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The brush of her bare leg against the muscled length of his thigh unearthed a shiver that reverberated through her. Heat pooled beneath her skin at the memory of what all that hard muscle could do. How it could take her to heaven and back. How it might have been worth every disastrous moment that had followed.
She watched, hypnotized, as his gaze darkened to midnight. As the power of what they created together took hold. One step and she would be in his arms. One tilt of her head and her mouth would be on his.
It would be magical. Unforgettable. Which had always been the problem between her and Santo. Because if he knew what she really was, who she was at her core, what she’d done, he wouldn’t want her anymore.
Her pulse was a frantic, flurried beat she couldn’t seem to control, and she took an unsteady step backward. “You’re right,” she agreed breathlessly, staring up into all that black heat. “It’s history under the bridge. You have moved on and so have I. So maybe we should agree on that and call it a night.”
A myriad of emotions flickered across his hard-boned face. As if he was debating whether or not to agree with her. She drew in a breath and waited, only to have his attention captured by something behind her, a bemused expression moving across his face.
An ominous thud started somewhere in the region of her heart. Warning bells rang in her head as she turned around slowly to find Leo padding out onto the porch, his thumb stuck in his mouth, his blue blanket trailing behind him. Clearly woken by their raised voices, he directed a big dark-eyed stare at Santo.
Gia stepped toward him, desperate to head off disaster. But there was no way to prevent it. Her son, cheeks flushed from sleep, golden hair ruffled, took his thumb out of his mouth, walked the last couple of steps toward her and held his chubby arms out to her. “Up.”
She picked him up and cuddled him close to her chest, her pulse pounding so loud in her ears it was like a freight train running through her head. Santo took in the scene, a frown creasing his brow. The curiosity in his gaze deepened as he stared at Leo. Then his eyes widened, shock flaring in those midnight depths.
It was like looking at two mirror images of each other.
She saw the moment realization dawned in Santo’s eyes. Watched the blood drain from his face.
* * *
Santo took an unsteady breath as he stared at velvety dark eyes that could have been his own. At the noticeable cowlick that had infuriated all three of the Di Fiore brothers as they’d grown into adulthood. He ruffled the hair of the child in front of him.
It could not be. The child could be Lombardi’s... Except there was no sign of the angular-faced Italian in the little boy clinging to Gia—there was only the identical image staring back at him. A bone-deep recognition echoed through him—a deep, primal pull in his gut unlike anything he’d ever felt in his life.
And then there was the panic arrowing through Gia’s eyes. The stark fear painted across her face as she held the little boy close. The events of the night started piling up in quick succession, bombarding him with the impossible. Why Gia had been so terrified to see him. Why she’d been so anxious to get rid of him.
Because she’d been guarding a secret she’d spent four years preserving.
Somehow, he found the presence of mind to pull himself together. “I didn’t know you had a little boy.” He set his gaze on Gia’s stricken face. “How old is he?”
She didn’t answer. For so long, so damn long, his heart climbed into his throat. “Dannazione, Gia. Answer the question.”
“He is three years old.”
The earth gave way beneath his feet, any reality he’d thought he’d ever known replaced by a grey haze that threatened to envelop him whole. But the little boy had settled now and was staring at him with big, dark, curious eyes that held the slightest bit of apprehension, and the silence on the porch was deafening.
“Friend?” the little boy whispered, looking up at Santo.
Friend? Santo almost choked on the word.
A strangled look crossed Gia’s face. “Yes,” she murmured. “A friend. And you should be in bed.” She glanced at Santo. “I need to—”
“Go,” he instructed curtly, as if she wasn’t about to carry his son away from him. As if the world wasn’t disintegrating beneath his feet. “We’ll talk when you get him settled.”
It was the longest ten minutes of his life as he paced the length of the porch, a chorus of cicadas keeping him company as a red haze built in his head. He had used a condom that night—he was sure of it. Except the night had been long, condoms had been known to fail and, quite honestly, the last thing he could remember was Gia stripping down to a skimpy piece of lace and then there had been nothing after that except the hot, sensual explosion that had followed.
Uncertainty dogging his every step, he forced himself to keep a lid on the violent emotion coursing through him until he confirmed what he already knew.
Gia’s face was deathly pale when she returned, slipping quietly onto the porch. Dressed now in cropped yoga pants and a T-shirt, she smoothed her palms over her thighs as she came to a halt in front of him.
“He is mine.”
The muscles in her throat convulsed. “Yes.”
A fury, unlike any he’d ever known, rose up inside of him. He clenched his hands into fists at his sides, attempted to control it, but it escaped his bounds, rising up into his throat until all that emerged was a primal sound of disbelief.
