“I don’t...” She sniffled against me. “I don’t understand. How did you know he was here? How did you get here?”
She drew back, and I let her go even though all I wanted to do was continue holding her.
“I’ve been tracking him.” I tucked a lock of silky hair behind her ear, desperate to keep touching her. However I could. “I knew he was trying to find you. When I discovered he’d been in Australia, I flew right here.”
She sat back on her heels and looked down at my damp shirt. “So you came for Giovanni.”
“No, I came for you, angioletto. To protect you. Because...”
Her gaze slowly lifted to mine. And as our eyes held, I decided I didn’t care if she’d grabbed me only because she was relieved she was still alive. I was done with lies and secrets.
“Because I love you,” I said, my throat thick. “Because I never stopped loving you. Because the thought of anything happening to you makes it impossible for me to breathe or think or—”
She threw her arms around my neck again, only this time, she didn’t just hug me. She pressed her lips to mine. And the second she kissed me, I opened and devoured her mouth the way I’d dreamt of devouring her every moment since we’d been apart.
“I love you too,” she whispered against my lips, climbing onto my lap and kissing me again and again. “Oh, Luc, I love you so much.”
Everything I’d been holding back, all the pain and misery and love and loss I’d been struggling not to feel all these months, gathered inside me, broke free and consumed me.
I was dizzy. Delirious. Shaking with the need to make things right. To show her just how much I still and always would love her.
She drew back from my lips long before I was ready to stop kissing her and looked at me in the moonlight. “I... I can’t believe you’re here. I feel like I’m dreaming.”
“You’re not dreaming. Because if you are, I am too.”
A soft laugh slipped from her lips, and she rested her forehead against mine. “I-I thought you’d forgotten about me.”
“Impossible.” I slid my fingers up her back and over her arm, marveling at how soft her skin was. Remembering all the times I’d held her and caressed her just like this.
“You’ve had plenty of women to keep you company.”
“What women?”
“All the ones you’ve been photographed with.”
“Have you been spying on me?”
She blushed. “It’s not spying when it’s all over the internet.”
“Angioletto.” I tipped her chin up with my finger so she could see my eyes. “They’re beards.”
“What?”
“Covers. To keep the Grande Cavaliere off my back. None of them meant anything to me. It was all for show. As soon as the cameras were off and the doors were closed, I kicked them out. I made a promise to you, remember?” I slid my fingers down her soft cheek. “To be faithful only to you.”
Hope filled her eyes, and I smiled because it was exactly what I’d ached to see.
“I haven’t been with anyone since you, Natalie.”
She grasped my left hand resting on her thigh where she was straddling me and looked at my finger. The ring and tattoo were gone, but when she pushed my sleeve back, her entire expression softened as she gazed at the bracelet still on my wrist.
“They made me have the tattoo removed,” I said softly. “And the legal paperwork might say we’re no longer married. But as far as I’m concerned, you are and always will be my wife. You’re the only woman in this world I want. You’re the only woman I’ve ever wanted.”
“Oh Luc.” She framed my face and kissed me. Slowly. With so much love in her eyes, I felt all the broken pieces inside me fuse back together.
“Please tell me we’re still unbreakable,” I whispered, gazing up at her. “I miss you. I miss you so much. And now that Giovanni isn’t a threat anymore, things can be different.”
“How?” She drew back and stared at me.
“He’s the only one who knew about your marking. Felicity told me she removed it. You can come back now. We can be together the way we should have been. I can really keep you safe in Italy now.”
Unease passed over her face. Before I could figure out what she was thinking, she pushed off me and stood.
“Natalie?”
“Th-there’s something I need to show you back at the house. Something that… changes things.”
I had no idea what she was talking about. I pushed to my feet and watched her carefully, but before I could ask what she meant, Haych rushed out of the foliage and skidded to a stop.
“Miss Natalie?”
“I’m fine, Haych.” She crossed the rocks and quickly hugged him. “Are you all right?” She drew back and stared up at him. “Sela?”
“I’m fine. She’s fine. No worries.”
Natalie breathed easier.
Haych moved to the cliff and glanced over the side. “We need to take care of that before anyone shows up looking for him.”
My brain snapped back into action. Haych was right. I couldn’t be completely sure Giovanni had come all the way to the South Pacific alone. And if someone from my House or any of the other Houses found him here...
I focused on Haych instead of the nervous look suddenly consuming Natalie’s features. “We’ll need to take him out in the boat and dump his body far enough out so the current doesn’t bring him back.”
“We’ll need to do it soon. Current’s already trying to pull him out.”
I stepped past Natalie toward the path that led back to the house.
She turned to look after me. “Luc?”
“It’s okay.” I forced a smile I didn’t feel. “We’ll talk when I get back.”
But the whole way down all I could think about was what she could possibly tell me that would change things between us.
And what I would do if she didn’t want to return to Italy with me.
I was a bundle of nerves by the time we got back.
Haych and I dumped Gio’s body twenty miles out, in an area I knew the current moved away from the island. The marine life there was plentiful. If he washed up on any nearby shores he’d be hard to identify, especially with his face smashed in from that fall on the rocks. Anyone who found him would assume he was a tourist who had one too many and hit his head when he fell overboard.
