by Dani Collins
Primo’s eldest sister, Donna, who had moved in with her teenage son last year said, “Don’t be too sure, Zia. Perhaps this baby mix-up was an attempt to hide the fact neither of the infants are Ferrantes. Did you think of that, Sandro?”
Barely a minute in and the claws were out. Of course, it was to be expected that Primo’s parents and sisters would defend their kin, but Octavia was struck by the open enmity in her remark. She and Donna might not have been friends, but they hadn’t been adversaries. She pressed even closer to her husband and felt his grip on her hand tighten.
“He’s ours,” Alessandro confirmed, low and sure, practically daring anyone to contradict him.
“Bring him to me,” Ermanno Ferrante said with an imperious wave of his hand.
He wasn’t a tall man. His children and grandchildren towered over him, but he was still spry and sharp-eyed despite his weathered skin and steel-gray hair. He sat with the arrogantly regal posture that Alessandro must have learned from him, because they both had the ability to command a room with a look.
Alessandro tugged Octavia with him as he carried Lorenzo across. She could feel Ermanno’s gaze drilling into her as she approached. He was capable of the same force and power that Alessandro possessed, but what was he looking for? Artifice? Proof? Guilt?
“Nonno, your great-grandson Lorenzo,” Alessandro said, leaning down to kiss his grandfather and set the baby in the old man’s arms.
Octavia would have kissed him in greeting, too, but the old man bent his head to give the baby a long, thorough study.
Behind her, she heard a few feet shuffle as everyone awaited his judgment.
“He looks like your father,” he said with a glance up to Alessandro. Then he nodded his head toward the side table. “Bring the photo.”
Octavia’s knees nearly gave in as she moved to fetch the black-and-white of Alessandro’s grandmother holding her firstborn and she had to agree, there was a strong similarity in the babies’ sleeping features. It was bittersweet to see the resemblance, making her see her son’s place in this family while reinforcing that she couldn’t take him away from it.
“You’ll understand if we’re not happy,” Viviana, Primo’s youngest sister, said.
“Babies make everyone happy.” Alessandro pivoted, voice light with contradiction, but his tone held an edge that put a knot in Octavia’s stomach.
“We’re not happy with the things you’ve done, Sandro,” Viviana clarified, chin coming up in belligerence.
“I’ve done exactly what I’m supposed to do—react to threats and limit damage,” he said without apology. “Nonno, Octavia and the baby need to rest. I’ll settle them in our apartment, then we can talk in the office. Zio, you may join us if you like. I imagine you have a few questions.”
Primo’s father, Giacomo, made a noise as if he had a lot more than a few questions about his son being arrested and fired and expelled from the family residences. Octavia felt the blister of hostility off everyone in the room, much of it aimed at her.
So she bit back saying that she wasn’t that tired. The past few nights had been rough ones sleepwise, but her incision was itchy rather than tender and physically she was starting to feel like her old self.
But this was too awful to endure. She let Alessandro take her up to the suite they always used. He went through to the sitting room where a temporary nursery had been arranged. Bree took Lorenzo and Alessandro came back to their bedroom, closing the door behind him.
“I want to go to the town house,” Octavia said firmly. There was no way she could sleep here. The verdant estate was beautiful and the view gave way to a distant scape of the city against the smudged blue of the bay, but antagonistic waves penetrated the walls and floors.
“Putting off this confrontation will only make it worse.” He unbent her folded arms and stole her light coat, tossing it to a chair and nudging her toward the bed. “But can you see that if I had left you in London, they would have held you in suspicion? By bringing you back to face them, you’re showing them you’re blameless.” He pressed her shoulder to sit on the edge of the bed, then he bent to pick up her feet, tipping her onto her side while he removed her shoes. “Once I make it clear that I fired Primo and the hospital is pressing charges, as well, they won’t hold you accountable.”
