Moments later, Ilona was settling into the shadowed interior of Leander’s car. He told Dino to “check the score” and waited for the man to put in his earbuds before saying in a dangerous tone, “Care to explain what cash in with a baby means?”
Not especially. She rolled her lips inward as she considered how much to say, but he was likely to find out once he was voting her shares at Pagonis anyway.
“There’s a provision in my father’s will to reapportion the family shares when babies are born.”
There was a stunned silence, then, “Spell it out for me. Are you saying that if I get you pregnant, our child will eat up shares that belong to the rest of the family?”
“Yes.”
“Why haven’t you told me that?”
“Because I don’t wish to be used as a brood mare or have my child used as a property stake.”
“That’s not what I’m suggesting.”
“Tell me that’s not the first thought that popped into your mind,” she scoffed.
His cheek ticked and he looked away. “I’ve trained myself to look at every option with an objective lens, especially when it comes to taking your brother down. That doesn’t mean I would follow through on something so cold-blooded. Midas would, though. Why hasn’t he?”
Ilona bit back a sigh, finding this whole topic distasteful. “He tried as soon as he married. That was seven years ago, but they didn’t have any luck. Apparently, he had gonorrhea when he was at uni and left it untreated for years. Four years ago, after his divorce, he supposedly got another woman pregnant, but our father was still alive. He insisted on a paternity test. The baby wasn’t Midas’s. Our father wrote in a condition that the family shares can only be held by Pagonis blood.”
“That all tracks,” Leander said with a disgusted snort. “What about the other one?”
“Hercules? He isn’t interested in women or children.”
“So that leaves you. If you carry a baby, it’s definitely a Pagonis. No wonder they’re so threatened by you.”
“Yes, and everything they put me through would be visited upon my child tenfold so I can’t.”
“I would protect both of you. You have to know that.”
“I would love to believe it,” she assured him. “But why do you suddenly want a baby? I was raised on spite, Leander. I refuse to conceive a baby simply to get the better of them. Kindly don’t ask me to.”
“I’m not.” He didn’t flinch. “But you do want children. Don’t you?” It wasn’t really a question. He was prodding for confirmation.
She did. Deep down, she had a flicker of a dream where her life was filled with love. Where high small voices said the words to her and a deep one said it across a pillow and she even said it herself. And meant it. She wanted it to spill out of her in the most sincere and healing way, making her feel worthy and needed. Whole.
She didn’t tell him any of that, only left a thick silence that had him turning his face to the window.
They didn’t speak again until they were at her building. As he got out to hold the door and assist her, he said, “We’ll talk more about this tomorrow.”
“No we won’t,” she muttered and went inside.
Why do you want a baby?
Children hadn’t been at the top of his immediate list of goals; Leander would admit that. Conceiving an heir was something he had firmly placed on the back burner while he spent all his concentration and effort on righting the wrong Midas had done to him.
He had always assumed he would have children at some point, though. His relationship with his mother was strained, but he had been close with his father. Maybe there was even a sense of something left undone. He had lost his father when he was sixteen. It was a time of life when many an adolescent walked out on their parents, determined to mature on their own terms.
Leander hadn’t had the luxury of choice and often wondered what his father would think of the person he had become. Would he be this jaded, driven man if his father hadn’t died? Would his father appreciate what Leander was trying to do in his memory? Was there any sense in doing it if he wasn’t going to pass his name and legacy on to another generation of Vasilous?
So yes, he wanted children for deeply personal reasons that had nothing to do with any advantage they might afford him with his mission against Midas Pagonis.
Obviously, he wouldn’t force any woman to carry his child if she didn’t want to, but given the security he could offer, he had been a little insulted that first day when Ilona had said, I don’t want children with you, summarily rejecting him as if he failed to measure up.
There were extenuating circumstances; he saw that now, and he understood her suspicion of his motives, but he was the product of an accidental pregnancy. He wouldn’t be cavalier about bringing children into anything but a committed, healthy relationship.
Which was not what they had.