Millie Adams - The Scandal Behind The Italian's Wedding

“Is it?” he asked. “Well, mine are fairly knowable. Often plastered on the front page of newspapers here and there. You are plainly not my fantasy.”

She thought of all the women he’d been seen with over the years. Sleek, polished and curvy. Brunette, blonde, pale or brown, didn’t seem to matter to him, but there was a sophistication to the women he enjoyed.

Quite like her sister, and not at all like her.

“Well, that is good to know,” she said.

“Why did you do it, Minerva?”

“I am sorry. I really didn’t do it to cause you trouble. But I’m being threatened, and so is Isabella, and in order to protect us both I needed to come up with an alternative paternity story.”

“An alternative paternity story?”

She winced. “Yes. Her father is after her.”

He eyed her with great skepticism. “I didn’t think you knew who her father was.”

She didn’t know whether to be shocked, offended or pleased that he thought her capable of having an anonymous interlude.

For heaven’s sake, she’d only ever been kissed one time in her life. A regrettable evening out with Katie in Rome where she’d tried to enjoy the pulsing music in the club, but had instead felt overheated and on the verge of a seizure.

She’d danced with a man in a shiny shirt—and she even knew his name because she wouldn’t even dance with a man without an introduction—and he’d kissed her on the dance floor. It had been wet and he’d tasted of liquor and she’d feigned a headache after and taken a cab back to the hostel they’d been staying in.

The idea of hooking up with someone, in a circumstance like that, made her want to peel her own skin off.

“Of course I know who he is. Unfortunately... The full implications of who he is did not become clear until later.”

“What does that mean?”

She could tell him the truth now, but something stopped her. Maybe it was admitting Isabella wasn’t her daughter, which always caught her in the chest and made her feel small. Like she’d stolen her and like what they had was potentially fragile, temporary and shaky.

Or maybe it was trust. Dante was a good man. Going off the fact he had rescued her from a fall, and helped her up when her knee was skinned, and bailed her out after her terrible humiliation in high school.

But to trust him with the truth was something she simply wasn’t brave enough to do.

Her life, Isabella’s life, was at risk, and she’d lied on livestream in front of the world.

Her bravery was tapped out.

“Her father is part of an organized crime family. Obviously something unknown to me at the time of her...you know. And he’s after her. He’s after us .”

“Are you telling me that you’re in actual danger?”

“Yes. And really, the only hope I have is convincing him that he isn’t actually the father.”

“And you think that will work?”

“It’s the only choice I have. I need your protection.”

He regarded her with dark, fathomless eyes, and yet again, she felt like he was peering at her as though she were a girl, and not a woman at all. A naughty child, in point of fact. Then something in his expression shifted.

It shamed her a little that this was so like when he’d come to her rescue at the party. That she was manipulating his pity for her. Her own pathetic nature being what called to him, yet again.

But she would lay down any and all pride for Isabella and she’d do it willingly.

“If she were in fact my child, then we would be family.”

“I... I suppose,” she said.

“There will need to be photographs of us together, as I would not be a neglectful father.”

“No indeed.”

“Of course, you know that if Isabella were really my child there would be only one thing for us to do.”

“Do I?”

“Yes.” He began to pace, like a caged tiger trying to find a weak spot in his cage. And suddenly he stopped, and she had the terrible feeling that the tiger had found what he’d been looking for. “Yes. Of course, there is only one option.”

“And that is?”

“You have to marry me.”

TWO THINGS HAD become clear to Dante as he’d stared down into Min’s green eyes.

The first was that if Minerva and Isabella were in real danger then he would have to protect them. There was no choice.

He could not uncover her lies, because no matter how convoluted it might be, his protection was perhaps the only thing standing between her and this man she claimed wanted to do her harm. Dante was not so foolish as to think he could simply involve law enforcement and make an issue like a man connected to a crime family go away.

But he had resources. Men at his disposal. And more important, he had money. If her plan didn’t work, he had other methods of being able to protect them.

And then, there was the second thing that occurred to him. Which was that if he wanted a stake in Robert King’s company, then marrying his daughter, and being the father of his granddaughter, was likely the best way to accomplish that.

Dante had always known he would marry. It was a given. He had no plans to love his wife, as indeed he had no plans to love, much less the ability. But he had always thought that he might want a son. Someone to carry on what he had started.

He was a man from nothing. Nothing had been given to him. And he had much that he could pass on to an heir.

So yes, he had often thought that he would marry. Why not Minerva? Why not when it would benefit them so?

No, he would never be attracted to the skinny, dull little hen, but it didn’t matter. They already had a child between them, as far as the world was concerned. And genetics meant nothing to Dante. The man who had fathered him had gone off God knows where and hadn’t given a damn about him. While his mother...

She had cared the best she could. But she had been an old, tired whore—in a literal sense, not a euphemistic or insulting one—and in the end, the comfort of drugs was much more enticing than the grind of impoverished motherhood.

She had given up taking care of Dante when he was about eight years old. And she had given up living when he was ten.

He had been on his own ever since.

And while he was not sentimental, not really, on that score, he felt some measure of passion over the idea of protecting Isabella.

He did not need to become emotionally entangled in order to do this. It required legal paperwork and public trappings, and it was all the sort of thing he could engineer easily without needing to change diapers or rock her to sleep in private.

He also felt some grudging admiration for Minerva.

Minerva was protecting her child. She had come up with the solution that had seemed best to her in a moment of panic.

And he had the means to protect a child. He would not leave Isabella exposed. Not as he had been.

After all, he had been dependent upon the good graces of a man who had not been his father. Robert King was, in many ways, the closest thing he had to a father.

No, genetics were not required to make a family. Genetics, however, had been required for him to gain access to Robert King’s company. And now...well. Now he’d have a link there, as well.

“Marriage?” She recoiled. “You have to be kidding me.”

“I’m not.”

Where did she get off looking horrified by the prospect of marrying him? He was the one who would be saddled to this plain little creature from now until eternity. He was the one who ought to be concerned.

“Yes, Min, marriage.”

“You’re old ,” she said.

He barked a laugh. “And you’re a child. But you wanted my protection, and I am willing to give it. But you have to give me something in return.”