Playing the Billionaire's Game - Pippa Roscoe Page 0,54

growled.

‘It’s not important, but I wanted to tell you myself before you found out from someone else. I’ve already found a house in Umbria. It’s a two-hour drive away from you—’

‘I’m coming.’

‘I don’t want you to.’

‘I don’t care, I’m coming,’ he said mulishly.

‘Not if I don’t give you the address.’

‘Maria, we both know that I can find you in less than fifteen minutes if I want to,’ he said. Realistically he only needed ten, but it was a Sunday.

‘But you won’t, because you’re my brother and you will respect my wishes.’

‘I’m going to kill him,’ he promised through gritted teeth.

‘You won’t, even if I did consider letting you do it for just a minute. Because Matthieu is the father of my unborn child.’

‘Come home?’ he asked, knowing already that he was defeated.

‘Sebastian, that’s your home. It’s time I found one of my own.’

After another five minutes of assurances that she was okay, she signed off. ‘Te amo, hermano.’

‘Te amo, hermana,’ he concluded, before disconnecting the call.

He stared, unseeing, at the range of dusty green hills beside the road, his hand white-knuckled around the slim phone.

‘Are you okay?’ Sia asked.

‘No. And I won’t be remotely okay until I have found Montcour and beaten him into a pulp,’ he said, his anger finally taking hold, his tone harsh, his words yelled, and he cursed, throwing his phone on the ground in rage.

‘Is this something you do a lot?’ Sia asked from inside the car, her face turned to him, her eyes covered by sunglasses, her expression impassive.

‘Qué?’ he demanded, confused by her question.

‘Perhaps I don’t know you well enough to tell if this is your usual reaction to bad news, or if this is extreme. Either way, I can’t say I’m a fan.’

‘If you don’t like it—’ he said, the heated words coming out of his mouth before he could call them back.

‘It’s not a matter of like. You are beginning to scare me.’

The calmly delivered line was at complete odds with her words, but the thought that he might have been in any way making her afraid cut him like a knife. The excess adrenaline from his anger, from his need to fight for those he cared for crashed through him but he quickly got himself under control. He cast a hard glance back towards her, concerned that he had pushed her too far. As if sensing his need, Sia took off her sunglasses. The purity of her gaze, the honesty and concern—not fear—shining for him, for his sister struck him all over again.

‘Your sister, is she okay?’ Sia asked.

‘No. She’s eight months pregnant, alone and if anything happens to her—’ Residual waves of helpless anger still lapped over him.

‘Is she in danger?’

He forced himself to take a breath. ‘No.’

Sia leaned over to the driver’s seat and opened his door, inviting him back into the car. ‘What about Eduardo?’

‘What about him?’ Sebastian asked, utterly confused about what their father had to do with it.

‘Can he do anything?’

Sebastian sank into the seat of the sports car with a bitter laugh. ‘He’s been the dictionary definition of absent for Maria’s entire life. I doubt very much that he’s going to change now.’

Sia leaned back in the leather seat, tucking her feet beneath her, signalling her patience for an explanation. He nearly laughed. Somehow, the truest interactions they shared had become silent exchanges, no need for words or questions, their understanding of each other almost instinctive.

‘It was one of the conditions of the purchase of their estate in Rimini. That Maria come to live with me.’

‘How old was she?’

‘Eight.’

Sia nodded as if beginning to understand and perhaps, given her own parents, she might just be able to.

‘It was the only way to protect her. Even before our father lost everything in the deal with Abrani, he had removed himself from her, emotionally and physically. Maria is a study of my mother. Hair, eyes, nose, mouth, chin...an almost exact replica. And, much like everything else, Eduardo simply couldn’t bear to be reminded of his wife. Because my father, despite all that he became after her death, had loved her so completely in life.

‘So, even though it was unintentional, I had to stand by and watch while he broke my sister’s heart, knowing that I wasn’t enough to fix it and never would be. Because what she needed was her father.’

Sia’s heart broke, knowing just how much that would have hurt Maria. Knowing just how much it had hurt her to be separated from her own