“I’ve never known you to be delusional, Sandro,” she said on a dry laugh. “If they didn’t warm up to me in the past, they certainly won’t now.”
He paused in reaching for the blanket folded on the foot of the bed.
“What did you say?”
“That you’re being optimistic. If it was just me, I could take their dislike, but I’m scared for Lorenzo. I realize he doesn’t even know what he’s in the middle of, but—”
“This is for Lorenzo, but no. What did you call me?” He dropped the blanket and sat his hip next to hers on the mattress.
His weight rolled her into him and a funny self-consciousness washed over her. “They all call you Sandro. I didn’t think you minded if I did.”
“You haven’t called me that in months.” His hand went to the outside of her thigh, light but familiar, making tingles fan out from the spot across her abdomen and down to her knee and inward to her loins.
She shifted, but he didn’t let the movement dislodge his hand.
“I didn’t notice,” she murmured. Avoiding his nickname hadn’t been a conscious decision and she couldn’t believe it mattered to him either way. The fact that he was remarking on it now made her use of the familiarity seem overly significant and intimate. She looked away, gaze scanning the ceiling for somewhere safe to land, but he lifted his hand off her hip and touched her chin, drawing her to look back at him.
The moment grew even more momentous for no reason at all. Neither of them spoke, but it was as if she’d opened a door and a million emotions had flooded in.
He was coming into her. And he took up a lot of space.
She desperately wished she could backpedal, but she couldn’t. All she could do was close her eyes in an attempt to shut him out. “I am tired,” she lied.
The mattress shifted and his breath warmed her lips before he kissed her.
She almost lifted a hand, wanting to draw it out. Her lips clung, but he kept the contact brief.
“We will get through this, cara,” he said, making it sound like a vow.
He stood and opened the blanket across her, letting it drift down in a puff of air and a layer of softness and warmth.
As he left, she kept her stinging eyes closed tight and tried to believe he wasn’t being optimistic. She wanted so badly to believe him.
But what if he was wrong?
* * *
Alessandro reentered the suite an hour later and saw the bed was empty. Clothes were strewed on the chair and the foot of the mattress. She wasn’t in the bathroom.
He was so keyed up, his heart lurched in his chest, convinced in that first second that she’d left in a hurry, but her cases were still here, one of them open on the floor near the closet.
The door into the sitting room was also open. He strode in to find Lorenzo asleep, which was reassuring, but there was no sign of the nanny or Octavia.
A hand appeared on the brocade curtain and Octavia peered at him from where she was sitting in the sun on the balcony. “Are you hungry? I ordered for both of us.”
He stepped outside to join her, finding her picking over a selection of antipasto, the scene so commonplace it made his leap to wrong conclusions embarrassing.
“I came up to see if you were awake and wanted to join us for a late lunch.” He stole a square of sharp cheese and hunger contracted his stomach. He dug in to the rest. “Where’s Bree?”
“I said I’d listen for Lorenzo so she could introduce herself to the kitchen and walk the grounds, get her bearings. Don’t eat
all the olives.”
His mouth twitched at her command, still not used to her new assertiveness, but there was something engaging about it. Like finding unexpected talent in your tennis opponent so the match was more challenging.
He was about done with challenges for the moment, though, he thought with a scowl.
He slid his attention to the tomato slices sprinkled with chopped basil and scooped a circle of toasted bread into the tapenade, topped it with an artichoke heart, then chased it with two of the stuffed grape leaves.
“You could have brought him down,” he chided. “You’re hiding.” Not that he blamed her. He had no desire to go to the dining room now he was here.
“I’m acclimating,” she corrected. “It’s nice to feel the sun and smell the earth and hear Italian again.” She tilted her closed eyes to the sky.
His conscience pinched, but then he reminded himself she’d been considering staying in London. He might have sent her away, but he’d brought her home, too.
The thought didn’t ease the havoc inside him. His muscles were still twitching with aggression after holding himself back so heroically in his meeting with his grandfather and his uncle.