“Santo,” Gia said haltingly, “you need to let me explain.”
“Explain what?” he exploded. “That I have a three-year-old son you haven’t told me about? There isn’t one possible reason on this earth you could give me which would explain why you would keep something like this from me.”
“Franco,” she choked out. “He was going to kill you.”
His jaw dropped. “What are you talking about?”
She sank back against a pillar. Pressed a hand against her temple. “I found out I was pregnant a couple of weeks before I married Franco. I was scared, terrified.It was a disaster, given the circumstances. I had no idea what to do. I couldn’t go to my father—that was inconceivable. So I went to my mother. She told me I had to tell Franco.”
“You should have come to me,” Santo grated out. “It was the obvious choice, Gia.”
“And done what?” Fire flared in her eyes. “I was about to marry one of the most powerful men in the country. A pivotal match that would cement my father’s business interests in Las Vegas, which were, at the time, in jeopardy. There was no way out.”
He gave her a thunderous look. “And so you simply chose to marry Lombardi instead, when you were pregnant with mychild?”
“There was nothing simple about it.” She threw the words at him with a ragged heat. “Franco was beside himself with fury. My impulse, my walk on the wild side had put the entire partnership in jeopardy.” She dragged a hand through her hair. Sucked in a deep breath. “Once Franco had finally calmed down, he told me we would have to make it work. That he would take my son as his own and give him his name. As long as no one ever found out the truth. As long as I never saw you again.”
Her eyes glittered a deep green as they lifted to his. “He said if I did, he would find out, he would hunt you down and he would kill you.”
Maledizione. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “I can protect myself,” he rasped. “You should have come to me, Gia.”
She shook her head, eyes bleak. “Nothing would have protected you against him. He had the power to eliminate anyone he liked. He could and would do it. There was no doubt in my mind he would.”
His brain buzzed with incomprehension. He understood Gia was intimidated by her powerful, charismatic father. Always had been. It was why she’d married Lombardi in the first place. To humiliate her father by walking away from her marriage would have been unthinkable. But to have passed his son off as Lombardi’s? To lie to the world about his parentage? It was unfathomable to him.
He fixed his gaze on hers, his fury a hot pulse against his skin. “So you allowed my son to be raised by Franco Lombardi? In the same culture of violence you were brought up in? That same culture of violence you hated so much?”
She shook her head. “I protected Leo. He was never exposed to any of it, Santo. I wouldn’t tolerate it. Franco knew that.”
Leo. His son’s name was Leo. He absorbed that mind-boggling fact. “Why leave then? After Franco died? Why walk away from your family?”
An emotion he couldn’t read flickered over her face. “Franco was murdered in broad daylight. I didn’t feel safe. I didn’t trust Leo’s safety with anyone but myself. So I ran.”
He bit back the surge of anger that coursed through him at the thought that his son could have been in danger. “To Delilah?”
“Yes.” Her lashes lowered. “I had known Delilah from some work I’d done on Franco’s hotels. We’d become friends even. I think she always knew there was something wrong with my marriage, but she never said anything. She just said if I ever needed anything, I could come to her. So I did. I explained my situation with Leo, that I didn’t want him to live that kind of a life, and she offered to get us out.”
“So your mother knows where you are?”
“Yes,” she acknowledged. “She’s the only one who does. We keep in contact via Delilah.”
He rubbed a hand against the stubble on his jaw, brain reeling. Addressed the one point he couldn’t wrap his head around. The obvious, simple choice she should have made. “If Franco was out of the picture, what stopped you from coming to me then?”
Color rode high on her delicate cheekbones. “You were with a different woman every week. In a different city on a different continent building Supersonic, Santo. You were not, in any way, prepared to settle down, that was clear. And you had obviously moved on.”
“Gia,” he growled, feeling himself slipping over the edge of reason. “Tell me the truth.”
Her beautiful eyes shone a luminous green. “I was afraid,” she admitted quietly, “that you would never forgive me for what I’d done. That you might take Leo away from me.”
She might have been right. Because right now, all he could feel was the fury burning through his veins. The anger that rose in a wild flood, stripping him of the ability to think.
He was a father. He had a three-year-old son. He had missed so many moments, so many milestones, things he would never get back. Priceless memories.
It was so far from the vision of the perfect family he’d had for himself, he couldn’t even begin to contemplate it. Because that was what he’d always wanted—the family he’d never had. A family like his best friend Pietro’s growing up—a warm Italian brood he’d been enveloped in when his own family had been shattered apart. Instead, he had a son he hadn’t known about, a woman who’d chosen another man over him, a woman he couldn’t trust. A woman with whom the complications ran a mile deep.
