The Demetrios Bridal Bargain Read Free

out of a sense of duty, but because against all the odds he was enjoying what he was doing.
    â€˜You ingrate, you will do as I say or…or…’ Andreos raised his clenched fists from his sides and glared at the younger man with every appearance of loathing.
    Mathieu, his calmness increasing in direct proportion to his father’s furious incoherence, raised a satirical brow. ‘You will disinherit me?’ he suggested.
    â€˜And do not think I won’t.’
    â€˜That is your decision.’
    â€˜You expect me to believe you don’t care?’ Andreos let out a loud bellow of scornful laughter and shook his head. ‘That you don’t care about losing an empire worth billions?’
    â€˜I don’t ask you to believe anything,’ Mathieu responded calmly. ‘Your empire is yours to give to whom you wish. I know you wanted to give it to Alex—’
    â€˜Don’t you dare say his name. He was worth ten of you.’
    Mathieu continued seamlessly in the same even voice as though there had been no interruption. ‘That is no longer possible. Alex is dead.’ An image of his half-brother’s smiling face flashed into his head and for a moment his sense of loss was so acute that he could not speak.
    Alex, the indulged and adored only son, could have, should have, resented the bastard older brother who had suddenly appeared like a cuckoo in the gold-lined nest. But he had not. Alex’s disposition had been as sunny and generous as his smile.
    â€˜I am the only son you have left,’ he said bleakly. ‘You wish to mould me into someone you think is fit to carry on your line.’ Mathieu’s smile revealed his total lack of regard for the illustrious family name he had inherited in his mid-teens. He had deliberately chosen to use his mother’s name when he began his racing career to distance himself from that name.
    â€˜Well, I think we owe one another some honesty. I am not interested in your name, your line…your empire. I have a name of my own, and I am not some malleable child, Father. I was moulded, for better or worse, into what I am today a long time ago.’
    The ruddy colour on the older man’s cheeks deepened to an alarming purple. ‘It is not my fault I did not know you existed…your mother…I brought you into my home after her death.’
    Like a surgical knife Mathieu’s deep, clear voice cut across the older man’s blustering protest. ‘Her name was Felicite, and you will not speak of my mother. You lost that right years ago.’
    The older man’s jaw dropped. He was not accustomed to being on the receiving end of commands. Nor was he used to seeing the glow of passion in the eyes of the son he had not known existed until he was fifteen years old.
    â€˜I gave you everything…’
    Except love. ‘I am not the son you want.’ Mathieu gave a philosophical shrug. ‘And you are not the father I would have chosen. But the fact is,’ he continued calmly, ‘I am the only son you have.’
    The older Greek flinched as though struck and Mathieu added in a softer voice, ‘We both wish it otherwise.’
    Anger flared in the older man’s eyes. ‘Wish it otherwise?’ he echoed, his lips twisted in a scornful grimace. ‘Your brother being killed as he was left you the sole heir…yes, your tears were most apparent at the time,’ he observed bitterly.
    This was a subject they had tiptoed along the edge of many times and this time, like the others, it was Mathieu who drew back, though emotion surfaced and flared for a moment like silver fire in his heavy-lidded eyes before he responded with a moderate, ‘We both wish it otherwise but this is the situation we find ourselves in. I suggest we both learn to live with it.’
    â€˜How dare you speak to me this way?’
    Mathieu had learnt the hard way that showing emotion gave people the upper hand,