She sat up and took the call. The blood drained from her face at the sound of her Aunt Carlotta’s voice on the other end of the phone. Short and to the point, her aunt told her that her mother had been admitted to the hospital with chest pains. A cardiac episode. How serious it was, they weren’t sure.
Gia sank back against the pillows, her heart in her mouth. Her mother had never had any heart problems, but the stress of her father’s pending testimony had been awful.
She pushed her disheveled hair out of her eyes. Santo had forbidden her to go to Las Vegas. She would be breaking their deal if she went. But she couldn’t not go. It was her mother.
Grim resolve moved through her. To hell with Santo. To hell with her father. To hell with all the men in the world she’d let tell her what to do. She was going.
She took Leo down for breakfast. Benecio was in the kitchen making a coffee. “You okay?” he queried, eyeing her red eyes.
“Actually, I’m not feeling well,” she lied. “I think Leo and I will stay in and watch some movies today. If you have things to do, feel free.”
He studied her for a moment, then nodded and melted off. Gia, aware that her window of opportunity was short, fed and dressed Leo in record time. Her son eyed her as she carried one of Santo’s expensive, high-tech suitcases out of the storage closet and threw it on the bed. Started dumping their clothes into it.
His eyes lit up. “Going on a trip? Take a plane?”
“Yes,” she confirmed.
“To see Papà?” he asked excitedly.
“No,” she said. “To see Nonna. Go find Rudolfo,” she instructed. “And your blanket.”
Leo rounded up his teddy bear and blanket as fast as his little legs would carry him. Gia finished packing while she booked flights on her mobile. In less than an hour she and Leo were wheeling the suitcase out the door.
Her son looked up at her, confused. “Take Benecio?”
“No,” she said evenly. “We’re giving Benecio the day off.”
* * *
Santo stepped into the penthouse at close to noon as a brilliant summer day cloaked New York in bright blue sunshine. His eyes were burning, his brain shot, every muscle in his body making itself known after his whirlwind four-day trip to Europe. But it had been imminently successful.
He’d engineered a meeting with Germany’s largest retailer, followed that with a slew of smaller appointments, then closed out the conference with a keynote speech that had brought the audience of thousands of youth to its feet. If that hadn’t been enough to make him a dead man walking, he’d tacked on a last-minute side trip to Madrid to talk Gervasio around.
Which he had. Grazie Dio.
In the end, it hadn’t simply been his business arguments that had won the Spaniard over, but Supersonic’s impeccable track record, too. It had overshadowed any doubts the Spanish CEO might have harbored about his personal connections to the Castiglione family. And so, with a request from Gervasio to pass his best along to Gia, they had shaken on the deal and Santo had headed home.
Which, he conceded as he set down his suitcase in the marble foyer, had been an issue he’d put on the back burner for the last couple of weeks. Allowing himself to engage with his beautiful, tempestuous wife, immersing himself in the passionate relationship they shared, sinking any deeper into that emotional realm with her than he already had was exactly what he couldn’t do when everything depended on him getting through this next week, this last big push to the Elevate launch, with a clear head.
He had, however, brought with him an olive branch in the bouquet of red roses he held in his hand. He stepped into the living room, where he was greeted by silence. Maybe Gia and Leo had gone out for a walk. Impatient to see his wife and son, he fished in his pocket, found his cell phone and called Benecio.
“Ciao,” he greeted him. “Where are you?”
“On my way back to the apartment,” his security team member said. “Gia isn’t feeling well. She’s staying in today.”
Santo frowned. “She isn’t here.”
There was a pause on the other end of the line. “I’ll be right there.”
Santo tried Gia’s cell, but it went to voice mail. Maybe she’d gone to the drugstore for some medication. But why, then, hadn’t she let Benecio know? And why wasn’t she answering her phone?
He tried her cell again with the same result. Tamped down the frisson of unease that slid through him. She and Leo were undoubtedly fine. But the fact that there were those who would use anything they could as leverage against Stefano Castiglione as he stood poised to testify, including his wife and child, was a reality he couldn’t ignore.
He called Gia’s cell a third time. This time, she answered. Relief settling through his bones, he frowned at the echo of public announcements in the background. “Where are you?”
“I’m in Las Vegas.” Her short, cursory statement had him straightening like an arrow. “My mother has had a heart attack. She’s in the hospital. Stable. They think it was a minor one. They’re going to run some tests and see how much damage was done.”
He raked a hand through his hair. “Thank goodness it was a minor one. Why the hell didn’t you call me?”
There was a pregnant silence on the other end of the line. His eyes widened. “Your mother is in the hospital, Gia. What did you think I would do?”
“I thought you’d forbid me to come. I know I’m breaking our deal, Santo, but I need to do this. She is all I have.”
“In your family,” he corrected in a distracted voice. “You have Leo and I. My family.” He buried a hand in his pocket and strode to the window, the skyline spread out before him. “Cristo. I have back-to-back meetings in the morning and the launch event on Wednesday. I can’t get out there.”
“It’s fine,” she murmured. “I don’t need you here.”
