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‘Roman, I’m so sorry you heard that,’ Milly began. But he couldn’t look at her, couldn’t let himself be swayed by feelings that didn’t make sense and never had.
‘Don’t be, it’s exactly what I expected,’ he said, his tone surprisingly measured considering he could feel his rage burning. He was Cade’s equal now in every respect and he’dworked like a dog for sixteen years to prove it. But Cade would never accept that. Maybe it was time he made him.
‘If you don’t want me dating Milly, why don’t you at least have the guts to admit the real reason?’ he barked, making both women flinch.
But he couldn’t see Cade’s wife any more, he couldn’t even really see Milly—her open, honest, beautiful face something he had come to rely on in the last weeks, to soothe him and excite him and make him ache. All he could see was the man in front of him, who had once stood in the way of everything he wanted, everything he needed, and was doing it again now. With her.
‘What the hell is that supposed to mean?’ Cade yelled back, still maintaining the lie this wasn’t personal. ‘You think I’m not entitled to protect a woman I think of as a sister from the likes of you?’
‘You may think of her as a sister, but it’s a good thing she’s not your actual sister...’ The bitterness flowed through his veins on the tsunami of rage, spewing out of his mouth on a wave of righteous fury. ‘Because then, me sleeping with her would be kind of incestuous, now, wouldn’t it?’
But Cade’s reaction was not what he expected. Instead of looking guilty or humiliated the way he was supposed to, his face went blank with shock and confusion.‘What...?’
‘You really don’t recognise me, do you?’ he said, the bitterness scalding his throat.
The fact Cade hadn’t ever figured out who he was only made the man’s self-serving destruction of Roman’s character in front of Milly that much worse.
‘I’m the kid who begged you for a job, sixteen years ago in Cade Tower,’ he said, determined to jog the bastard’s memory. ‘The kid you had thrown out in the gutter by your security guards. The kid who was dumb enough to give you his real name at the time... Dante Rocco. The son of Alicia Rocco, your oldman’s mistress. The kid you pretended not to know was your old man’s bastard. And your half-brother.’
Cade didn’t look shocked any more, he looked... What even was that?
But before Roman could gauge the man’s reaction, he heard a gasp. And swung round, to find himself staring into Milly’s pale face. The rage curdled, and the fog of anger and aggression caused by hurts from long ago cleared, to be replaced by a slice of agonising pain that plunged into his chest as he noticed the glitter of tears in her eyes.
‘Roman, I’m... Why didn’t you tell me?’ she whispered, but there was no accusation in her voice, only sadness and sympathy and regret... And acceptance.
The fear slammed into him again, so much bigger than before. Because nothing mattered now, except her and what she thought of him. And that couldn’t be right, because he didn’t care what anyone thought of him.Ever.
But even as he tried to tell himself that, the guilt and remorse continued to sideswipe him. He turned back to Cade and his wife, who were still staring at him, speechless.
Everything was wrong. This wasn’t how this was supposed to go. He’d envisioned this showdown in his mind a thousand times and he was supposed to feel vindicated, assured. Instead, his stomach was in freefall. And he knew he had screwed up. Badly. But he didn’t even know how, or why.
As the devastating feeling of being exposed, of being raw, of never being enough closed in around him, he said the only thing he could think of to protect himself. And his pride.
‘You’ll be glad to know, I’m leaving as soon as my helicopter arrives,’ he said to the Cades. Then he forced himself to turn to Milly. ‘Come with me or stay here. I don’t care that much either way.’
But as he strode out of the room, the heavy silence behind him like a weight bearing down on his soul, and tugged his phone out of his pocket with shaking fingers to text his pilot, he knew he did care. Far too much.
CHAPTER NINE
MILLYSTOODINthe middle of Brandon’s study, but felt as if she were floating outside herself. She trembled, trapped in the strange limbo—between sadness and shock and confusion—as the voices of her sister and her brother-in-law drifted around her.
‘Do you remember him, Brandon?’ Lacey’s voice whispered through the numbness.
‘Yeah, weirdly, I do remember that kid.’ Brandon had collapsed into an armchair, and was running his fingers through his hair, looking more agitated than Milly had ever seen him. ‘He made quite an impression. How the hell he had managed to get into the executive suites at Cade Inc, I’ll never know as there were three levels of security. But I don’t remember asking to have him kicked out.’
‘Could what he’s saying be true?’ Lacey said, sitting beside her husband and pressing her hand to his knee. ‘That he’s your brother?’
Brandon gripped Lacey’s hand, then let out a heavy sigh, the ghosts of a childhood Milly knew he’d spent years dealing with flickering through his expression. ‘I never knew the names of any of my father’s mistresses, so I never made the connection. But I wouldn’t put it past the bastard to deny his own flesh and blood.’ He sank his head into his hands. ‘No wonder Garner has aways hated me.’
Milly felt the murmured conversation—and what it revealed—like a physical blow.
Roman was Brandon’s half-brother. And Alfred Cade was the man who had tried to force his mother to have an abortion. To ensure he didn’t exist.
The agony in his face, when he’d turned to her in that moment, made total sense now.
She scrubbed the tears off her cheeks. She had to go to him. She could help him, soothe him, tell him how much he meant to her.
But as she lurched out of her shocked stupor, ready to run after him, Lacey leapt up and grabbed her. ‘Milly, where are you going?’
