by Dani Collins
“He’s going to kill me. Tell Paolo my water just broke.”
* * *
Vito was not a romantic, but he had seen the longing in Gwyn’s expression and felt a kick of commiseration. Paolo and Lauren made anyone covetous of their happiness. He envied his cousin himself, not just for finding his soul mate, but for his freedom to pursue a life with her. Even if Vito did find the right woman...
He was adept at not letting himself dwell on such things and cut off the thoughts as he and Paolo took Roberto down to the water and exchanged reports.
Paolo expanded on what he’d already messaged, saying Fabrizio was a tough nut, but cracks were showing in his story. The board of Jensen’s foundation was not yet moved to worry about any of this, let alone meeting to discuss Jensen’s possible removal. Jensen himself was leaving the country for a minor quake that was more photo op than actual disaster relief, but would bolster his image.
“You haven’t frozen the foundation’s assets?” Vito asked.
“I don’t have grounds. I’ll be pushing for a forensic audit once Fabrizio breaks or we’re able to prove Jensen was behind the instructions to move funds, but he is definitely playing a rough PR game right now. This—” He chucked his chin back toward the house and Gwyn. “I see where you’re going and it would work if it was true, but I can’t go on record saying that you’ve been having an affair with her all along. We all may have to testify at some point.”
“Sì,” Vito agreed. “But you can state that unnamed sources—me—” he shrugged “—made you aware some time ago that there were worrisome transactions within the account. We put it on a watch list and saw no reason to remove Miss Ellis because she was not only conducting herself with sound ethics, but has since proven to be an excellent source of knowledge with regards to the foundation’s legitimate activities.”
“You’re convinced she has been conducting herself ethically?”
It was the judgment Vito had been avoiding making, aware that Gwyn was already a weakness to him. He wanted her and therefore he wanted to believe her, because how could he have an affair with a woman who was committing crimes against the bank? He couldn’t gamble his family’s future on his own selfish desires.
But at every stage, if she was the type to manipulate a man like Jensen, her actions would have been different, right up to this afternoon in the car. He would have been the one losing control to her hand or mouth, he was sure, if she was the type to lie and steal and wish him to believe otherwise.
At no time since he’d met her had Gwyn acted dishonorably, though. In fact, she was trying to protect the little family she had from the fallout of dishonor that, if she was innocent, wasn’t hers to bear.
The problem was, if she was blameless, he was going to have to kill the man who had done this to her.
“I believe she is Jensen’s victim, yes,” Vito said, and heard the cruel edge on his tone. “They gambled on her lack of experience and when she showed her intelligence, they threw her to the wolves.”
He understood the expression bloodthirsty as he said it. His tongue tingled and his throat tried a dry swallow, but he didn’t long for water. He craved the tang of suffering for Jensen and Fabrizio and whoever had helped them by taking those photos.
He felt the quick slash of Paolo’s glance before he returned his watchful gaze to his son, but his cousin obviously read his mood.
“So we imply you two have been having an affair all along and she’s been feeding us information. What happens when I’m asked point-blank if I condone my VP of operations sleeping with a customer service rep?” Paolo folded his arms, eyes on his son, but his tone added, Because I don’t.
“You never comment on the private lives of your family or your employees,” Vito said, which was true. “But as a rule, you expect to be notified of such relationships in a timely manner and you have no quarrel with when and how your VP of operations has advised you of this connection.”
Paolo shook his head, mouth pulled into a half smirk. “People call me competitive, but strategy plays are your drug of choice, aren’t they?”
“Live the lie and it becomes the truth,” he said blithely.
Paolo sobered. “The photos certainly look convincing,” he said with another pointed look, before returning his alert attention to his son in the water.
Vito had seen the photos online from today’s shopping trip with Gwyn and last night’s kiss. The passionate embrace on the stern of the yacht still made his pulse pound just thinking of it. His mind went to the car, the wet heat clenching his fingers as she shuddered and cried out with fulfillment.
There were a million reasons why he should merely act like they were an item, rather than make the affair real, but they would make it real. He knew it in the same way that adversaries knew a physical confrontation was coming. They could put it off, because they both knew in their gut that neither of them would come away unscathed, but their making love was inevitable.
“No comment?” Paolo prodded. “Because if she’s a victim, don’t make her more of one.”
That stung. Vito hid it, countering lightly, “What do you want me to say? I like women. I can’t help that they like me back.”
It was the laissez-faire attitude he always affected when discussing paramours. Paolo was the head of the family. He couldn’t escape marriage and the duty of producing progeny. Vito didn’t have the same pressure to procreate. He was at liberty to play the field the rest of his life if he wanted to.
Paolo sent him a dour look, the one that told him Vito could show the rest of the world, pretend his entire life was one long, lighthearted affair, but he knew better.
Paolo knew him better than anyone. They had been adversaries themselves in childhood, scrapping constantly. Two strong-willed, alpha-natured boys of similar ages would. It had culminated in a fistfight of epic proportions when they were twelve, not far from here, on the property Vito’s family still owned, high in the hills overlooking the lake. They had been beating each other with serious intent, their superficial argument transitioning into a far more serious drive for dominance over the other. Neither was the type to give up. Ever.