He wanted to scream.
Nothing should have prevented Gia from telling him the truth about his son no matter what the circumstances had been. Nothing. But he was also smart enough to know that he wasn’t in any condition to be attempting rational thought at the moment.
He turned and braced his hands on the railing while he stared out at the sparkling bay. He was supposed to be leaving in the morning. He could safely say that wasn’t happening. In fact, he didn’t want to let his son out of his sight. But Gia and Leo—who he assumed had been named after her grandfather—were safe for the night, since Delilah’s security was second to none. And he needed a chance to breathe.
Gia set a nervous gaze on him as he turned around, clearly attempting to anticipate his next move. “What are you thinking?”
“That I need time to think.”
She gave him a beseeching look. “We have a good life here, Santo—Leo and I. He is happy. Well adjusted. He plays on the beach every afternoon and he loves his friends. He won’t ever have to suffer the stigma of being a Castiglione.”
“He should be a Di Fiore.” The thick surge of emotion in his voice reverberated through the stillness of the night. “Goddammit, Gia. Have you any idea of what you’ve taken from me? Stolen from me?”
She blanched. Lifted her chin. “Yes, I do,” she said quietly. “But I did what I thought was best for Leo.”
A harsh sound choked its way out of him. “I know you think you did. That’s what astounds me. You think so much like a Castiglione, you don’t know the difference between what’s right and what’s wrong.”
A shattered look spread across her face. He ignored it, his brain too full to think. “Here’s how this is going to go,” he said tersely. “I will contact you tomorrow. At which time you will be there, Gia, or I will use every legal resource I have to find you, and when I do, you can kiss your son goodbye, because there isn’t a court on this earth that wouldn’t award me custody of Leo with your criminal past. The time for running is over.”
CHAPTER THREE (#uc9ae7ecf-e57d-5c45-a142-5c5433178b5d)
GIA COULDN’T SLEEP. She sat in a chair on the veranda, staring out at the ocean as the deep dark of a Caribbean night set in with all its requisite sparkling stars, attempting to absorb the fact that her secret was out after three long, painful years of keeping it. She wondered what the ramifications would be, because surely there would be consequences. Santo’s parting speech had made that clear.
Her stomach curled into a tight ball. She pressed her palms against it, as if willing it would smooth out the knots that made it hard to breathe. Had she really been foolish enough to think she could keep her secret forever? That her love for Leo would be enough to sustain the two of them in this sanctuary she’d created? That somehow, somewhere along the way, the truth wouldn’t eventually come out?
She’d pushed aside that fear every time it had surfaced, because Leo’s safety had always been paramount. But her betrayal sat in the back of her mind, festering and dark. Because she’d known what she was doing was wrong. She’d been clear on that, despite Santo’s scathing appraisal to the contrary. There had simply been no other way out.
But now, as the guilt pushed its way out into the open, filling her chest with its heavy weight, it threatened to consume her. Her decision had seemed so clear-cut in the moment. Protect her son. Do what was necessary. But after witnessing the naked emotion on Santo’s face tonight, allowing herself to acknowledge what she’d stripped him of, it didn’t seem so straightforward anymore. It felt selfish. Unforgivable.
And couldn’t all of this, she acknowledged, hugging her arms tight around herself, have been avoided if only she hadn’t had that one weak moment?
She had resigned herself to her marriage to Franco on the eve of her engagement party. Had always known her purpose in life was to cement the Castiglione bloodline through a powerful political marriage, rather than to pursue the dreams she’d had. But running into Santo in the airport lounge they’d both been scheduled to fly out of that night had thrown her into disarray.
A stormy winter night had cast havoc across the eastern seaboard, grounding all of the flights for the evening. Flustered, because she’d known Franco would be furious with her, she’d accepted Santo’s offer to find her a hotel room alongside his. They’d ended up having dinner together in the bar of the hotel because the weather had been that bad.
It had been time to catch up properly, both of their lives since high school frantically busy, with Santo building a company and her finishing off a design degree and an internship at a high-end Manhattan firm. They’d kept in touch—a party here, a coffee there—but both of them had accepted the fact that to put some distance between them was the wise thing to do. But she’d never been able to break that bond completely. Santo had been the haven she’d run to when life became too much.
Her thoughts had been a circular storm of emotion that had mirrored the gale-force winds raging outside, the knowledge of what she was about to do, the fear of what she’d been about to commit herself to, had clawed at her throat. Her decisiveness had stumbled, replaced by a desperate desire to control her own destiny, if only for one night. For the chance to know what it would be like to be with a man like Santo, who had grown from the eighteen-year-old boy she’d first met into a formidably beautiful man who made her heart race like one of the jet engines that had ceased flying overhead.
