Innocent's Pregnancy Revelation - Chapter 3
Chapter 3
“I need to speak to your grandmother.” Henriqua glanced warily at the phone he held.
The sheer audacity of this woman shouldn’t be able to astonish him, not after she seduced him, set him up for the type of swindle that had men thrown from helicopters, then escaped to South America. If she possessed a single ounce of sense, she would have stayed there.
“That will never happen,” he assured her, not yet dialing and not sure why. “Approach her and I will remove you myself.” He was dying for an excuse to get his hands on her, palm still hot from the brief contact with her upper arm.
He pulled up his lawyer’s number. Not the police. Not the investigators who had put him through the wringer for weeks. Not even a signal for hotel security. Why? His lawyer would tell him to report to the investigators that she was in the country.
“It’s important, Ben.” The slight tremble in her lashes and the faint quaver in her voice fanned some deeply buried part of him, a place he had allowed her to breach once. He wasn’t stupid enough to let her do it again.
“It is,” he agreed, using the tone he reserved for off-grid thugs who thought they could threaten an American because he was away from the comforts of home. “This is my family. You’ve caused enough damage.”
He caught his cousin Gizi looking over with a frown. She knew every socialite in New York, especially the ones who would have the nerve to crash a wedding.
“Do you hate me?” Henriqua asked, braced, yet there was a glimmer of desperate hope in her deceptively appealing eyes.
“Yes,” he said without hesitation, even though the word had barbs that caught in his throat.
“You’ll never forgive me,” she said, voice fading now while her gaze remained fixed on him.
“I will not.” His stomach felt full of wet cement.
A shadow of anguish passed over her expression. She nodded understanding. “I’m prepared to testify on your behalf.”
“What I need is a confession, darling. You’re a day late and several million dollars short. I’d say the thought counts, but it really doesn’t.”
“There are mitigating factors.” She reached as though to adjust her glasses even though she wasn’t wearing them. She turned it into a skim of her hair that was equally awkward since her hair wasn’t twisted into its usual knot. It was loose. The way it was when they made love. “Things your grandmother should hear.”
Rozi, the bride, was rising from the sofa and speaking to Viktor, both of them looking this way.
“Nothing, absolutely nothing, could come out of your mouth that would make me think you have any right to speak to me, let alone a cherished member of my family.”
She gave him a look that seemed to turn the floor to water beneath his feet. Her voice hit his ears from a distance.
“I’m pregnant.”