Scandalously Expecting His Child. Оливия Гейтс

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СКАЧАТЬ walked away steadily. Her five-inch heels clicked on the wooden bridge leading away from the garden house over the pond in a rhythmic, deliberate staccato.

      Inside her, absolute chaos raged.

      This confrontation with Raiden had been a total shock. It hadn’t even been a possibility in her mind coming here.

      When Hiro had called her a few hours ago, insisting that she attended this ball, she’d been loath to agree. Even with a new face and identity, she dreaded social functions and suffocated under scrutiny. Looking the way she did now, and being a gaijin, as foreigners were called in Japan, and Hiro’s personal companion to boot, she’d been certain she’d be put under the microscope of public interest. But she’d agreed without letting Hiro know of her aversion. She’d do anything for him.

      Then he’d told her he was sending her the dress he wanted her to wear, and her dormant curiosity had been roused. But it had been when she’d noticed he’d sounded nothing like his warmly indulgent and coolly humorous self, but nervous, urgent and sour, that she’d gently probed.

      And he’d told her what he’d withheld from her for months—why he’d been holding this ball, and for whom. The woman he wanted. She’d become engaged to another, obeying her family’s demands. He’d wanted to show her he wouldn’t be mourning her loss, had an exotic beauty on whom to bestow the affections she’d rejected. Then he’d told her the name of the man he’d lost his woman to. Raiden.

      After that, she’d been as anxious as he about this ball.

      During the past three years, after she’d resurfaced with her new identity, she’d seen Raiden many times, all from afar. He’d even been the indirect reason she’d come to Japan. Seeing him up close again was a whole different ball game, the anticipation eating her up with agitation and eagerness.

      So she’d dressed up as Hiro had wanted, played the role he’d wanted her to play when he’d taken her to Raiden and his fiancée. Empathy at Hiro’s suffering at Megumi’s sight had been intensified by her upheaval at Raiden’s nearness. Seeing him face-to-face had felt like a direct blow to the heart.

      But she’d played her part for Hiro’s sake, and had almost sagged in his stiff hold when he, too, hadn’t been able to bear Megumi’s nearness any longer and cut their confrontation short. She’d thought that had been it.

      Not for a second had she considered Raiden might see any similarity between the new her and the casually dressing, flat shoe–wearing, slim blonde he’d once known. So even when she’d felt him following her, she’d thought he’d been pursuing Hiro’s new romantic interest. The Raiden she’d known wouldn’t have struck at an adversary that way, but then he could have changed since she’d betrayed him.

      Then he’d confronted her, and every meticulously erected pillar maintaining her cohesion had crumbled in shock.

      But she’d been trained too well, through too many brutal tests. She’d acted her way to perfection through her life’s worst situations. And she’d had plenty of nightmarish ones. None, however, had ever affected her as her time with Raiden had.

      In the garden house, she’d still fallen back on her fail-safe maneuvers, trapping her agitation in her deepest recesses, plastering one of her automated reaction modes on the surface. But then he’d taken her in his arms, drowned her in a kiss that had dissolved the last vestiges of her facade. And she’d given up the pretense.

      What had followed had been agonizing. But she hoped she’d maintained a semblance of indifference all through.

      One thing held her together now as she walked away from Raiden. Knowing that he’d heed her warning and leave her alone. She’d never see or hear from him again. Or if she did, he’d pretend she was the total stranger he’d just met tonight.

      Not that he didn’t hate it. She’d felt him seething to obey the urge to do her major damage, equivalent to what he considered she’d caused him. She could feel his gaze on her all the way to the mansion’s entrance, bombarding her with his pent-up rage and contempt.

      By the time she reached one of Hiro’s limos, she’d expended the last of her balance. After forcing her rented apartment’s address in Shibuya out of unsteady lips to the unknown driver, she flopped back in her seat, her nerves in pieces, her muscles like trembling jelly.

      Exhaling forcibly to expel her agitation, she tried to luxuriate in the sights of Tokyo at night. The city was one of the most exotic and exciting places she’d ever been, and her life had taken her almost everywhere.

      She soon gave up, resigned she’d see nothing during the hour’s drive but Raiden’s magnificent, wrathful face. Would feel nothing but regurgitated turmoil and searing memories.

      Had it really been five years? The insane whirlpool of events as she’d reinvented herself since made her feel as if it had been fifty years. But his memory was so intense, it could have been five days since she’d last seen him. She hadn’t forgotten a thing about him. His beauty was as indescribable as she remembered, and his effect on her was as overpowering.

      When she’d been sent to spy on him, all she’d known was that he was an American billionaire venture capitalist of Japanese origins. His business past was impeccable and his personal one unremarkable, having been born to a single mother who’d died when he’d been ten, placing him in the foster system until he’d been eighteen. Then he’d traveled the world before coming back to the States at twenty-six, and he’d been soaring through the venture capitalism field since. He’d been twenty-nine when she’d met him and already a billionaire. Now at thirty-four, he was at the undisputable top, with a handful of others, one of whom was Hiro.

      But her recruiter was convinced Raiden was a former assassin, and had sent her to get intimate with Raiden and get solid proof. And she had. Through the full access Raiden had given her to his domain, she’d used her special training to breach his secret records and gotten that proof.

      But it had been years of research later that had put together his real life story. What he himself hadn’t known when he’d been with her. It had been just months ago that she’d worked out just how he’d become that ninja assassin called Lightning.

      He’d been two when he’d lost his family in an earthquake and tsunami that hit the rural Akita Prefecture in Japan. Taken to a shelter in the aftermath, he’d remained there for two years until his extraordinary agility had brought him to the attention of a “recruiter” for The Organization, a shadow operation that took children and turned them into unstoppable mercenaries who executed top-risk operations for the highest bidders. Pretending she was a relative, the recruiter had taken him only to sell him to The Organization.

      He’d been among hundreds of boys taken from all over the world, kept segregated in a remote area in the Balkans, viciously trained and molded until they graduated to fieldwork. They performed missions under strict surveillance from their personal handlers. Death was the only punishment for any attempts at subordination or escape. But he’d been one of a few who’d ever escaped. She suspected some or even all of his partners in Black Castle Enterprises were also escapees.

      She’d often wondered if he’d called himself Raiden, the god of thunder and lightning in Japan, to reflect his code name when he’d been the ultimate ninja warrior, so certain no one would ever tie him to his former identity. His cover was ingenious, after all, and it was a common enough name. As for Kuroshiro, that literally meant Black Castle. She’d also wondered if he’d picked it after the name of his joint enterprise with his partners, or if they’d СКАЧАТЬ