The Sicilian's Marriage Arrangement

His words were a death knell to the hopes she had tried so hard not to nurse.

“Why did you marry me if you don’t love me?” She just could not believe he was so determined not to have an affair with a virgin that he had chosen to marry a woman he had so little feeling for.

He spun back to face her, his expression almost scary. “You know why. I have been unkind, I admit this, but you must also admit that you carry some of the blame for that.”

“Because I was a virgin?”

“Do not play games.” His hands clenched at his sides. “I heard you tell your grandfather thank-you for his manipulations on your behalf.”

She stared at him, as at sea about this whole thing as she had been when he’d gone off the rails the first time. “I just don’t understand why you’re so upset about a little matchmaking. You didn’t have to succumb.”

“Is that what you call it, matchmaking? How innocent that sounds, but I call it blackmail.”

There are things you don’t know. Her grandfather’s words echoed in her mind. “Are you saying my grandfather blackmailed you into marrying me?”

Impossible. That sort of thing just didn’t happen in the twenty-first century. It was positively Machiavellian and that kind of business had gone out with the Middle Ages, at least when it came to marriage bargains and the like.

But Luciano’s expression denied her naive certainty. “Are you attempting to convince me you did not know?”

She glared at him, anger and resentment boiling in a cauldron inside her that was ready to explode all over him. She jumped up and faced him, fury making her body rigid. “I don’t have to convince you of anything.” He was the one who’d been caught taking a shower while his former girlfriend lounged around answering his cell phone. “If you won’t tell me, I’ll call my grandfather and ask him.”

She turned to do just that, but his words stopped her.

“Do not go. I will tell you.” Luciano’s olive complexion had gone gray. “You thought your grandfather tried to get us together, but you did not realize the methods he used?”

The methods had been pretty obvious, or at least she had thought so at the time. “He sent you to check on me in Athens.”

“He sent me, Si, but not to check on you. I was under duress to convince you of marriage.”

That explained so much.

Luciano looked sick and she could imagine why. A proud man like him would have been severely bothered by the fact that he was being manipulated by someone else. Her grandfather’s weapon of blackmail must have been a good one.

“What did he use as leverage?” she asked.

“Di Valerio Shipping.”

“Your great-grandfather’s company?” Luciano had told her about the modest shipping company during one of their discussions at a business dinner.

She had thought he was sweetly sentimental for holding on to it when it was such a small concern compared to his other holdings. “I don’t understand how my grandfather could threaten it. It’s a family held company.”

“It was, but my uncle gambles. He lost a lot of money and rather than swallow his pride and ask me for it, he sold his shares in the family company to your grandfather.”

“So?” She still didn’t get how that could impact her husband. He was the head of the company. Her grandfather could play pesky-fly-in-the-ointment, but that wouldn’t be enough to force Luciano into doing something he didn’t want to.

“Joshua also was able to secure enough shares and proxies from family members no longer close to the company to take control. He threatened to approve a merger with our chief competitor, a merger that would result in the disappearance of the di Valerio name.”

And his Sicilian pride had found that untenable.

“What were the terms?” she asked, a little awed by her grandfather’s ruthlessness.

As Luciano outlined the terms for their marriage arrangement, she went cold to the depths of her being.

“So you planned to make me pregnant and then ditch me.”

It made sense. Once she had his baby, he had control of his company back and he didn’t need her. Even if she divorced him, he retained control of the company through the child. It also explained his chilly reaction to her announcement of the pregnancy. He needed the baby, but Luciano couldn’t work up any enthusiasm for having a child with her, the granddaughter of the man who had blackmailed him and so severely offended his Sicilian pride.

“That’s why you made that crack about me not using anything and getting pregnant so fast.” She couldn’t breathe, but she had to force the words out anyway. “You had no intention of returning to my bed after I conceived.”