Something in the way she said it, the dead tone to her voice, raised the hairs on the back of his arms. As if all her walls were back up and she’d built them ten times stronger. “Gia,” he said quietly, “I realize things were a little off between us before I left. But it’s been crazy, you know that.” He glanced at his watch. “I can fly out there for a couple of hours now.”
“No.” Her voice was flat. Decisive. “I need to do this on my own. I need some time to think.”
“About what?” he asked carefully.
“About us. About everything.”
Us? Everything? It was a big, blinking red caution sign that chilled his blood. “What are you talking about? You can’t just throw this at me.”
Someone calling his wife’s name sounded in the background. “I have to go,” she said. “Give me some time, Santo. It’s what I need.”
The line went dead. He stood staring at the phone, utterly unsure of what to do. He could not believe she had just thrown that at him. Now, when he was utterly unable to do anything about it.
Benecio chose that unfortunate moment to walk in. Santo gave him a savage look. “Which part of ‘do not let them out of your sight’ did you misinterpret?”
His bodyguard gave a helpless shrug. “She said she was sick. This building is beyond secure. I came back to check on her earlier and the bedroom door was closed. I assumed they were taking a nap.”
Should he have gone in? his bodyguard’s raised eyebrow queried.
Santo blew out a breath. Truthfully, it was not Benecio’s fault. Gia was a professional at evading her bodyguards. One helpless look from those big green eyes and she would have had Benecio eating right out of the palm of her hand.
“She’s in Vegas,” he rasped.
Benecio’s eyes widened. “Do you want me to go after her?”
He debated the thought. It would make him feel better to know Gia had his security team with her. But the Castiglione family would be under lockdown right now. It would be an armed fortress. They wouldn’t be in any dange
r. And his wife had made it clear she wanted nothing to do with him.
He shook his head. Dismissed his bodyguard. Made himself an espresso and stood, nursing it in his hands as he considered the day unfolding around him.
He had known he had hurt Gia, blowing off dinner like he had. But it had been all he could do to keep his head straight. To get to the next thing in front of him. To get through the storm he’d been in. He had, however, intended to smooth things over when the madness was done. Which had clearly been a mistake.
His wife might have sounded confused, but he couldn’t mistake the message that had come through. It had been loud and clear. She was having second thoughts about them. Reconsidering them.
His head flashed back to the words he’d heard from the hallway, his softball glove in his hand, before his mother had walked out.
I can’t do this, Leone. I didn’t sign up for this.
It paralyzed him for a moment, a bolt of pure fury moving through him. Because wasn’t this always the way with Gia? She held things inside, bottled them up and refused to address them. Except, he allowed with a sinking realization, she had reached out to him. The night she’d cooked dinner for him. When she’d called him in Munich. When she’d sounded so lost on the phone.
He’d been preoccupied, focused on the networking he’d been doing. Had, in his defense, tried to call her back. But she hadn’t wanted to hear what he’d had to say. Now his wife was in Las Vegas without his protection, he had no idea where her head was at, and he had a wicked week ahead of him in which he had no time to breathe.
* * *
Gia and her Aunt Carlotta took turns at her mother’s bedside over the next couple of days as her condition continued to improve. The damage to her mother’s heart, according to the doctors, had been limited in nature. Nothing that was irrecoverable with the right medication and the opportunity to heal.
A crush of family came and went, most of it from her mother’s side, which was a relief, because the cool response she received from the Castigliones, including her brother, Tommaso, made it clear they would prefer she not be there at all. Her Aunt Carlotta, formidable by anyone’s standards, silenced them all, installing she and Leo in her home and ensuring her nephew was surrounded by his cousins, whom Leo bemusedly seemed to accept as yet another facet of his new life.
Her father, she discovered, planned to take the Fifth when he testified later this week, rather than reveal his inner circle. He believed his expensive legal team would prevail. Which, her aunt declared with dismissive disdain, was what had driven her mother into the hospital in the first place, Stefano’s arroganza. This circus show he was performing.
Finally, Gia got a chance to spend some time alone with her mother. It was disconcerting to see her like this, her mother’s olive skin pale beneath its usual warmth, her familiar bergamot scent an elusive whisper against a sterile hospital backdrop, her dark, exotic features, so like her own, strained from the trauma of the past seventy-two hours. To watch her mother’s almond-shaped eyes fill with tears at the sight of Leo, whom she hadn’t seen since he was six months old.
“He is so much like Santo,” her mother murmured. “The spitting image. I think if you had stayed, it would have been difficult to hide it.”
Gia’s throat tightened at the mention of her husband. At the distance between them it seemed impossible to bridge. Her mother’s gaze sharpened. Issuing a request for Carlotta to take Leo off to get a treat, she motioned for the nurse to leave the room. Alone, she wrapped her cool, frail-boned hand around Gia’s.
“Tell me what’s wrong.”
Gia lashes swept down. “Am I that transparent?”
“Only to me.” Her mother’s mouth softened. “You have been telling me about this beautiful new home you and Santo have bought on the beach. About your fabulous new job. How much Leo loves his new life in New York. Everything seems wonderful, no? So why do you look so sad?”
Tears stung her eyes, a reflexive reaction only her mother could provoke. As if she was five years old again with a scraped knee.
