Rings of Gold: Gold Ring of Betrayal / The Marriage Surrender / The Unforgettable Husband. Michelle ReidЧитать онлайн книгу.
of fuss!’
‘Oh, God.’ Sara’s hand went up to cover her mouth, panic suddenly clawing at her again. ‘Why, Nicolas?’ she cried in wretched despair. ‘She’s only two years old! She was no threat to you! Why did you take my baby away?’
She didn’t see him move, yet he was at her side in an instant, his fingers burning that damned electrical charge into her flesh as he spun her around to face him. ‘I won’t repeat this again,’ he clipped. ‘So listen well. I did not take your child.’
‘S-someone did,’ she choked, blue eyes luminous with bulging tears. ‘Who else do you know who hated her enough to do that?’
He sighed again, not answering that one—not answering because he couldn’t deny her accusation. ‘Come and sit down again before you drop,’ he suggested. ‘And we will—’
‘I don’t want to sit down!’ she angrily refused. ‘And I don’t want you touching me!’ Violently, she wrenched free of his grasp.
His mouth tightened, a sign that at last her manner towards him was beginning to get through his thick skin. ‘Who else, Nicolas?’ she repeated starkly. ‘Who else would want to take my baby from me?’
‘Not from you,’ he said quietly, turning away. ‘They have taken her from me.’
‘You?’ Sara stared at the rigid wall of his back in blank incredulity. ‘But why should they want to do that? You disowned her!’ she cried.
‘But the world does not know that.’
Sara went cold. Stone-still, icy cold as realisation slapped her full in the face. ‘You mean—?’ She swallowed, having to battle to rise above a new kind of fear suddenly clutching at her breast. She had banked on this being his doing. Banked on it so much that it came as a desperate blow to have him place an alternative in her mind.
‘I am a powerful man.’ He stated the unarguable. ‘Power brings its own enemies—’
But— ‘No.’ She was shaking her head in denial even before he’d finished speaking. ‘No,’ she repeated. ‘This is family stuff. I know it is. I spoke to them on the—’
‘You spoke to them?’ He turned, those predator’s eyes suddenly razor-like with surprise.
‘On the phone.’ She nodded, swallowing as the terrible sickness she had experienced during that dreadful call came back to torment her.
‘When?’ His voice had roughened, hardened. He didn’t like it that she had been able to tell him something he had not been told already. It pricked his insufferable belief that he was omnipotent, the man who knew everything. ‘When did this telephone conversation take place?’
‘A-about an hour after they t-took her,’ she whispered, then added bitterly, ‘They said you would know what to do!’ She stared at him in despair, her summer-blue eyes suddenly turned into dark, dark pools in an agonised face. ‘Well, do it, Nicolas!’ she cried. ‘For God’s sake do it!’
He muttered a violent curse, and was suddenly at her side again, hard fingers coiling around her slender arm, brooking no protest this time as he pushed her back into the sofa.
‘Now listen …’ he said, coming to sit down beside her. ‘I need to know what they said to you, Sara. And I need to know how they said it. You understand?’
Understand? Of course she understood! ‘You want to know if they were Sicilian,’ she choked. ‘Well, yes! They were Sicilian—like you!’ she said accusingly. ‘I recognised the accent, the same blinding contempt for anything and anyone who is not of the same breed!’
He ignored all of that. ‘Male or female?’ he persisted.
‘M-male,’ she breathed.
‘Old—young—could you tell?’
She shook her head. ‘M-muffled. The v-voice was m-muffled—by something held over the m-mouthpiece, I think.’ Then she gagged, her hand whipping up to cover her quivering mouth.
Yet, ruthlessly, he reached up to catch the hand, removed it, held it trapped in his own in a firm command for attention.
‘Did he speak in English?’
She nodded. ‘But with a Sicilian accent. Let go of me …’
He ignored that. ‘And what did he say? Exactly, Sara,’ he insisted. ‘What did he say?’
She began to shake all over—shake violently, eyes closing as she locked herself onto that terrible conversation that had confirmed her worst fears. ‘“We h-have your ch-hild,”’ she quoted, word for mind-numbing word. Her fingers were icy cold and trembling so badly that he began gently chafing them with his own. ‘“Sh-she is s-safe for now. Get S-Santino. He will know wh-what to do. We w-will contact you again at seven-th-thirty …”’ Dazedly she glanced around the room. ‘What time is it?’ she asked jerkily.
‘Shush. Not yet six,’ he murmured calmingly. ‘Concentrate, Sara. Did he say anything else? Did you hear anything else? Any background sound, other voices, a plane, a car—anything?’
She shook her head. ‘N-nothing.’ No sound. Only the voice. Not even the sound of a child crying— ‘Oh, God.’ She whipped her hand out from between his to cover her eyes. ‘My baby,’ she whispered. ‘My poor baby … I want her here!’ She turned on him, holding out her arms and looking lost and tormented and heart-rendingly pathetic. ‘In my arms …’ Her arms folded and closed around her slender body, hugging, hugging as if the small child were already there and safe. ‘Oh, God,’ she groaned. ‘Oh, God, Nicolas, do something. Do something!’
‘OK,’ he muttered, but distractedly. ‘OK. It will be done. But I want to know why the hell I was not informed of this telephone conversation. Was it taped?’ He was frowning blackly. ‘The police have a trace on this line. It must have been taped!’
‘Afraid someone may recognise the voice?’ she seared at him scathingly. His golden eyes withered her with a look, then he climbed grimly to his feet. Alarm shot through her. ‘Where are you going?’ she bit out shrilly.
Glancing down at her, he could have been hewn from stone again. ‘To do something about this, as you requested,’ he replied. ‘In the meantime I suggest you go to your room and try to rest.’ His gaze flicked dispassionately over her. ‘I will keep you informed of any developments.’
‘Leave it all to you, you mean,’ she surmised from that.
His cool nod confirmed it. ‘It is, after all, why I am here.’
The only reason why he was here. ‘Where were you?’ she asked him, curious suddenly. ‘When they told you. Where were you?’
‘New York.’
She frowned. ‘New York? But it’s been only six hours since—’
‘Concorde,’ he drawled—then added tauntingly, ‘Still suspecting me of stealing your child?’
Her chin came up, bitterness turning her blue eyes as cold as his tiger ones. ‘We both know you’re quite capable of it,’ she said.
‘But why should I want to?’ he quite sensibly pointed out. ‘She bears no threat to me.’
‘No?’ Sara questioned that statement. ‘Until he rids himself of one wife and finds himself another, Lia is the legitimate heir of Nicolas Santino. Whether or not he was man enough to conceive her.’
As a provocation it was one step too far. She knew it even as his eyes flashed, and he was suddenly leaning over her, his white teeth glinting dangerously between tightened lips, the alluring scent of his aftershave completely overlaid by the stark scent of danger. ‘Take care, wife,’ he gritted, ‘what you say to me!’
‘And you take care,’ she threw shakily back, ‘that you hand my baby back to me in one whole and hearty