He closed the door behind him and crossed to her desk. “I see that Mia gets her verbal skills honestly. It is a fascinating trait in the Marcelli women. I wish to speak with you.”
“I have no interest in listening.” She reached for the phone. “I can call security. Actually, I can call my brother. The ex-SEAL. He doesn’t like you much, and seeing as he’s a man who could take you out with a Q-tip, I’d be a little worried if I were you.”
Rafael held out both hands, palms up. “Am I so frightening as all that? You have to call in reinforcements because you are afraid that by listening to me you might change your mind?”
“You’re manipulating me.”
He smiled slightly. “I doubt it will work on you, but it is necessary to try.” He stepped closer. “Hear me out, Brenna. What harm is there in that? We both know I’m unlikely to influence you in any way. Later, when I am gone, you can call Mia and mock me behind my back. Think how that will bring you both pleasure.”
She sat back in her chair. “Fine. But only because of the mocking. I’m really going to do that.”
“I’m sure you are.” He claimed the seat opposite hers and wondered how to begin. “I wish to make amends with Mia.”
“Why?”
“I did not plan for things to go this way.”
“Right. You just wanted to steal Danny, then leave town. I’m sorry we got in the way of that. What a serious bummer.”
“Brenna, you deliberately misunderstand me.”
“Oh, no. I understand you perfectly. Mia’s right. You’re sorry about getting caught, but you’re not the least bit sorry about what you tried to do. You don’t care about anyone, not even Danny.”
He narrowed his gaze. “Of course I care about my son.”
“I don’t think so. Oh, sure, Danny as heir is really important to you, but that’s about your country and tradition. It’s not as if Danny is a real person to you. It’s not as if you care about his happiness.”
He stood and glared at her. “How dare you speak to me this way?”
“I believe you came to me, not the other way around. So I can pretty much talk to you any way I’d like. You’re free to leave.” She pointed at the door.
He sank back into the chair. “I’m not leaving.”
“Then you have a problem, because I’m going to continue to talk to you any way I want.” She leaned toward him. “Rafael, no one who genuinely cares about a child could imagine ripping a four-year-old little boy away from his mother and the only family he’s ever known. Do you have any idea how that would devastate him? Of what he would go through?”
“He is my heir,” he said, but the words came automatically. Without meaning to, he remembered a time long ago. He had been about Daniel’s age when his own mother had died. He recalled the activity around her room and then nothing but quiet. No one would speak with him. For days he only saw his nanny. Then one evening his father had appeared and announced his mother was dead. The funeral was the next day and Rafael was expected to behave appropriately.
He’d understood nothing, except the fact that his father was obviously very angry with him. It wasn’t until nearly a week later that he’d begun to figure out his mother was gone forever.
He remembered feeling lost and afraid. Sometimes he would creep into her room and curl up on her bed, closing his eyes as tightly as he could, hoping that when he opened them, she would be there.
“I had no intension of keeping Mia from her son,” he told Brenna. “I had very specifically planned for her to…” He paused, not sure how to explain what he hadn’t decided yet for himself.
“To what?” she asked impatiently. “See him for fifteen minutes every quarter? Don’t give me that crap. You didn’t have a plan. You didn’t think of anything but what you wanted. You’re like a kid who only discovers he’s interested in a toy after someone else has taken it from him. It’s not as if you cared about Danny until now.”
“I did not know about him until recently.”
Brenna leaned forward and gave him a cold smile that warned him she was about to trap him. “Did you bother to find out if Mia might be pregnant? Did it occur to you to send one of your minions to do a little reconnaissance work? Six or seven months after the last time you two got personal, it would have been really easy to tell. My God, Rafael. You let her think you’d died. What kind of weasel behavior is that?”
“It did not occur to me she could be pregnant.”
“Why? Hadn’t the little soldiers been potent until then?”
“I used a condom.”
“Which obviously failed. Still, you had a responsibility and you’re avoiding the question about just letting her go. Not even a good-bye? Wouldn’t that at least have showed good manners?”
He shifted in his seat and glanced out the window toward the vineyard. “There were reasons.”
“Uh-huh. Let me guess. You didn’t want her to know who you really were. You didn’t want to risk an American groupie. How embarrassing. Plus she could have told the world how you’d been playing dress-up.”
He swung back to her. “I was protecting the heritage of my country. That is hardly playing dress-up.” Brenna was a most annoying woman. Nearly as difficult as her sister.
“Call it what you like,” she said with a shrug. “What do I care?”
“We are getting off the subject at hand,” he said between clenched teeth. “I would appreciate your assistance in finding a way to communicate with Mia.”
“I don’t think so. I mean, come on. To what end? You had an affair with her once and let her go. Now you tried to steal her kid. You’re not a really good catch, despite the title.”
His frustration flared into anger. “What did you expect?” he asked heatedly. “That I would marry her?”
“You’re the one who proposed.”
He stood again and paced the length of the office. “I had no choice. I had to secure Daniel for my people. You think because I have money and a title it is all so easy for me, but you are wrong. With great wealth and power comes responsibility. I must not only think of today, I must think of five hundred years from now. Each law, each pardon, each act has consequences. Like ripples in a pond, they continue endlessly.”
He paused by the map on the wall and traced the outline of the Marcelli land. “There are times when I wish it could be different. That I were a man like any other. That my life was my own. But it is not.”
Brenna leaned back in her chair. “I wish I had some tissue here so I could weep for your sad little life. Poor rich boy all alone.” She straightened. “I don’t actually give a rat’s ass about you or your sob story. The bottom line is you lied. You lied and you’re not even sorry. If you had come to Mia and explained the truth from the beginning, she would have worked with you. She’s intelligent and reasonable. But that never occurred to you. I guess compromise isn’t a word in the royal vocabulary. You didn’t bother to find out anything about her when the two of you were together before or you would have known that number one, she’s more than willing to do what’s right, and number two, she will die before she lets you take her child away from her.”
“You speak of compromise,” he said slowly. “I have been thinking about the concept.”
“A little too much after the fact. Welcome to the real world, where people actually negotiate things like child custody agreements and stealing is against the law.”
He looked at her. “You do not like me.”
“No one does, except maybe Danny, and that’s because he doesn’t know any better. But he will.”
“You will turn him against me?”
“I won’t have to. I’m guessing you’ll do that all on your own.”
Her statement insulted him. “You do not know me.”
“I have a good idea about you. You’ve never had to work for anything in your life. You get what you want and people just get out of the way. That’s not happening this time. We’re a strong family, and when you screwed Mia, you screwed us all.” She paused. “Figuratively, of course, because otherwise, to quote my baby sister, ick.”