It was close to eleven p.m. when we docked. I’d been running on pure adrenaline the last thirty-six hours, but I wasn’t tired. All I could think about was returning to Natalie, pulling her into my arms, and showing her just how much I’d missed her these last eighteen months. And convincing her that whatever she needed to tell me didn’t change anything.
I loved her. I’d always love her, no matter what had happened while we’d been apart.
I didn’t want her to see any lingering signs of what had happened to Gio, though. So I bypassed the house and followed Haych to his cottage to clean up. He and Sela had married in the time I’d been away and were now living in her villa. His things were mostly cleaned out save a few boxes of old clothes. I grabbed a T-shirt from the closest box and gave my bloody dress shirt to Haych with instructions to burn it and his soiled clothing the following day.
The lights were on in the main house when I pushed the front door open. Voices echoed from the kitchen—Natalie’s and Sela’s—and my nerves spun as I headed that way. The earlier mess had been cleaned up, and the villa was exactly as I remembered. But I was too focused on finding Natalie to appreciate it.
My heart skipped a beat when I entered the room and spotted Natalie at the table with a cup of tea in front of her. Our eyes held, and hers grew wary as she gazed at me. But underneath all those nerves I also saw heat. A heat that fired each cylinder in my body and brought every single neuron to life.
“Well?” Natalie pushed to her feet and stared at me from across the room. A bruise had formed on her cheek from Giovanni’s attack, but to me she’d never been more beautiful. An angel shining brigh
t in the middle of all my darkness.
“All taken care of,” I answered.
“He won’t be bothering anyone ever again,” Haych said as he moved into the room at my side.
Natalie exhaled a relieved breath. Before I could go to her, though, Sela turned from where she was stirring something in a mug at the counter, spotted me, and shrieked, “Luc!”
She held a baby in her arms, one with dark hair and bronze skin I only saw for a few seconds before she pushed the child at Haych and threw her arms around my neck. “I’m so glad you’re here.”
I hugged her, catching Natalie’s amused expression across the room. As much as I wanted only to grab my wife and never let go, I didn’t want to be impolite. “Thanks. It’s good to be home.”
Even if it was only a brief visit.
I pushed that thought aside and realized something very hard and round was pressing against my stomach. Easing back, I looked down and lifted my brow in surprise. “You’re pregnant.”
“Yeah.” A proud grin curled Sela’s lips as she ran a hand over her swollen belly. “Only a few more months. I’m ready to be done.”
I glanced toward Haych who’d moved across the kitchen and was struggling with the dark-haired baby, bouncing the fussy kid in his arms. I couldn’t tell how old the kid was but he had to be close to a year if Sela was pregnant already again. “You’ve been busy while I’ve been away.”
“Some. Not as much as you might think.”
“Here.” Natalie moved toward Haych and reached for the wiggling baby. “I’ll take him.”
The baby held out his arms for Natalie and made a cooing sound. As soon as she pulled him against her, he laid his head on her shoulder and started sucking on his fist.
A pang of loss hit me hard. I hadn’t let myself think too much about kids because I knew it was never an option for me. But as I watched Natalie gently rocking Sela’s baby, and I saw what a natural mother she was, something in my heart felt as if it shattered right there in front of her, even though I had no reason to feel anything but relief that she was safe once and for all.
“Luc?”
I startled at the sound of Sela’s voice and looked down. “Yeah.”
She smiled. “I asked if you were hungry. I could make something if you—“
“No, I’m fine.”
I suddenly wanted her and her babies gone. I didn’t want to be reminded of everything I’d given up. I just wanted to reconnect with my wife and lose myself in Natalie’s sweetness. To convince her whatever she was worried about didn’t even matter. “I’m mostly just tired.”
“Of course you are.” She turned toward Haych. “We should probably go and let them get some sleep.”
Haych smirked, knowing full well I didn’t want sleep. He turned to Natalie. “Goodnight, Miss Natalie.”
“Thanks Haych. For everything.”
He blushed and crossed toward me to shake my hand and reassure me Sela wouldn’t be bugging us in the morning.
Sela moved Natalie’s way and the two women hugged. They exchanged quiet words I couldn’t make out, then I heard Sela say, “If you change your mind, call us.”
“Thanks.”
Haych joined Sela at the back door. With a wave, the two left holding hands.
I had no idea what had just happened. As Natalie moved toward me with the baby still in her arms, though, I panicked because my plans for a romantic night reconnecting with my wife were going to crash and burn if she had to babysit.
“Why didn’t they take their baby?” I asked.
“Because he’s not their baby.”
I stared at her as she stopped in front of me, sure I’d heard her wrong. “Then whose baby is h—?“
“His name is Ian.” She glanced down at the baby resting on her shoulder, still sucking on his fist. “I told you there was something I needed to talk to you about. This is it. I-I named him after his father.”
My chest contracted. “He’s… yours?”
“Yes.”
Holy shit. The fact she’d named the kid after his father slammed into me, telling me she’d known the father, which meant he really was hers. Biologically. Not adopted.