Paolo’s father had stopped them. He’d been a man of strength and drive and purpose, the conservative head of the bank that had been the family’s livelihood for generations. He was a loving man, a devoted uncle, a pillar of strength for all of them.
And he’d nearly cried when he’d pulled the boys apart.
You can’t do this, his uncle had said. No more. You’re family.
Vito didn’t like upsetting his favorite uncle, but he had had nameless frustrations swirling inside him. He was claimed to be part of their clan, but he wasn’t. Something was off and he knew it. He loved his parents. His mother doted on him. His father showed great pride in every one of Vito’s accomplishments, but he didn’t feel close to them. He was different. Not quite like them, not the same in temperament or looks as his sisters. He felt more kinship toward Paolo’s father than his own. When they all came together for these sorts of big, family occasions, he caught watchful looks from some of the older aunts and uncles. It made him tense. Meanwhile, Paolo was so very confident in his own position, Vito was compelled to knock his cousin out of it.
So the angry accusation had come out. Am I? Family?
The way Paolo had looked to his father for that same answer, as if he too suspected Vito was not quite one of them, had been the most devastating blow of all.
Paolo’s father had stood there with his hand on his hair, like he’d come across a bomb blast and was suffering a kind of shell shock himself, unable to make sense of the broken landscape.
Then, very decisively, he had nodded. Fine. I’ll tell you. Both of you.
Vito had never questioned such huge news coming from his uncle, rather than his father. It was a Donatelli matter, after all. He was a Donatelli. Legally he was a Donatelli-Gallo. Women kept their maiden name when they married in Italy. He and his sisters used a hyphenated version of t
heir parents’ names, but he had always felt more drawn to the Donatelli side of his family and used that name to this day.
Because he had no Gallo in him, he had learned, sitting on a retaining wall overlooking the lake, hearing his uncle explain to him that his mother, his real mother, was the youngest Donatelli sibling, Zia Antoinietta. The aunt who had died and was rarely mentioned because her loss made everyone so sad. Vito would later look at her photographs and see more of himself in her than in her older sister, the woman who had called herself his mother all his life.
Your father was a dangerous man, Vito. Dangerous to us as a family, to the bank and very dangerous to your mother. I pulled her away from him so many times, but she kept going back. She was pregnant. She thought she loved him. I’ll never forgive myself for not finding a way... She finally realized what was in store for both of you when he knocked her around and put her into labor. She called me to come to her where she was hiding from him. She died having you. I held her, waiting for the damned ambulance, and she begged me to keep you away from him, to keep you from turning into a mafioso like him. He wanted an heir to his empire, but it’s a kingdom built on blood and suffering. We would have called you Paolo’s brother, but well, you know the story we tell instead.
Vito did. His adoptive mother, the middle sister, often told the story of how she had thought she had miscarried, but Vito had miraculously survived. In reality, she and her husband had spirited her sister’s newborn to the family home at the lake and waited out a suitable time before presenting Vito as their son. His birthday was off by four months.
I paid a fortune to the doctors to write out a certificate that you had died with her. And threatened your father with murder charges if the affair ever came out. I’m certain he would come for you if he knew you survived, Paolo’s father had warned.
Vito could only imagine the fortune Paolo’s father had paid to keep the liaison from becoming public knowledge and destroying the bank as it was. If online scandal rags had existed then, the affair wouldn’t have suppressed as easily, he was sure.
Your mother was too precious to me, you are too precious to me, for me to watch you two beating each other senseless. Turning to Paolo, he had lifted his shirt, showing a long scar that had always been blamed on surgery, but not today. Did I take this knife trying to bring home my sister so my own son could kill hers? Save your strength for the fights that matter, then fight them together. Understand?
He hadn’t had to warn them to keep the secret. That was a given. He had risen and urged Paolo to come with him, to give Vito time alone.
No, Paolo had said. I’ll stay.
They had sat in silence a long time, the space Paolo’s father had taken up a wide gap between them. Finally Paolo had said, Do you want to punch me?
Yes, Vito had seethed. But he hadn’t. They’d never fought again. They rarely mentioned it. Eventually Vito had learned the name of his biological father and the man’s predilection for violence had sickened him. Then there was the second son’s equally conscienceless disposition.
Vito wanted to believe he was different, but how could he claim to be a better man than what he’d come from when just the thought of those men and their actions put him into a state of mind willing to crush and kill? Vigilante justice was still brute force and only proved he was more like his biological father than he wanted to admit.
So he couldn’t in good conscience make children with a woman without telling her what kind of blood he carried and he couldn’t reveal the truth without endangering his family and the bank.
Therefore, he was a confirmed bachelor, destined to have affairs with women who didn’t expect a future and to commiserate with the struggles of child-rearing from the sidelines.
“Your lips are blue. Come out,” Paolo ordered his son.
“Three more,” Roberto said, holding up three quivering fingers, teeth chattering, narrow shoulders shaking as he prepared to dive for yet another colored rock.
“One,” Paolo said firmly.
“Two,” Roberto responded.
