He nodded. “A risk I am willing to take—that I will give you no reason to dissolve our marriage. You would have complete freedom. You would not have to spend your days poring over account books or negotiating with suppliers. You could do exactly as you please.”
“Iamdoing exactly as I please,” she replied. “If you really think I would give up everything I’ve worked for just for the promise of a bigger house and some vacations to Baiae…” She shook her head. “I refuse your proposal.”
His eyes narrowed, the charming mask slipping. “I have made you several generous offers, Lucretia, this last one being the most generous of all. I have treated you like a respected associate. But allow me to advise you that this will be my last offer. If you maintain your refusal, you will no longer be my colleague, but my adversary. And my adversaries do not last long.”
That was true enough; for the last several years, Felix had dedicated himself to picking off competing shipping enterprises one by one, whether through undercutting their prices, overtaking their supplier relationships, swaying their investors, or simply convincing them to sell their ships. Lucretia was nowthe last major competitor in Ostia. If she folded, Felix would control the entire flow of goods into and out of the port city, which could have disastrous consequences if his greed took over.
So she would stand against him, if it came to it. She would risk whatever it took to maintain her independence, and she certainly wouldn’t accept his offer of marriage.
“My refusal stands.”
“Perhaps you wish to think about it.”
She rose to her feet, a gesture of dismissal. “I trust you’ll have no further reason to speak to me again.”
A muscle pulsed in his jaw. In a quick, spare movement, he stood and cast her one long, dark glance before he turned for the door.
Lucretia waited until she heard the outer door to their office open and close before sinking back into her chair. She let out a long breath. She wasn’t thrilled at the idea of having Felix for an enemy, but she owed it to Ostia—and possibly the entire Roman economy—to stand against him.
Felix walked away from Lucretia’s office, passing through the Square of the Guilds where all of Ostia’s commerce centered. He tried and failed to unclench his jaw. He had planned to return to his own office, on the opposite side of the square from Lucretia’s, but now he was too irritated to get any work done. Better to take a brisk walk to work off his frustration.
Lucretia’s calm refusal of his best offer rankled him. Who did she think she was playing with? She had to be the only woman in Ostia who would refuse a marriage proposal from him.
Unluckily for him, Lucretia was the only one he had any interest in marrying.
Purely for business reasons, of course. If he couldn’t convince Lucretia to sell her ships to him outright, then he’d thought offering a lifetime of security and a respected stepfather for her son would sway her.
His proposal had certainly hadnothingto do with the fact that thoughts of her had filled his mind ever since they first met years ago, when she was still married to Cornelius. Her shining auburn hair, her quick wit and delicate laugh. Her tempting figure, always hidden beneath a loose dress.
Five years ago, she had also refused him—though that proposal had been of a more prurient nature than the one he’d made today. His inelegant, fumbling advance had left him deeply embarrassed.
It had been a simple thing to quietly lust after her when she was nothing more than his rival’s wife. But now, a year after Cornelius’s death, Lucretia herself had become his greatest rival. A layer of regard had built—unwillingly—alongside his attraction to her. She had managed to maintain and even grow her husband’s business. Somehow, she had convinced the captains of her ships to stay with her and had preserved Cornelius’s relationships with merchants and suppliers from Massilia to New Carthage. It made him wonder if perhaps she had been more involved with the business during Cornelius’s lifetime than Felix had realized, if her husband’s key contacts were willing to trust her without batting an eye.
He hated the way he felt around her. Though he strove to avoid her, Ostia’s small social circle threw them together more often than not. Whenever they were in the same room, his attention was drawn to her like a hapless moth to a flame. She scrambled his focus, rendering his other conversations a blur of half-understood words.
On a few occasions, in a particularly crowded room, they’d touched, and each brief moment of contact was branded ontohis mind. There was the time her shoulder had brushed his arm when she’d stepped aside to make room for someone to pass. Then the time when her knee had bumped him as she’d risen from the dining couch. Most memorably, she’d once stumbled into him, jostled by someone behind her, and her entire body had pressed against his for one breathless, heated moment. Much as he resented his reaction to her, he hoarded those little moments like Croesus hoarded gold.
But Felix would not let Lucretia’s allure blind him. She was standing in the way of his goal to monopolize shipping to and from Ostia, and he would find a way to remove her from his path.
As he made his way through the streets, leaving the colonnaded central square behind, a commotion down a side street caught his attention. He paused, glancing into the shadowy alley. It was just a group of adolescent boys, embroiled in a scuffle.
He made to keep walking, but the nature of the scuffle kept his focus. It didn’t seem to be an ordinary, evenly matched brawl, but a three-on-one beating. The boy at the middle of it all was curled into a ball, trying to protect his face from the kicks and punches of the others.
Distaste curled in his stomach. Felix had occasionally been the victim of such torment as a child. If there was one thing he couldn’t abide, it was an unfair fight. Nowadays, he visited the gymnasium twice a week to spar with his fists and had developed into a highly capable boxer, but as a boy, he’d been too often targeted for beatings, until his mother, Volusia, had removed him from school and secured private tutors.
Well, he was overdue for a training session, so dispatching these bullies would serve two purposes.
Felix strode into the alley and grabbed the closest boy by the neck of his tunic. He hauled him off the victim and shoved himtoward the wall of the alley. The second boy turned to Felix with a snarl and aimed a punch, but Felix deflected the blow easily and rewarded the boy with a cuff to the side of his head that sent the boy reeling to the dirt.
The third boy took a step back, his gaze flicking between Felix and his two comrades, both attempting to drag themselves to their feet.
Felix narrowed his eyes. “Go.”
The boy turned and ran. The other two stumbled after him, leaving Felix alone in the alley with their erstwhile victim.
The adolescent hauled himself to his feet, brushing dirt off his knee-length tunic. A few scrapes and bruises marred his arms and legs, but he didn’t seem to be seriously injured. “Thank you,” he muttered.
Based on the tenor of his voice, Felix put the boy’s age at fourteen or fifteen. He was scrawny for his age, though, which was likely at least part of the reason he’d been targeted. Boys like his attackers loved an easy victim.
