Married For His One-Night Heir

CHAPTER THREE

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.”

Delilah frowned. “How did Santo take the news about him?”

“Not well.” The understatement of the year.

Delilah sighed and took a sip of her coffee. “This is a mess,” she said finally. “You know that. Santo is one of the most powerful men on the planet. Does he want his son?”

She nodded. That much was clear.

“Then I would suggest,” Delilah advised, “that you attempt to reason with him. It’s your only option. And,” she added quietly, eyes on Gia’s, “you might want to figure out how you feel about him while you’re at it. There are clearly some unresolved feelings there between you two.”

She intended to ignore the latter piece of advice completely, because Santo clearly hated her for what she’d done. She wasn’t sure about the first part, either. The Santo who had walked away from her last night had been a cold, hard stranger she couldn’t hope to know. She didn’t think reasoning with him was going to work.

But she had to try, because everything banked on her succeeding. Convincing Santo she had done the right thing.

* * *

Santo stood leaning against the railing of the terrace of his suite as a stunning pink sunset blazed its way across the sky. He’d spent the night before attempting to absorb the mind-numbing news that he had a three-year-old son. Walking for hours on the beach in an effort to work past the emotion consuming him. To figure out his next step. Which had produced a single, yet irrefutable solution to the situation he now found himself in.

He’d gone through it with his lawyer in New York this morning, his proposed solution the one his chief legal counsel deemed “the cleanest one possible.” The complex process of having Leo’s paternity corrected was another story. It was a land mine of red tape to negotiate that left him with a dark cloud in his head. Which hadn’t necessarily been lessened by his brother’s parting words that morning.

You know what I’m thinking.

Yes. And it would never be him. His father had married his mother, a Broadway dancer, when she’d become pregnant with his child. Had been so blindingly in love with her, with the thought of her, he hadn’t considered the consequences of tying himself to a woman who would never be happy. Who had never wanted to be a wife or a mother. Who had married him for his money and then proceeded to make his life miserable from that day forward.

Which was not how his relationship with Gia was going to proceed. His father might have allowed his emotion to rule him, he might have allowed emotion to rule him the first time around with Gia, but this iteration of their relationship would be based on rationality. On putting their child first.

She showed up at six-thirty sharp, exactly as he’d known she would, because he held all the cards in this unspeakably difficult situation she’d created, and he intended to use them. His plan, however, was momentarily derailed when he opened the door and found her on the threshold.

Clad in a knee-length, olive-green dress with a halter-style top, the soft drape of the material accented her perfect curves, doing particular justice to her amazing backside, which had used to make every boy in school stop and stare. Then walk the other way when they remembered who she was.

Hauling his gaze upward, he refused to allow himself to fall into that trap. He focused, instead, on Gia’s pinched face. Bare of makeup, except for a light-coloured gloss on her lips, there were shadows painted beneath her brilliant green eyes. She looked vulnerable. Apprehensive. Scared. Which normally would have tugged at his heartstrings, but not this time.

He waved her into a seat. “Would you like a drink?”

She shook her head. Perched herself on the arm of a chair instead. He moved to the bar, poured himself two fingers of Scotch, because he sorely needed it, added some ice, then turned to face her, leaning a hip against the marble.

Gia dug her teeth into her lip, eyes on his. “Santo,” she began haltingly, “I don’t think we were entirely rational, either of us, last night. It was an emotional discussion. Perhaps we can start over—discuss this situation with a fresh perspective?”

He cradled the glass between his fingers. “Actually,” he murmured, with a contemplative look, “I woke up with excellent perspective. You stole my son from me, Gia. You kept his existence a secret for three years, one you would no doubt have continued to keep had it not been for last night. So, from now on, I will be the one calling the shots and you will be the one listening.”

She swallowed hard, the delicate muscles of her throat pulling tight. “You need to be reasonable.”

“Believe me, this is reasonable after the thoughts that have been going through my head.” He inclined his head. “Who is taking care of Leo while you’re here?”

“His babysitter. I thought it better we spoke in private.”

“And during the day when you work?”

“He goes to the hotel day care.”

“Day care?” He said the words as if they were dirty, which they were to him, because the idea of his son being cared for by strangers was just that unpalatable to him.

“I work,” she pointed out. “I have a successful career, which allows me to support my son. The day care is amazing. Leo loves it. Everyone there is wonderful.”

“So he is growing up without a father and a mother?”

Her head snapped back, her green eyes firing. “On the contrary. I start and finish work early every day. I spend the better part of the afternoons with Leo, as well as the evenings. He never wants for love or affection, Santo, and the socialization with the other children is good for him. He needs to learn to bond with other kids.”