A fierce need to see his wife had driven him in swift steps up to their room. Funny how, after years of being the safety net for his entire family, he’d alienated nearly all of them and really only had an ally in Octavia. No one else appreciated the depth of betrayal he was experiencing and it bound him to her in a way he hadn’t recognized until his uncle had confronted him on it.
“What hold does she have on you that you’d choose her over Primo?” That bark from Giacomo had lit a fire in Alessandro. His own grandfather had asked if there was some way—or reason—her family could have done this.
Octavia was his wife, he’d near shouted in completely uncharacteristic ferocity. They’d stared at him flatly. The statement wasn’t an explanation.
You don’t choose a woman over your family, his uncle had spat, adding to his grandfather, He was always unpredictable. It had been a deliberate attempt to goad Alessandro into losing his temper completely.
It had nearly worked. Instead, he’d said something that he hadn’t even computed until the words had come out of his mouth. “Octavia is my family. She and my son are as much my family as any of you. I protect all of my family. Provided they remain loyal to me.”
Thankfully Octavia’s eyes remained closed and she couldn’t see the barely banked rage he was still struggling to contain. Or his confusion as he belatedly wondered if he really was choosing his marriage over his fealty to the Ferrantes. He had fashioned himself into a bastion of dependability and allegiance and couldn’t let a woman shake his resolve. That’s why he hadn’t wanted a love match when he married.
But as she’d held him off this past month, showing more caution than warmth, he’d been acutely aware of a sense of loss. He was ready to do just about anything to get back what he’d had.
Which disturbed him.
Leaning his backside on the balcony rail, he studied his wife, trying to determine how she was managing to affect him so deeply. She wasn’t a calculating femme fatale making a deliberate effort to provoke him. Quite the opposite. In some ways she was more aloof than when they’d first met, but wasn’t doing it as a lure.
She was genuinely disappointed and mistrustful, which cut a straight line through his ego.
Plus, she was so beautiful his throat hurt just looking at her. The baby weight still softening her pretty features made them even more sensual and fascinating. Her hair was loose and longer than he remembered it. He wanted to comb his hands through the silky strands, letting them caress between his fingers, then bury his nose in the almond-and-nutmeg scent. That hair of hers had been a fetish since his first whiff. Why?
Her color was better, he noted, though her brow remained tense and there was an underlying anxiety in the somberness of her mouth. She still seemed very wary and worried.
But she’d called him Sandro earlier. It had been so sweet it had touched off a pang in his chest, until he’d seen how badly she’d wanted to swallow it back, fearful she’d let her defenses down too far. He’d taken such encouragement from that little slip and had been shaken by how much she’d regretted letting it happen.
He sighed at the gridlock before him.
She opened her eyes.
“Don’t you want to look at the view?” She indicated the cushioned chair on the other side of the table, then nodded past him to the sweep of land toward the distant water.
“I am,” he said, delivering his compliment with a dose of self-mockery, mostly because it was so damned true. He could barely take his eyes off her.
And he wasn’t above using every weapon at his disposal to overcome her defenses, even flattery.
Which he supposed she realized because she dismissed his words with a downward sweep of her lashes. It should have been a relief that she didn’t know how sincere he was in his praise of her, that he was entranced by her, but it just reminded him that she didn’t even trust him to be honest about something as simple as her beauty.
The food he’d eaten grew heavy as gravel in the pit of his gut.
After a moment, she lifted her attention to him, her expression grave. “How did it go?”
He shrugged shoulders that were prickling from the penetrating heat of the sun, instinctively wanting to shut down a rehash of what had been a very difficult conversation. But his efforts to protect her had backfired in the past. He supposed she had a right to know what they were up against.
“My grandfather is understandably troubled. Giacomo is livid.”
She glanced back toward where Lorenzo slept, brow knitting with consternation.
