Filthy Rich Prince: A Filthy Rich Billionaires Book Read online

  “Perhaps. Trafficking in stolen antiquities is a significant crime in Montebianco. We take our heritage very seriously here.”

  Lily’s right temple pounded. “I didn’t steal anything. If you check with the street vendor, you’ll know it’s the truth.”

  “We are having some difficulty locating him. Not to mention that street vendors do not typically sell priceless artworks as if they are cheap trinkets.”

  “You’re lying.” The man had a stall in the market, for goodness sake. How hard was it to find him again?

  “I assure you I am not. He seems to have disappeared. If ever he was there in the first place.”

  Lily’s bravado leached away under the weight of his arrogant surety. She was too tired to fight him, and too worried about her baby to care about matching wits with this cold-blooded man any longer. She just wanted it over with. “Fine. What do you want to know?”

  “I want you to tell me if this child is mine.”

  Lily’s lungs refused to work properly. Liquid fear softened her spine, her knees, but somehow she remained upright. “What kind of question is that?” she asked on little more than a whisper.

  His eyes flashed fire. “It is the kind of question you will answer truthfully if you wish to remain free.”

  She nearly choked. “You call this free?”

  “Lily,” he said, a hint of exasperation in his voice. And something else. Pain? Weariness?

  She swallowed, dropped her gaze to study the tiles at her feet. Her heart pounded so hard she felt dizzy. It was the moment of truth, the one she’d never thought would come. Would he somehow care for her and Danny? Would he help them and be a father to her boy?

  Of course he wouldn’t. He was marrying a princess, God help the poor woman, and he wasn’t about to change his ways just because he had yet another child in this world. He might give her money to take care of Danny, but Lily knew that everything came with a price. She’d basically taken care of herself since she was fifteen years old, and she would continue to take care of herself and her baby on the strength of her will and determination. She would not accept handouts from this man.

  A finger under her chin tipped her head up. She hadn’t realized he’d moved so close. The touch stung, brought memories to the surface she’d rather forget. His eyes were mesmerizing, as pale and blue as a winter lake. She’d wanted to drown in them once. Wanted to drown in him.

  Part of her still did.

  “Why does it matter?” she said, fighting a wave of panic.

  His gaze never wavered, piercing her to the core. The contrast of his soft words was jarring to her senses. “Is this boy mine?”

  In a split second, a million possible outcomes crossed her mind. And yet there was only one answer she could give, no matter how it tortured her to do so. “Yes,” she whispered.

  She was utterly still as his hand dropped. A moment later, while time stood still, he twirled a lock of her hair around his finger. “I remember this hair,” he said softly. “It is still like the finest silk in my hands.”

  He’d moved closer still, his body mere fractions away. The hilt of his sword grazed her beneath the ribs. “You remember?” she said, then cursed herself for sounding so desperate for an affirmative answer.

  His gaze dropped to her mouth, lingered long enough that warmth blossomed between her thighs. Had she ever been kissed so thoroughly as when he’d kissed her? She stared at his lips, remembering the first brush of them. Remembering how his tongue dipped in to stroke her own, the way she’d sighed and opened to him, the utter rush of desire that flooded her as the kiss deepened into something that left them both gasping for breath and sanity when it was through.

  He smelled so good, like citrus and spice and warm Mediterranean nights. She wanted to lean into him, wanted to kiss him again, wanted to know if what she’d felt with him had been real or a fluke.

  “I remember you,” he said.

  For an insane moment she thought he might really kiss her. With a soft curse, he moved away, unstrapping the sword as he walked. It clattered to the floor beside the chair with the rest of his gear before he spun and fixed her with a glare.

  “I remember that we met in Jackson Square when a pickpocket tried to steal your purse. I remember meeting you for three nights in a row in front of the cathedral. But most of all, I remember the last night. Mardi Gras. You were still a virgin.”

  Lily didn’t care if she had permission or not. She moved to a plush couch and sank down on it, aware that she hadn’t showered since yesterday and that she probably smelled as musty as the dungeon. But her legs wouldn’t hold her up any longer.