“Everything is a negotiation,” Paolo muttered, making Vito set his teeth because Paolo was complaining about a privilege not every man had. “Two. Then—”
“Paolo!” Gwyn came to the rail above them, at the edge of the pool deck. Her eyes were wide, her face pale. “Lauren says her water broke!”
Paolo went white and grim, swearing tightly. “Out, Roberto. Now. Stay with Vito,” he ordered his son, locking gazes with Vito long enough to cement the command that Vito keep his son from drowning, but also sharing a moment of genuine fear.
It struck Vito that Paolo had never told Lauren why he didn’t find these home births of hers as much of a joke as she did. He knew women could die.
It also told him how volatile his secret still was, if Paolo hadn’t shared it with the woman who was his other half.
“I’ll call the ambulance,” he said to Paolo’s back, pulling out his phone as his cousin took the stone stairs in great leaps, already pushing back his sleeves.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“THAT WAS THE most remarkable experience of my life,” Gwyn said forty minutes later, as the ambulance carried off a grumbling Lauren and an infant boy who had squawked once, latched perfectly, then fallen asleep snuggled against her.
“They’re just going to tell me that everything is fine and I can go home if I want to. I wish you hadn’t called them,” Lauren scolded Vito on her way out the door.
“Humor us, mia bella,” Paolo said with equanimity, buttoning his clean shirt with hands that might have tremored a little, but he’d barely broken a sweat while carrying his wife to their bed and catching their son minutes later.
He’d been very coolheaded, calling Gwyn to bring him the bag he’d prepared with clean towels and receiving blankets, speaking to his wife in a calm, tender tone, using sterilized clips and scissors from the bag to cut the cord himself, as if he’d been a midwife all his life.
Their daughter slept through most of it, waking in time to glimpse her new brother, but quite content to cuddle with Vito amidst all the activity. Roberto called the little girl Bambi, which was adorable, and both children stayed with Gwyn and Vito while Paolo went in the ambulance with his wife. A car pulled out from the house across the street where the drivers and other ancillary staff were staying, following to bring them back once Lauren and the baby had been examined.
Vito didn’t say anything as he closed the door. In fact, his color was down and he took a measured breath as if he’d just dodged a train.
“You’re green around the gills, Vittorio,” Gwyn chided, amused. “Were you worried?” She hadn’t had time to panic and was riding a high of amazement.
“Lauren makes it look easy,” he said in a tone that suggested he was well aware labor and delivery didn’t always go so smoothly.
“I’ll say,” Gwyn responded. “I didn’t even get the water boiled!” She moved into the kitchen where she had managed to snap off the gas on her way to fetch Paolo. “Shall I finish making dinner?”
“We’ll help,” Vito said, sliding Bianca onto a stool while Roberto climbed into the one his mother had been using. Vito was very good with the children and they openly adored him, grinning at his teasing, behaving angelically as he gently kept them on task.
Vito exchanged several texts with Paolo, who mentioned that everything was fine but there was a small delay in seeing the doctor.
“Paolo will be taking some family time now that the baby is here,” Vito said to Gwyn. “We had planned for this, but we’ll have a proper meeting when he gets back to review a few things before I assume his duties. You and I will spend the night here and head back to the city in the morning.”
Gwyn nodded absently, too caught up in watching him cut up a little girl’s food, steady Roberto’s hand as he shook out red pepper flakes then smoothly reached to top up Gwyn’s wineglass with a practiced flair. Throw in his ability give a woman orgasms and get the laundry done and he was the perfect
man in every way.
He met her gaze.
Her thoughts must have reflected in her it. Building a career had been a dominating goal in her life, partly because she’d seen how hard her mother had struggled to support herself without a proper profession. Gwyn had focused on her degree and finding the right job and chasing opportunities for advancement. It had meant relegating a husband and children to a dreamy “someday” that she hoped would find her when the time was right.
But she longed for a place to settle and call home. She wanted a family within it that wasn’t a tenuous late-in-life connection, but a network of blood ties like this family had, where a woman could be nosy about a man simply because she cared about him. She could leave her children with him in utter confidence that he would keep them safe and give them the affectionate security that fed their souls.
“Be careful, Gwyn,” Vittorio said with gentle gravity, holding her gaze.
She scanned for hazards the children might tip before meeting his gaze again, confused.
He wore the tough, circumspect look of the man who’d first stared her down in Nadine Billaud’s office.
“This is not our life,” he said in the same temperate tone. “Not yours. Not mine. So stop thinking it will happen.”
She was far too transparent around him. It was achingly painful to be this obvious, especially when he had touched her so intimately they were practically lovers, then shot down her dreams so dispassionately, leaving her nursing a giant ache that hollowed out her chest.
“Not with you, perhaps,” she said, lifting her glass and her chin, holding his gaze even though the locked stare made her stomach cramp. “But there’s no reason I can’t have something like this, someday. Is there?” she challenged.
He might have flinched, but she wasn’t sure.
And the silence went on long enough for her to remember her own notoriety. Would anyone want her after this? Ever?
A noise at the door told them the new parents had returned.
Gwyn rose to set two more places, grateful for a reason to turn away and hide that her eyes were welling up.