“It’s Santo,” she confessed. “He’s been distant. Off. Ever since that dinner with Gervasio Delgado. I’m afraid it’s broken something between us and I don’t know how to make it right. That it’s turning into my marriage with Franco all over again and I don’t know what to do about it.”
Her mother rested a dark-eyed stare on her. “Santo is not Franco, Gia. Nor is he your father. He is a good man who cares about you. Your marriage is never going to turn into the one that it was.” She arched a dark eyebrow at her. “You said he has been busy with this big business thing of his. That he has a great deal of pressure on him right now. Maybe that’s all it is.”
Maybe it was. She’d told herself that a million times. But she also knew in her gut, that Santo had been different. That he had withdrawn. And the ghosts from her past were too strong to ignore.
Her mother’s gaze softened. “Have you talked to Santo? Told him how you feel?”
“I’m afraid to.” Her biggest fear uprooted itself and came tumbling out of her mouth. “I’m afraid he’s never going to let himself trust me again. That I broke something between us when I walked away with Leo. That I will never be his first choice.”
Her mother’s brow furrowed. “Why would you think that? He was crazy about you, Gia, that was clear. It was enough that your father stepped in.”
“Because of who I am,” she said quietly. “Because I’m afraid it will break us over and over again until he won’t want to be with me.”
Her mother sat back against the pillows, a dark glint in her eyes. She was silent for a long moment before she spoke. “I think you are assuming a great deal of things, mia cara. That you will never know the answers to these questions unless you ask him.” She shook her head. “You have an opportunity to have everything I never had. A marriage of your own choosing. One that is based on love and affection. And yes,” she conceded, “I know Santo pushed you into it, but given that you are in love with him, that once, he was all that you wanted, is it not worth the effort to find out if you are right or if you are wrong?”
Gia swallowed hard, past the lump constricting her throat. It wasn’t about the effort. She wasn’t sure she could bear to hear the answer. That of all the rejection she’d suffered in her life, Santo was the one person she didn’t think she could handle it from. The one who could break her.
Her mother squeezed her hand. “You’ve been running from your feelings for a long time, Giovanna. It’s time you stopped and admitted what they are.”
She knew her mother was right. In her heart, she knew Santo still had strong feelings for her. It was there in the things he said and did. In the way he’d held her after her father had taken her apart. It was the fact that he might never fully let himself go there that terrified her.
It might have been complicated, but I thought it was worth it.
Her heart took a perilous leap. Maybe, it was her turn to take the next step. To tell Santo how she felt. To make everything right she’d wronged four years ago when she’d walked away from him. To jump in with both feet and hope that her gamble that he could love her again wouldn’t shatter her.
She had fought for everything else in her life. Maybe it was time she fought for Santo.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
FLASHBULBS REFLECTED off the step and repeat banner at Liberte, Manhattan’s new hot spot in Chelsea, as celebrity after celebrity arrived on a sultry summer night that held the city in a steamy, breathless thrall. The club had its outdoor misters firing, showering the crowd with a cool, refreshing spray, but nothing could quell the guests’ enthusiasm for Supersonic’s big night.
The invitation-only Elevate party was, officially, the hottest ticket in town. Every fashion, sports and celebrity influencer from around the globe was making their way up onto the dais for their moment in the spotlight. And if the stacked guest l
ist wasn’t enough to prove it, the buzz from fashion’s inner circles was. The celebrity-backed shoe was about to become the most coveted accessory on the planet, and no one wanted to miss its debut.
From the lit, buzzing entrance, guests descended a flight of stairs into an ethereal oasis. A world of sensory pleasure. The entire space was done in black and white to reflect the sleek, impactful ad campaign, accented by splashes of Supersonic red. Beautiful waitstaff dressed in black circulated with trays of a dark-fruit martini, while projected against the stark white walls were massive video images of the elite athletes who starred in the Elevate ad campaign, accompanied by inspirational messaging of how Elevate had helped raised their game. It was the only nod toward business on a night meant for celebration, other than the sneaker itself, subtly interwoven into the decor on raised, lit displays.
Santo stood at the center of it all, leaning a hip against the gleaming gold bar. To his left stood the president of America’s biggest retail chain. To his right, Carl O’Brien, the star quarterback he’d signed today, minus Abigail, who’d decided it wasn’t a match made in heaven. In front of him, the highest-paid soccer player in the world partied with his entourage. And somewhere in the crowd was Gervasio Delgado, who had flown in from Madrid for the event.
It should have been the most important night of his life. The culmination of a decade’s worth of work spent developing and bringing to market the most important product in his company’s history. The night Elevate took the world by storm. Instead, he felt numb. Dead inside. Unable to work up the enthusiasm he should have possessed in what was undoubtedly a triumphant moment, because his wife wasn’t there to share it with him. And nothing felt right without her.
Worse, he was beginning to think it was all his fault. That he had been so busy trying to keep it all together, with trying to make this night happen, with keeping his wife at a distance, so afraid strong, spirited Gia would shatter his heart again, he might have destroyed the amazing thing they’d been building.
Married for His One-Night Heir Page 16