  “But when you came to the prison…” Her voice trailed off as she thought about how cold and cruel he would have to be to put her through that ordeal. This was not a man to lose her head over, not a fairytale prince on a white stallion. This was a petty, privileged man who didn’t care about anything but his own pleasure.

  Even if he had seemed more concerned with hers on the night she’d given him her virginity. What had she been thinking?

  Easy. She’d been thinking that he was the handsomest, most interesting man she’d ever met. She’d been thinking they had a connection that ran deep despite their only knowing each other a short time. She’d been thinking of romance and fairy tales. Her head had been in the clouds, and she’d paid for it in the end.

  She would not make that mistake again.

  “This is what you will do now,” he continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “You will call your friend Carla and have her bring the boy to the airport. She will turn him over to a woman in my employ. Her name is Gisela—”

  “No!” Lily shot to her feet as shock reverberated through her. “I’m not telling Carla to give my son to a stranger—”

  “Our son, is he not, Lily?”

  Her heart battered her ribs. She would not lose her baby to this man. Not ever. “Surely you can’t be prepared to take my word on it,” she flung at him with far more bravado than she felt. “Let me go home and you’ll never hear another thing from me, I swear.”

  “That I cannot do, signorina.” Irritation crossed his features as he stalked toward her again. “And I already know the truth. Our son was born nearly seventeen months ago, on November the twenty-fifth, in a small hospital in Port Pierre, Louisiana. You were in labor for twenty-two hours, and the only person at your bedside was Carla Breaux.”

  Lily sank onto the couch again as her legs gave way. He knew the truth. Of course he did. His resources were vast compared to hers. Compared to most, she would imagine. “Why did you ask me if he was yours if you know so much?”

  “Because I wanted to hear you say it.”

  Lily felt as if she were collapsing in on herself. Her body folded over, slowly, until her head was nearly between her knees. Fury and fear mingled in her gut, bubbled into a great howl of rage that erupted from her throat, astonishing her.

  Astonishing Nico too, if the alarm on his face was any indication.

  “You are not taking my baby away from me,” she vowed. “I’ll go back to that cell and stay there, but I will not tell Carla to hand over Danny to you.”

  He went to the bar set against one wall and poured a measure of caramel-colored liquid into a glass. Then he returned and held the cut crystal out to her. “Drink this.”

  “No.”

  “You are overwrought. This will help.”

  She gripped the glass in both hands, more to make him go away than anything. When he stood so close, her head felt fuzzy. Thankfully, he retreated a few steps. He picked up a phone, issued what she assumed were a set of orders since whoever was on the other end never had time to speak before he hung up again.

  “You will call your friend Carla and tell her to bring Daniele to the airport tomorrow morning.”

  “I won’t,” she said quietly, resenting the way he so easily Italianized her son’s name. Daniel sounded exotic when he said it.

  “Indeed you will,” Nico replied. “You can make
this easy, or you can make it hard. Should you not cooperate, you might never see Daniele again. Because you will not leave Montebianco. He could grow up motherless, and alone.”

  Numbness crept over her. “You would do that to your own son? You would make him an orphan?”

  She didn’t miss the nearly imperceptible clenching of his jaw. “I will do what it takes to make you see reason, cara. If you cooperate, this will not have to happen, si?”

  “How can you be so cruel?”

  He shrugged an elegant shoulder, and Lily saw red. The spoiled bastard! The glass she held tumbled to the floor and shattered against the tile as she lunged for him. Nico was faster, however. He swept her high into his arms and carried her across the room as she kicked and struggled.

  “Dio, woman, you are wearing sandals. Do you want to slice your feet to ribbons?”

  Lily didn’t care. She simply didn’t care about anything any longer. This man, this cold evil man, was trying to take away the one person in the world who meant the most to her. It was her greatest fear come to life. She would not allow it.

