Riccardo's Secret Child Read Online Free PDF

some of his natural self-composure, which had been blown to smithereens in the space of three short hours.
    Somehow he would deal with this. And somehow Julia Nash would be made to pay for the torture she had subjected him to. It mattered not that Caroline and her lover were now no longer around to be held accountable for their vile actions.
    Julia Nash was here, accessory to the crime as far as he was concerned, and she would pay the price.
    She ran into the kitchen, her face distressed, and he looked at her in stony silence.
    â€˜Don’t even dare think that you can make excuses for Caroline and what she did! Don’t even imagine for one minute that you can justify the immorality of her decision!’
    Their eyes locked, Julia helpless to break free from the ice-cold blackness of his stare.
    â€˜How dared she think that she could play God and make decisions that would affect my life and the life of my own flesh and blood? And you…’ he added in a voice thick withcontempt, ‘how did you feel watching your brother do the job that should rightfully have been mine?’
    â€˜That’s not fair!’ Julia protested, even though she knew that she was doing little more than shouting in a wind because he was not going to listen to a word she said. But still, she had to defend them both. She might not have agreed with what they had decided to do, but she had been able to see their point. Caroline was terrified that Riccardo, had he known of the existence of his daughter, would do his best to gain custody. The thought of having the fruit of his loins raised by another man would have been anathema to him. So she had silenced Julia’s objections. She had reasoned that, however much the courts decided in favour of the mother, Riccardo Fabbrini had the power and the wealth to get exactly what he wanted.
    â€˜How dare you talk to me about fair?’ he gritted. He slammed his fist on the counter, tipping the edge of the saucer resting beneath her cup, and sent both shattering to the ground. She doubted that he was even aware of it.
    â€˜You wouldn’t have been married to her!’ she persisted, mutinously defying the warning in his eyes. ‘You’re not comparing like with like. You might have seen Nicola on weekends, but you still wouldn’t have shared the completeness of a family home. The marriage was over well before she was born. Before she was conceived, even!’
    Riccardo refused to hear the sense behind what she was saying. He felt like a man who had suddenly and inexplicably had the rug pulled from under his feet and in the process found himself freefalling through thin air off the edge of a precipice. No, reason was the last thing that appealed.
    The small brown sparrow in front of him might be pleading for his understanding, but understanding was the least emotion accessible to him right now.
    â€˜Now that you know, we need to talk about Nicola, decide how often you want to see her.’ Julia spoke even though her mouth felt dry, and she had to move to the kitchen table and sit down, because her legs were beginning to feel very uncooperative.
    She sat down and ran her fingers through her thick shoulder-length hair, tucking it nervously behind her ears. This meeting had all gone so very wrong that she had no idea where anything was heading any more. She had expected a more civilised reaction, a more accommodating approach. She knew that he was a force to be reckoned with in the world of business. She had reasonably deduced that, that being the case, he would respond with the efficient detachment which would have been part and parcel of his working persona. She had not banked on his natural passion, which now flowed around him in invisible waves, putting paid to any thoughts of a reasonable approach.
    â€˜A calm, phlegmatic British approach to a problem, is that it? I am supposed to quietly accept years of premeditated deceit with a smile on my face and then get down