“No, cara,” he reassured in a quick hush, stepping forward. He leaned down to kiss the part in her hair, surreptitiously stealing a caress and inhaling her scent, but trying to impart comfort, too. He was a physical man and found it easier to show than to tell, but he did his best to assuage her fears with words, too. “He won’t harm him. And I won’t let anyone try.”
“You’re sure?” She caught his hand.
Her fingers were cold and the tightness with which she clung was both heartening and worrisome. He liked that she was looking to him and seemed so willing to take his word. It was a first step in rebuilding her belief in him, but it made him realize how frightened she was under her composed exterior. He was learning that his wife was a woman of far more complexity than he’d given her credit for.
Which was a concern on many levels, but for now he had to alleviate her fear.
He hooked his foot around the leg of the empty chair and dragged it around so he faced her, not letting go of her hand. He spoke in an undertone that wouldn’t carry to open windows or below to the gardens.
“I am sure, but we are facing a greater battle than I anticipated. Primo wasn’t the only one playing politics or resenting my position.”
“I never thought it significant before,” she murmured. “Until we arrived today and I saw that almost everyone who lives here... They’re all Giacomo’s children. There’s your aunt, but she travels so much this isn’t really where she lives, is it? And no one from your father’s or his sister’s side.”
They’d all had seemingly valid reasons for moving in and it was his grandfather’s house. Alessandro hadn’t considered it an appropriation, especially when his grandfather was in fine health and Alessandro preferred his town house because it was closer to work. Through Octavia’s eyes, however, he saw things much differently.
Especially after today’s conversation.
“My uncle is trying to convince my grandfather to let him have control again. So I may have an opportunity to put my house in order.” Disdain curled his lip as he recalled the suggestion. “I said he has some work to do in his own. I am in control, legally, so it’s no
t within my grandfather’s rights to remove me, but I didn’t want to insult him by reminding Giacomo of that in front of him. Things will get uglier before they settle into place.”
The wrinkle in her brow deepened. “When I went off to school, there was a girl in her last year there. Her father had a bone to pick with mine. To this day, I don’t even know what the problem was, but she turned me into persona non grata. I feel like that’s how it’s going to be here.”
She was pale and, despite the new mettle she was showing toward him, very sensitive. He saw it now, underneath the impassive expression she’d no doubt perfected against cold shoulders.
A weight settled on his heart, an apology on his lips.
“I’m asking a lot, I know.” He massaged her hand, still bare of his rings. Even though he knew she wasn’t leaving them off to hurt him, he disliked how her empty fingers suggested their marriage had been set on a windowsill to collect dust. He wanted the statement of their commitment back where it was prominent and visible.
But the rings were the least of his problems. He forced himself to maintain a light hold on her fingers, even though a subversive sense of urgency made him want to close his grip and hang on tight. Was he harming her—them—by insisting she face this with him? When she’d already been through so much and confrontation wasn’t her strong suit?
Was it even necessary for her to be here? After his uncle’s questioning of his loyalty, he had to wonder if these final weeks of restructuring might be easier if Octavia wasn’t under everyone’s noses.
Even as he considered sending her away, he rejected the idea. He wasn’t giving her up. Not when it was exactly the result Primo had hoped for.
Octavia had been a source of tension in the family from the moment he had married her, he saw now. His taking a wife and producing an heir was the assertion of his position as overseer of the Ferrante empire. Apparently Primo hadn’t been the only one to find that threatening. From his Uncle Giacomo through that branch of the family, there was disapproval and antagonism.
The opposition Sandro had only subconsciously acknowledged in his cousin last year was flagrant now. Leaving Octavia in London had given them all breathing space, but it had been a mistake. Sandro wouldn’t abandon her again and it was a decision that had less to do with defending his right to his heritage and more to do with how precarious his marriage was. If Giacomo and the rest of the family made these next few weeks difficult enough, he could lose Octavia and he simply refused to.