  She twisted in his iron grip, throwing him off balance so that he stumbled. Lily pressed her advantage and they fell to the thick Oriental carpet together, Nico taking the brunt of the impact. A moment later, he flipped her and she found herself on her back, Nico’s hard form pressing into her, breast to belly to hip.

  “Stop fighting me, cara,” he said harshly. “It changes nothing.”

  Lily wiggled beneath him, trying to shake him off. His solid form didn’t budge. The point of a star-shaped medal dug into her ribs. “Why are you doing this to me?” she cried. “You have dozens of children with your mistresses, so why do you care about mine?”

  Rage, disbelief, frustration—they chased across his face in equal measure. “I have one child, Liliana. One. And you have kept him from me.”

  “I don’t believe you,” she gasped out.

  Nico shifted and the medal’s point thankfully stopped pricking her. He gripped her arms, forced them above her head. He seemed to hover on the edge of control. “Have you never thought that gossip magazines might lie?”

  “They can’t all be lies.” There had to be a grain of truth, right? Perhaps they exaggerated, but there must be something to it. Not one of the reporters she knew at the Register would dare write something so patently false.

  Nico’s laugh was short and bitter. “You have obviously never been on the receiving end of these carrion. They feed on outrage and misdirection. There’s hardly a single thing they print about me that is true.”

  “Now I know you’re lying. I’ve seen photos of you with lots of women—”

  “I have had many mistresses,” he said, cutting her off. “This is to be expected—”

  “Why? Because you’re some kind of God’s gift—”

  “Basta! You seek to exasperate me, signorina, and you succeed. Nevertheless, I have one child.”

  Lily’s chest heaved in frustration as she stared up at him. But her eyes closed as the truth of his words sank in. Gossip magazines thrived on scandal. She knew that. But she didn’t want to believe he spoke the truth. Because if he did, so much she’d thought about him would be wrong. The blood drained from her head as the implications of what he said sank in.

  “But if Danny really is the only one, that would mean—”

  She couldn’t finish the sentence, uncertain what to say next. Was Danny in line for a throne? Impossible. He was a sweet little boy who loved to play in puddles when it rained. He loved his stuffed animals, his toy firetruck, and bedtime stories. He gave his love freely, and his laughter was the purest form of happiness Lily had ever heard.

  Nico finished her thought. “Yes, cara, our child is my heir and second in line to the throne of Montebianco.”

  Her insides were jelly. “How is that even possible? We aren’t married.”

  “It just is,” he said, his accent thickening suddenly as she moved.

  Lily took advantage of his distraction to try and buck him off. She arched her back and flexed her body upward, shoving into the cradle of his hips. His cock was hard and she gasped. Knowing he was aroused sent a jolt of sensation sizzling through her.

  In spite of her anger and frustration, the feeling was delicious.

  Dangerous.

  Nico’s breath caught as she shoved against him. The sound was slight, but she heard it nonetheless.

  And just like that she was on fire, absolutely aflame with longing. How could it be possible? How could she feel desire for him when he wanted to ruin her life? He’d given her the most precious thing in her world, and now he wanted to take it away. And her body didn’t seem to care. She redoubled her efforts to throw him off. She would never let him touch her like that again.

  “Maledizione,” he ground out between clenched teeth. “Stop moving—or would you like to take this into the bedroom and do it properly?”

  Lily’s palms splayed against the crisp material of his uniform. A desperate, greedy part of her did indeed want to do it properly. But her common sense, her anger, her sheer dislike of the man won out. “Get off me.”

  “As you wish,” he said, then bounded up and left her to climb to her feet alone.

  Lily hugged herself, her body still tingling with the shock of desire. How could she want him? She closed her eyes, squeezed her arms tight around her middle. My God, she really was her mother’s daughter. This horrid man threatened her and it was all she could do not to succumb to his touch. Not to remember how it had felt with him. How perfect and glorious it had been to lie beneath him….

  Stop.

  She could not afford the distraction of such thoughts. She had to focus. “What now?”