They’d polished off an expensive bottle of Amarone over a dinner she hadn’t been able to eat, an ever-present, pulsing attraction throbbing across the table between them, a living force she’d never been able to quell. She’d watched Santo extinguish it with that superior self-control of his, her heart sinking as he’d suggested they should both get some sleep.
Which might possibly have worked, had they not ended up alone in a silent elevator as they’d been whisked high into the sky. Had her desperation not reached a fever pitch about halfway there, her fear and frustration closing the distance between them. And then there had only been Santo’s arms. A hotel room she wasn’t sure belonged to him or to her. A night she would never forget a second of no matter how long she lived, every single piece of clothing they’d removed a revelation of what it had felt like to be alive.
One night for herself before she’d married a man she didn’t love.
And then had come the harsh reality of morning. Of what she’d done. Of what was ahead—a glittering, star-studded party at the Lombardis’ Las Vegas home to announce her engagement to Franco. The day she would officially become his.
Maybe it had been easier to run than to face what she’d done. How she’d felt about Santo. Maybe she’d convinced herself he would move on as he always did and she would end up brokenhearted. And maybe, it had been the coward’s way out, exactly as he’d suggested.
She finally stumbled to bed in the early hours. She woke bleary-eyed, sure her safe little world was about to be blown to smithereens, and there was nothing she could do about it.
She dropped off Leo at the hotel day care, her heart in her throat as she watched him toddle off to join the others, a smile on his face. She couldn’t lose him. He was all that she had. It had been them against the world for the past three years. She felt helpless in a way she hadn’t in forever and it threw her back to a version of herself she never wanted to be again. Never would be again. Powerless. At the mercy of the forces surrounding her.
Delilah, always a lethally accurate barometer of her moods, appeared in her office shortly thereafter. Clad in a brilliant scarlet suit, her perfectly manicured nails colored to match, she looked as impeccable as always.
“Clearly, I have failed in my efforts,” she observed, her ever-present coffee cup in hand. “Poor Justin left brokenhearted. Although I think I might have been sabotaged by outside forces. Is there something I should know about you and Santo Di Fiore?”
Gia’s stomach curled. “You picked up on that?”
“It was hard not to,” Delilah said drily. “The tension between you two was palpable. He was barely paying attention to anything I said.”
She swallowed past the giant knot in her throat. “Santo is Leo’s father. His real father.”
Delilah’s jaw dropped. Coffee sloshed out of her cup and over the side. She set it down on the cabinet, shaking the liquid from her hand. “I’m sorry. Could you say that again?”
Gia found a napkin in her desk and handed it to Delilah. “Santo and I had a night together before Franco and I married. We conceived Leo.”
Delilah stared at her, gobsmacked. “But how? Why? You knew you were going to marry him.”
“I was frightened. Scared. Santo was there.” She sat back in her chair and drew in a deep breath. “We had known each other since high school. He was a senior in my freshman year. The most popular boy in school—the star athlete everyone loved. I was persona non grata. A Castiglione. No one wanted to hang out with me, and even on the rare occasion they did, Dante made quick work of them.”
“But Santo,” she reminisced, her heart pulsing, “walked right up to my table in the cafeteria. Sat down and started chatting away as if it was the most natural thing in the world that the most popular guy in school would want to talk to me.” She sank her teeth into her lip, remembering how tongue-tied she’d been. “I was completely dazzled by him.”
“You fell in love with him,” Delilah concluded.
“It wasn’t so simple. I was promised to Franco. We—” she hesitated, searching for the right words “—became friends. We use to run together in the mornings. Talk afterward in the stands. And there was more,” she conceded. “An attraction that grew between us. Dante caught on to what was going on and my father sent a message through him. That I was not a possibility for Santo. That I never would be.”
She told Delilah how her friendship with Santo had grown into something special. How he’d been the one she’d always run to. The night her sixteenth birthday party had fallen apart at the seams when her new friend, the one she’d thought might actually become a best friend, hadn’t shown up because she’d been forbidden to. The afternoon she’d found out she’d been accepted for a glamorous exchange program to France, only to be told it posed too much of a security risk. The day she’d secured a spot on the track team only to find out her father had ensured it instead with his strong-arm techniques. Santo had always been there.
And then, there had been that night with him that had turned her life upside down. She told Delilah about Franco’s fury, and the promise she had made to him to never see Santo again.
Delilah’s sapphire gaze deepened with understanding. “Which was why your marriage to Franco was so rocky. Because of Leo.”
“Yes.”
