Page 23 of Christmas Baby with Her Ultra-Rich Boss

‘Their third.’

‘I don’t know why but I was always under the impression you were an only child,’ she mused. ‘How old are they?’

‘My nephews? Seven and three.’

‘That will be nice for our child. We have cousins from my dad’s side and it was always such a laugh when we got together as kids. We adored seeing them.’

‘That will not happen for our child. I have not seen my brother in twelve years.’

That shocked her, he could see.

This was not a conversation Konstantinos wished to have but now it was here, he could see the necessity in telling her about it. Lena would discover the reasons for his estrangement from his brother at some point. Better to have it out in the open now. Better she understood, too, why she could never be more to him than his child’s mother, and from the tempest of emotions thrashing through him just to sit across a desk from her, he knew he needed to remind himself, too, before the temptation to act on his emotions got the better of him again. Remind himself exactly why he would never commit himself to a woman again or trust their motives.

‘His wife was supposed to be my wife.’

Her smooth brow creased.‘What...?’

‘My brother stole my fiancée from me.’

All the lightness on Lena’s features vanished.

Keeping tight control of his own features, he said, ‘I’d known Cassia all my life. She went to my school and worked in my parents’ restaurant at weekends. I worshipped the ground she walked on but she never looked twice at me, not until I turned twenty.’ He tapped his bent, overlong nose and added sardonically, ‘None of the girls ever looked twice at me.’

The coldness that seeped into Lena’s veins as he spoke sent the most horrible shiver coiling up her spine.

‘She went to university but quit after a year and started working full-time for us. When she finally agreed to a date, I thought all my birthdays had come at once. She was my first lover. I hoped she would be my only lover. When she agreed to marry me, I thought I was the luckiest man alive. I was never ambitious until we got together. The family restaurant brought in enough money for us to have a decent life but in my eyes, Cassia was a princess, and princesses deserved the best of everything. I wanted to give her the world. I convinced my parents to take out a mortgage on the restaurant so I could buy my own. From that, I bought another and then another, and then I bought my first hotel. I wasn’t rich like I am now, not by any means, but I worked hard and was turning over a decent profit. I believed Cassia and I would have the comfortable life we’d dreamed of with enough money to travel to exotic parts of the world and raise a family. What I didn’t know was that while I was working hard to build our comfortable life, she’d started screwing my brother.’

Lena was finding it hard to breathe. She didn’t know what was worse, what Konstantinos was revealing or the absolute dispassion in the way he was telling it. No, she did know what the worst part was—the fire in his eyes. The warnings being fired at her.

He was telling her all this for a reason.

‘Two weeks before our wedding day she finally found the guts to tell me the truth. She didn’t love me. She’d never loved me. She only agreed to that first date to make Theo jealous. It was my brother she really wanted. Not me.’

Lena covered her mouth in horror. She wished she could cover her ears, too. This was horrendous. Just horrendous. The kind of betrayal that must rip a man’s heart out.

He grunted a laugh that landed on her ears like nails on a chalkboard. ‘And Theo wanted her, too. I knew he thought Cassia attractive—he was always joking about me punching above my weight with her—but I never dreamed he would act on it and betray me like that.’

‘I’m so sorry,’ she whispered hoarsely.

‘What for? If they hadn’t betrayed me I wouldn’t have needed to find solace in my work. I wouldn’t have built this empire.’ He gave another of those awful laughs. ‘I should have seen it coming. Theo is movie-star handsome. Why would the princess want the ugly brother when she could have the handsome prince?’

‘You are not ugly,’ she said vehemently, wishing she could teleport herself to Kos and scratch the eyes out of the two people who’d behaved so cruelly and caused such devastation.

Leaning over her desk, he eyeballed her. ‘The mirror does not lie. If I wasn’t rich, you wouldn’t have looked twice at me. None of the women I’ve been intimate with would have.’

He shoved his chair back before she could even think of a response to his hurtful accusation. When he next looked at her, there was a gentler expression on his face. ‘I am sorry if I sound bitter. I haven’t spoken about Theo and Cassia in many years but it is only right you know about it, and hear it from me and not some gossip in Kos. Now you will have to excuse me—I have video calls to make. Tell Sven to join us in the meeting room in an hour so we can start on the transition process.’

He swept out of the office and closed the door behind him without looking back at her.

CHAPTER EIGHT

‘IUNDERSTANDTHEREis a blizzard and storm expected later today,’ Konstantinos said as a form of greeting when he stepped into Lena’s office the next morning.

Even though he hadn’t told her to expect him this early, she greeted him with a cordial smile. ‘There is a chance of it. It might miss us.’

He took a seat on the visitors’ chair. ‘Have you put the contingencies in place?’

‘Yes.’

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