"Straight to the point." Phoebe's voice cutting through the whistling wind. "How exactly do you plan to take responsibility for my life? Because …"
"Because you are carrying my heir?"
"You … you know I'm pregnant?" she breathed, her voice dropping into a strained whisper that was nearly swallowed by the wind.
Raymond's small, calm smile remained intact, contrasting sharply with the storm brewing in her eyes. "I know everything about you. Of course, I know you're pregnant."
"But … no! that's impossible! That means you've been spying on me this whole time!" Phoebe shrieked, her voice cracking with a mixture of fury and rising panic.
"How could I not know," Raymond countered, his tone dropping into a deeper, more resonant frequency, "When you are carrying my child?"
The words hung heavily in the air. Deep down, Phoebe wasn't just spiraling because Raymond had discovered her secret, she was being violently triggered by the reality of the pregnancy itself, a reality she was nowhere near ready to face. Her mind flashed back to the ghosts of her past, suffocating her. Overwhelmed, she took a sharp step backward, instinctively widening the physical distance between them on the narrow balcony.
"Don't tell me …" Phoebe stammered, her eyes wide with sudden, wild suspicion. "You planned all of this, didn't you? Don't tell me … I was just a target you chose to breed your child?!"
The venomous accusation caught Raymond slightly off guard. The amusement faded from his features, replaced by a cold seriousness. "No."
"You're lying! I don't believe a single word out of your mouth!" Phoebe's voice rose to a hysterical pitch. Her emotional stability was fracturing right before his eyes. In her frustration, she violently ran her fingers through her damp hair, clawing at her reflection.
Seeing her break down, Raymond took a calculated step forward, driven by an instinct to anchor her. But before his leather shoe could plant firmly, Phoebe snapped.
"Stop right there! Don't you dare come any closer to me!"
Denial, anger, and a deep, aching betrayal warred inside her head, turning her thoughts into chaos. "Arh! Out of all the women in this pathetic world, why me?! Why did you have to target me to carry your baby?!"
A tear finally broke free, hot and angry, tracing a path down her pale, flushed cheek. "You are twisted. You're evil!"
"Listen to me first," Raymond commanded softly but firmly.
"What else is there to say, huh?!"
"I never planned any of this before that night, I didn't even know who you were—
"Liar! What reason do I have to believe a bastard like you?!"
Raymond exhaled a slow, quiet breath. He knew he had to keep his explanation short and lethal. Giving her long, winding speech would only feed her hysteria. He needed a single, undeniable truth to break her defense.
"How could I have planned any of it," Raymond began, his calm voice cutting through her rage as his intense, steady gaze locked onto hers, stripped of any predatory edge, "when you were the one who chose the location of our meeting?"
Phoebe froze, her breath catching in her throat.
"You came to Italy on your own accord, by your own choice," Raymond continued smoothly, laying out the facts like cards on a table. "How could I have engineered a trap like that? Unless … your business trip to Italy was manipulated by someone else to force our paths to cross. Was it?"
The heavy words hit her like a splash of ice water. Phoebe fell dead silent, the wind whipping around them as she stood completely still, forced to process his logic through the fog of her fading anger.
There was no denying it, everything Raymond said was the absolute truth. Italy had been her own desperate sanctuary, a sudden, impulsive escape to heal the shattered pieces of her heart after the heartbreak Nick had inflicted upon her. She hadn't gone there on anyone's recommendation, and the bar she had stumbled into that night had been entirely her own choice.
Watching the storm in phoebe's eyes briefly give away to stark silence, Raymond assumed his logic had finally pierced through her defense. Slowly, cautiously, he began to close the distance between them.
"Argh! I still don't believe you!" Phoebe suddenly shot back, her defenses slamming right back up. "For all I know, you could have been targeting me for months! The moment I set foot in Italy, your satellites probably picked it up, you tracked me to that bar, and you orchestrated that entire passionate night just to trap me?!"
A part of Raymond wanted to roar in frustration, he couldn't fathom how her brilliant, sharp mind could twist reality into such a wild, elaborate conspiracy. Yet, looking at the fierce fire burning within her, he knew better than to pour gasoline on a woman who was already being consumed by her own chaos.
"Do I need to hand you the security logs to prove I arrived at that bar long before you did?" Raymond countered, his voice dripping with absolute certainty, even though, in truth, he had no historical timeline of their exact arrival times.
"Furthermore … I have never focused my attention on any woman before. I have traversed the world, crossed paths with countless women, and not a single one ever occupied my thoughts. So tell me, how could I have been targeting you for months? Especially with a motive as ungentlemanly as trapping you with my child?"
