“No!” Lily yelled.
Nate went on. “And you are too.”
“What?” This time it came out as a high-pitched scream.
“What?” Alistair shouted, also jumping up from his chair.
Victor, not to be left seated, also got up.
Eyes never leaving Lily, Nate announced, “You’re moving to London.”
“I am not,” Lily returned.
“You and Natasha are moving in with me. You and I are getting married in two months.”
“What?” Lily screamed again.
“This is insane,” Alistair threw in.
Nate’s gaze sliced to Alistair and he repeated, “Lily and I will be married. She and Natasha are moving to London, moving in with me.”
Lily leaned forward and put her hands on the table. This was too much, just too damned much. She’d had enough.
“You forget, I tried that before and it… did… not… work!” Lily flung at him.
Nate’s carefully controlled face flinched.
“Lily –” Victor said softly.
She interrupted whatever Victor was going to say. “No! No, no, no!” Lily pushed away from the conference table and looked at Alistair. “I’m leaving,” she declared flatly.
Alistair was visibly grinding his teeth. If there was a paperweight close by, at that moment she would have gladly handed it to him and showed him where to aim.
He stopped grinding long enough to grunt, “Go.”
She grabbed her bag where it was sitting on the table, whirled and headed smartly for the door, not looking back.
She was brought to an abrupt halt with a strong hand on her upper arm.
She winced uncontrollably in pain when the hard fingers closed around her bruised arm and she turned and looked at the familiar, strong, long-fingered hand then at Nate who was standing behind her.
He watched her wince at his touch and something anguished flashed through his eyes.
“Take your hand off my client,” Alistair, seething, was walking swiftly toward them.
Nate ignored him.
“I want to meet my daughter,” he told Lily.
“Fine,” Lily snapped, wanting nothing but escape. Her head was beginning to pound.
“I want to meet her tomorrow,” Nate demanded.
“Fine!” Lily clipped.
“I want you there,” he pushed.
“Fine!”
“Lily, don’t say another word,” Alistair warned from beside them.
“You’ll be there tomorrow,” Nate ordered, it should have been a query but it was a command.
“Yes!” she cried. She would have said anything to get away.
She wrenched her arm free as Alistair said her name sharply in frustration.
She didn’t pay attention.
She turned away from Nate and ran away as fast as her high heels would carry her.
Chapter Fourteen
Nate & Victor, Nate & Laura
For the first fifteen minutes of the ride back to London, the two passengers in the back of the Rolls Royce were completely silent, each lost in their own tormented thoughts.
Then the silence was broken.
“Nathaniel –” Victor began.
“Don’t,” Nate’s voice cracked like a whip.
Victor held his breath for a moment.
There was not a single man on earth he would allow to speak to him that way except Nathaniel.
Especially now.
Victor sighed, looked out the window and instead of seeing the rolling pastureland, his vision filled with Lily.
Jesus, fucking, God, he thought. Laura couldn’t tell him not to curse so blasphemously in his thoughts and more than likely, if she’d witnessed the nightmare in that conference room, she’d have a few curses of her own.
The minute Victor walked in the room, seeing Lily so close and cosy with her lawyer, looking so beautiful, stylish and serene, he’d wanted to tear her head off.
Ten minutes later he’d had the crazy, sudden, unprecedented urge to get down on his knees and beg her forgiveness.
She’d named her child Natasha, for Nathaniel.
She’d named her child after him, Victor, she’d given her baby, Nathaniel’s baby, Victor’s name.
And she’d nearly died doing it.
And after ten minutes more, Victor had been too broken to know what to do and that was a feeling he’d not felt for decades.
He was broken because she was broken. Broken because the bright, vivacious girl who had walked innocently into his home eight years before had been all but destroyed.
That suit she wore was camouflage, making it not so easy to see all that had been the glorious Lily was lost. The longer the attorneys talked the more she retreated, the further she got from them, from anyone and especially from Nate. She was so thin, so pale, she actually looked at the end in physical pain.
All because of Victor’s two, spoiled-rotten, dead-rotten children.
He was to blame for this. Victor.
His past sins had come home to roost.
“Nathaniel, we have to talk,” he tried again.
Nate’s head slowly turned from the window he was staring unseeingly out of and his eyes focussed on Victor. At the look in his son’s eyes, Victor immediately had nothing to say.
Then Nate spoke.
“Eight years,” he said.
Victor closed his eyes in pain.
“They cost us eight years,” Victor heard Nathaniel say.
Victor opened his eyes again. “I’ll take care of Danielle and Jeffrey,” he vowed.
And he most definitely would.
A muscle in Nate’s jaw jumped and he turned his head back to his contemplation of the scenery.
Victor went on. “Son, I swear to you, they’ll wish they were never born.”
And he meant it. They were his children by blood but they were his children no more.
Neither Nate nor Victor for a second questioned that Jeff and Danielle had done exactly what Lily’s attorney had said they’d done. The whole time Laura ranted and raved and Victor cursed and shouted after Lily disappeared, they didn’t say a word.
It wasn’t as if Lily had a great offer to go shopping in Milan that she couldn’t resist and that’s why she left Nate. She was at home in Indiana grieving the loss of both of her parents. Then at twenty-two years of age, grieving, also pregnant, she came back to Nate only to be told he was dead.
And his children knew and neither of them said one single word.
Not only that, they’d participated in this terrible deception. Jeff likely took the note and Danielle…
Victor shook off his thoughts. He’d deal with them later.
“What are you going to do?” Victor asked.
Nate sat silent.
Victor continued. “Nathaniel, you saw her. She’s –”
“I saw her,” Nate bit off, his voice eloquently stating, without a great many words, exactly what he’d seen and exactly how it affected him.
“You have to…” Victor started but didn’t finish. How did one go about piecing together a shattered person?
Victor thought that Nathaniel could do anything he put his mind to doing. He believed this with everything he was.
However, this was going to be his son’s mightiest challenge.
“What are you going to do?” Victor asked again.
Nate took in a deep breath and then slowly let it out.
He turned to Victor and looked him directly in the eyes.
“I’m going to put my family back together.”
Nate stood at the floor to ceiling windows that made up the entire wall to the vast living room in his penthouse apartment.