4 of Stolen For My Spanish Scandal

I had. I really had. I’d even found a doctor well away from where I lived to confirm it. She wouldn’t have told anyone, would she? Weren’t doctors supposed to keep their patient’s information private?

Fear cut like a knife inside me, combining with hurt and anger and the anxiety of the last three months, plus the lack of food, and making my gut twist again, more violently this time.

I clutched hard to the back of the couch, fighting the nausea, but it was relentless.

I didn’t want to be sick in front of him. I’d already humiliated myself enough, hadn’t I?

Yet my body didn’t seem to think this was a compelling argument. And there was nothing I could do as I stumbled forward a couple of steps and threw up my breakfast all over his expensive handmade leather shoes.

CHAPTER TWO

Constantine

WHENTHELIGHTShad suddenly gone out downstairs, I’d allowed myself one crystal-clear moment of intense rage. In the darkness no one would see me let out a soundless roar of fury and so I had.

But it was only one moment.

The instant the lights had come back on I was myself again, the way I had to be. Impervious. Detached. Frozen solid all the way through.

Nevertheless, the fury had remained, so when I stepped into that room and my little stepsister threw up all over my shoes I was very tempted to roar again. But that would have been one slip too far, and my control around her already had cracks in it miles deep. So all I did was clench my teeth around the rage until my jaw ached.

I’d known she was here—put me in a dark room anywhere and I’d know the second she stepped into it—and I’d seen her hiding behind a column downstairs in the ballroom. And the instant I had, the frustrating indecision that had dogged me for the past two days, ever since I’d learned of her pregnancy, had coalesced into hard certainty.

My twin brother’s not entirely unexpected appearance not fifteen minutes earlier, returned from the dead, had only sealed the deal.

I already knew Valentin was alive. Three months ago I’d had word that he hadn’t been killed in a car accident fifteen years earlier, the way we all thought, but was alive and well and CEO of a legitimate company he’d built off the back of various shady enterprises.

I’d known he was going to make a play for Silver Inc, the huge European conglomerate my father and his father before him had built from the ground up, because it was just the kind of thing hewoulddo.

I’d even suspected he’d take Olivia, my fiancée. And sure enough, with his usual dramatics, he’d cut the power and spirited her away.

However, I’d been expecting him to make his move during the funeral, not the wake, and no small part of my fury was directed at myself as well as him.

Clearly I’d been complacent.

Now my fiancée had been taken, and while I knew he wouldn’t hurt her—Olivia had a considerable history with Valentin—it was a tremendous...inconvenience.

I’d spent a lot of time choosing the right woman and she’d ticked all the boxes. Intelligence, strength, poise, beauty. She was the CEO of a diamond company and had power and influence in her own right.

She was exactly what I wanted, and the best thing about her was that she wasn’t anything like Jenny Grey, my little stepsister. My lovely little stepsister. The one woman in the world I could never have.

Except all that had now changed.

Olivia had been taken, and the woman I’d been protecting ever since she was a child—the woman I was still protecting even now, though she’d never know it—was pregnant with my child.

Which made everything very,veryclear.

For the past four years I’d been holding Jenny at arm’s length to keep her safe, both from my father and from me, but one night had ended that. One night and my own lack of control. For two days after I’d found out she was pregnant I’d thought of and discarded various plans that would involve me only peripherally, while at the same time making sure she and the child were safe, yet I hadn’t been able to settle on one that would satisfy me.

However, Valentin’s little escapade had made the decision for me.

I’d never believed in the inevitability of fate, and yet there was something inevitable this. About Jenny being here, and pregnant, at the same time as Olivia was taken.

So instead of fighting the inevitable, I embraced it.

I’d already given the order to make sure Jenny was shown to this room, since I’d wanted to talk to her about the pregnancy anyway. So the instant the lights went out I fought my way through the confusion to find one of my security team—one who hadn’t been compromised by Valentin—and make sure Jenny hadn’t got caught up in the panic. Sure enough, confirmation was given that she was in the room I’d set aside for our discussion.

I’d come here with the intention of announcing my plans to her. However, I hadn’t expected her to suddenly bend over and throw up on my shoes.

---