  He whirled on her, his uniform as crisp and perfect as if he hadn’t just been rolling on the floor with her. His royal bearing was absolute. She wondered that she’d never noticed it in the three days she’d spent with him in New Orleans.

  “You will call your friend and instruct her to turn over the child.”

  Lily shook her head. “Why? So you can marry your princess and raise my child with her? Not just no, but hell no.”

  Nico’s brows drew together. “We will need to work on that mouth of yours. It’s unfit for a royal.”

  Lily snorted. “But not unfit enough for you two years ago when you seduced me, huh? Go to hell, Nico,” she said, stressing his name without the title.

  “You most definitely require etiquette lessons, cara mia.” His gaze raked her from head to toe. “And a suitable wardrobe.”

  Lily stiffened. Her clothes might not be the height of fashion, but they were usually clean and neat. Unlike now, when she’d spent the last twenty-four hours in a prison cell and just wrestled on the floor with a prince.

  Nico retrieved a cell phone from a table. “You and your son will never want for anything again. You will no longer have to work. I will take care of you both.”

  Lily stared at the gleaming phone held so casually in his hand, his words more seductive than she cared to admit. Never to have to struggle again? Never to worry about keeping her apartment or her health insurance? Money and freedom from the fear of not having enough to take care of her baby?

  But no. What was he offering her—the chance to be a kept woman while he married his princess and had babies with her? Lily would work herself half to death before she accepted such treatment. She’d taken care of Danny this long. She could continue to do so just fine on her own.

  “I can take care of my son without you,” she said.

  His expression grew so chilly she had to suppress a shiver. “Apparently I have not expressed myself in a manner you understand. There is no choice, Liliana. You and the boy belong to me.”

  Lily snorted. “Even you can’t own people, Nico.”

  He merely smiled at her. A frisson of warning raced down her spine and pooled in her belly. A moment later, he lifted the phone to his ear and began speaking in Italian. This time it was a conversation, not simply a set of or
ders. When he finished, he lay the phone on a nearby table.

  “What did you do?”

  His self-satisfied smile did nothing to ease her tension. “Five million dollars is a lot of money, no? Do you think your friend will turn this down for you?”

  Black spots swam before her eyes, but Lily refused to buckle. “My God…”

  “Si, it is not likely, is it?” He moved closer, shadowing her like the predator he was, impossibly male and utterly beautiful in spite of the hatred she felt for him in that moment. “She will not turn it down, Liliana. Shall I tell you why?”

  When she didn’t reply, he continued. “Carla has a boyfriend with a little problem. He likes the game tables in New Orleans a bit too much, yes? He has taken much from her in the last three years. Her savings are gone, her house leveraged in excess of its current value. This money represents a new life, cara mia. She will not say no.”

  Lily blinked up at him. She knew she was defeated. Carla hadn’t told her the extent of Alan’s problems, but Lily had known that it worried her friend. Carla was almost as bad as Lily’s mother when it came to her slavish devotion to a man who cared more for himself than for her.

  Nico’s fingers stroked down Lily’s cheek, impossibly tender when compared with his actions. She shuddered in spite of her vow not to react. “What do you plan to do with my baby?”

  His eyes hardened, his hand dropping away. “Our baby, Liliana.”

  Lily faced him squarely, ready to do battle, heartsick and heartbroken all at once. “You can’t buy me off too, Nico. I will never leave Danny with you willingly.”

  “Clearly not,” he said, his voice deepening with anger. “But you will not need to do so.”

  Lily gaped at him. “My God, you are unbelievable. How do you think your wife-to-be is going to feel about me and Danny, huh?”

  “Why don’t you ask her yourself?”

  “What? Are you insane?”

  Nico grabbed her by the arm and propelled her toward the opposite wall, her puny resistance not slowing him in the least. He approached a door, and for one crazy minute she thought it was a bedroom and there was a woman inside. He would throw open the door and there she would be, the Princess Antonella Romanelli of Monteverde, a black-haired grey-eyed beauty, sprawled across silk sheets and pouting prettily because her lover was taking too long to get the baby mama under control.