It was a clash of titans on that balcony, two fiercely proud, high society figures refusing to yield an inch of their pride. Phoebe was desperately clinging to the narrative that she was a victim of a calculated trap, while Raymond was trying to make her see that he wasn't that brand of a monster.
"A statement like that carries zero weight! It's nothing but self-defense!" she snapped, her breath catching.
Raymond let out a sharp, rough exhale. "It seems that along with your beauty, you possess an incredibly stubborn streak."
Even in the middle of a mocking remark, he couldn't help but slip in a compliment. But internally, the man who was used to crushing opponents with a single command was growing genuinely perplexed. For the first time in his life, his massive ego and relentless need to win had met its match. He couldn't end this debate with just one or two cold explanations.
Phoebe let out a hollow, bitter laugh, fresh tears escaping her eyes and tracks down her damp, flawless skin. "Why are you silent? You've run out of lies, haven't you?" She laughed again, the sound brittle and mocking. "Just admit it, Raymond! At least accept what you did so a bastard like you doesn't end up looking like a pathetic loser, too!"
The word 'loser' snapped something vital inside Raymond.
A dormant, dark beast within his soul, one that usually slept whenever he was dealing with her, violently awakened. His calm demeanor shifted, his quiet gaze darkening into something sharp, piercing, and utterly predatory. When Phoebe raised her hand, signaling him to halt, he completely ignored it. He marched forward with absolute, terrifying conviction.
"Anyone in this world is free to doubt my word, including you," Raymond murmured, his voice deadly quiet. He didn't raise his pitch, he could have easily roared at her, but the rational part of his brain remained acutely aware that he was looking at the woman he loved. Screaming at her would fix nothing. "But there is one thing you must do right now … open your mind. Stop letting your fury dictate a flawed, broken logic."
Before she could pull away or deny him further, Raymond's hand shot out, his fingers wrapping around her wrist in an unbreakable, commanding grip.
"I am not lying to you." He whispered, his face inches from hers. "And if you want ironclad proof that I didn't even know you existed before that night … I can give it to you right now."
Phoebe swallowed hard, her heart hammering against her ribs. "What proof?"
"I literally hired a private intelligence team to hunt down the identity of the mysterious woman who had shared my bed that night," he revealed, his cold, steady voice sending a chilling shiver straight down her spine. His dark eyes never wavered from hers, locking her in place. "I demanded to know who she was, where she came from, and everything about her, because until that investigation concluded, I had absolutely no idea where you lived, Miss Fortunata."
When no further answers left Phoebe's lips, her gaze began to turn hollow, clouded by a bitter refusal to accept the reality staring her in the face.
Raymond broke the silence, his voice steady. "Is there anything else you suspect me of, Miss Fortunata?"
Phoebe instinctively wanted to shake her head, but the sheer denial locked in her throat choked her. The suppression reached its boiling point, and her emotions fractured completely. "Arhh!"
A raw, piercing shriek tore from her lungs as her hands instantly balled into fists, raining a desperate barrage of blows against Raymond's broad, solid chest.
"You're evil! You're evil! You fucking absolute bastard!"
Raymond didn't block her path, nor did he attempt to shield himself from her wrath. He stood like a monolith, letting her vent every ounce of her suffocating fury onto him. Fueled by raw adrenaline and heartbreak, her strikes carried a surprising amount of power. He felt the dull ache of each blow bruising his skin, but he completely ignored the pain. He knew that forcing her to suppress this chaotic rage would only deteriorate her fragile condition further.
When her fists finally lost their momentum, Phoebe frantically gripped her own hair, about to violently pull at the strands in a fit of self-destruction.
In a flash, Raymond's arms shot out, wrapping securely around her waist and pulling her flush against his chest, trapping her hands between their bodies. He anchored her into a fierce, inescapable embrace.
"If you want to be angry, if you want to scream, unleash it all on me …" Raymond's voice wrapping around her like a soothing balm. "… not on yourself."
With infinite tenderness, his large hand gently stroked the back of her head, smoothing down the tangled lock of her hair. He held her slender frame tightly against him, molding her into an embrace that offered absolute protection and an undeniable, enveloping comfort against the harsh afternoon wind.
As her tears kept flowing, the last of phoebe's strength simply vanished. The combination of her fever, the lingering heat from the bath, and the sheer emotional shock she had just endured caused her defenses to crumble instantly. Her head suddenly spun, and her vision went entirely dark.
"Hey, Be?" Raymond murmured, his protective instinct kicking in as he immediately tightened his grip the moment, he felt her body go limp and lose its footing.