My chest squeezed even tighter, making it hard to breathe. I moved back a half step.
“He’s nine months old.”
Nine months...
My brain spun. That meant she’d gotten pregnant not long after I’d sent her away. She’d been with another man weeks, maybe even days, after I’d divorced her.
I stumbled back another step, my skin growing hot, perspiration dotting my spine. She’d been with someone else...
And why wouldn’t she? I’d pushed her away, divorced her, told her we’d never see each other again. If she’d turned to someone else for comfort, could I blame her for that? I’d broken her heart. And yet...
My gaze drifted to the baby yawning in her arms. I hated the idea of her with anyone but me. Sickness churned in my stomach when I thought of another man kissing her, holding her, touching her—
“Ian is the Scottish Gaelic form of John,” Natalie said.
She stepped closer, and I tensed because I had nowhere else to go. The wall was already at my back. I had no right to be jealous, but... motherfucker... I was. Not just because she’d so easily replaced me after everything we’d been through, but because that man—whoever he was—had given her something I never could.
“It means ‘Gift from God.’ And I thought that was kind of fitting”—she glanced down at the now sleeping baby—“seeing as how he really is a miracle, and he was conceived in Scotland.”
My brain wasn’t working. Did she just say Scotland? She’d gone to Scotland after she’d left me in Italy?
I supposed that was possible—she’d left on Felicity’s family jet—but I thought they’d flown right to the States.
“I couldn’t give him his father’s full name because that would be too obvious,” she said softly. “So I picked three letters from the middle of his name.”
For a split second, her words hung in the air around me, and then, when her meaning hit, my eyes narrowed in absolute disbelief. “Wait. Are you saying—?”
“I found out I was pregnant after I got here. At first, I thought it was stress and sadness messing up my cycle. Then I realized... it wasn’t. And I quickly understood why my stomach had been so queasy the whole time we were in Italy.”
My gaze shot to the sleeping baby on her shoulder—to his dark hair and olive coloring I suddenly realized weren’t like Haych’s as I’d automatically assumed. They weren’t like Haych’s at all.
They were like mine.
“But...” My throat was so dry I had to swallow to form words. “That’s... impossible. H-how? I can’t—“
“Apparently, you can. Felicity said that the vas deferens, or whatever it is they cut in a vasectomy, can grow back together. Even after ten or more years. It’s rare, but it happens.”
“Felicity?” My eyes met hers again. “She knows?”
Natalie nodded. “She’s visited several time. She flew out when I was due and even delivered him here on the island. I made her and Marco promise not to tell you because I knew if they did, you’d try to get to us. And I...” Her soft blue eyes grew damp. “As much as I wanted that, I couldn’t put you in danger.” She glanced down at the baby. “I couldn’t put Ian in danger.”
My head grew light. So light I sagged back against the wall. I still couldn’t wrap my mind around this. “But you... That doctor in Panama, on our way here that first time... He put that implant in your arm. I was there. I saw it happen.”
“I asked Felicity about that too. When I told her I thought I was pregnant, she didn’t believe me either. She flew all the way out here to check me herself. And when she realized I was and took the implant out of my arm, she said it was probably injected too deep to work correctly. Apparently, there were several lawsuits in the UK about the implants failing from improper insertion a few years ago.”
I still coul
dn’t believe it. She’d had a baby.
She’d had my baby.
“It shouldn’t be possible, Luc, but it was. The only explanation I have is that this baby desperately wanted to be born. He is a miracle.”
My lungs contracted until I could barely breathe, and my vision grew blurry, making it nearly impossible to see.
“I don’t want you to worry,” she said quickly. “I’ve taken every precaution to keep him hidden. No one knows where he really came from except for Sela, Haych, Felicity, Marco, and my mother. I stayed on the island the whole pregnancy. He was delivered here. And a few months after he was born, Felicity and Marco helped me file forged adoption papers with the US government. To anyone who was looking, I went home to the States to adopt a baby. So he’s safe from your House. No one knows he’s yours. I’ll never let anyone find out the truth. And I’m not asking for anything from you. I’m only telling you now because you’re here, and I can’t lie to you about it, and—“
“Tu sei un dono del cielo.” I captured her in a fierce hug, careful near the sleeping baby. “Ti amo, angioletto.” I pressed my lips against her temple and closed my eyes as I held her tight. “Senza di te non sono niente.”
She turned her face into my throat. And in a muffled voice I heard her whisper, “You’re not upset?”
I drew back and looked down at her. “Why would you ever think I’d be upset by this?”
She blinked damp lashes at me. “Because you told me in Scotland that you didn’t want children.”
“Ah, Dio.” I lifted my hand to her face and turned her lips up to mine so I could kiss her. Once. Twice. “You know I’m a stronzo who’s wrong most the time.”
She laughed, and I swiped a tear from her cheek that spilled over her lashes. “Oh, Luc... The whole time you and Haych were gone, I was terrified of how you’d react.”
I kissed her again and pressed my forehead to hers. “You had nothing to be afraid of, angioletto. I just... I can’t believe you did this all on your own.”
“He made it easy. He’s a good baby, Luc.”
The Choice (House of Sin Book 6) Page 13