Which she never had. He, however, knew the flipside. What it was like to come home to a nanny who had never lasted, and then later, when he’d been a teenager, to come home to nothing at all when his mother had walked out on them.

He’d been thirteen when she’d left after his father’s business had gone bankrupt and his family had lost everything—the house, the car, every piece of solid footing he’d ever known. His father busy drowning his sorrows at a local bar, Nico working to support the family, Lazzero off in his basketball-obsessed world, it had been unspeakably lonely to come home to the empty, dingy apartment they’d lived in. So he’d gone to his friend Pietro’s instead. Enveloped himself in the freely given warmth that had been bestowed upon him there.

Something Leo was never going to have to do.

“I have no problem with my son socializing with other children,” he bit out tersely. “In fact, I’m all for it, Gia. My issue here is that you have not only deprived Leo of his father, you have deprived him of his extended family as well, because you have walked away from yours and stripped him of mine.” He pointed his glass at her. “Nico and Chloe have a two-year-old boy named Jack. A cousin he doesn’t even know. How is that fair?”

Any color that had been in her cheeks fled. She hugged her arms tight around herself, her eyes glittering with emotion. “I am so sorry,” she said huskily. “I am, Santo. I do understand what I did was wrong, despite your opinion to the contrary. But I did what I thought was best for Leo at the time and I would do it a million times over, because I never want him to grow up like I did. As a Castiglione. That was the only thing in my head when I left.”

He absorbed the defiant tilt of her chin. The fire in her eyes. That was what had kept him up all night. The fact that she believed, in her own misguided way, that she’d done the right thing. Because Gia had only ever known one world—a world in which the blood ties that bound her—family, loyalty—meant everything. A world in which power and intimidation reigned supreme—except that she’d held no power in that world. In her mind, there had been no way out.

He regarded her with a hooded gaze. “What were you going to tell Leo when the time came? The truth? Or were you going to tell him that his father was a high-priced thug?”

She flinched. Lifted a fluttering hand to her throat. “I hadn’t thought that far ahead,” she admitted. “We’ve been too busy trying to survive. Making a life for ourselves. Leo’s welfare has been my top priority.”

Which he believed. It was the only reason he wasn’t going to take his child and walk. Do to her exactly what she’d done to him. Because as angry as he was, as unforgivable as what she had done had been, he had to take the situation she’d been in into account. It had taken guts for her to walk away from her life. Courage. She’d put Leo first, something his own mother hadn’t done. And she had been young and scared. All things he couldn’t ignore.

Gia set her gaze on his, apprehension flaring in her eyes. “I can’t change the past, Santo, the decisions I made. But I can make this right. Clearly,” she acknowledged, “you are going to want to be a part of Leo’s life. I was thinking about solutions last night. I thought you could visit us here... Get Leo used to the idea of having you around, and then, when he is older, more able to understand the situation, we can tell him the truth.”

A slow curl of heat unraveled inside of him, firing the blood in his veins to dangerously combustible levels. “And what do you propose we tell him when I visit? That I am that friend you referred to the other night? How many friends do you have, Gia?”

Her face froze. “I have been building a life here. Establishing a career. There has been no time for dating. All I do is work and spend time with Leo, who is a handful as you can imagine, as all three-year-olds tend to be.”

The defensively issued words lodged themselves in his throat. “I can’t actually imagine,” he said softly, “because you’ve deprived me of the right to know that, Gia. You have deprived me of everything.”

She blanched. He set down his glass on the bar. “I am his father. I have missed three years of his life. You think a weekend pass is going to suffice? A few dips in the sea as he learns to swim?” He shook his head. “I want every day with him. I want to wake up with him bouncing on the bed. I want to take him to the park and throw a ball around. I want to hear about his day when I tuck him into bed. I want it all.”

“What else can we do?” she queried helplessly. “You live in New York and I live here. Leo is settled and happy. A limited custody arrangement is the only realistic solution for us.”

“It is not a viable proposition.” His low growl made her jump. “That’s not how this is going to work, Gia.”

She eyed him warily. “Which part?”

“All of it. I have a proposal for you. It’s the only one on the table. Nonnegotiable on all points. Take it or leave it.”

The wariness written across her face intensified. “Which is?”

“We do what’s in the best interests of our child. You marry me, we create a life together in New York and give Leo the family he deserves.”

* * *

Gia’s stomach dropped, like a book falling off a high shelf. She stared at Santo, horrified, not sure which of his proposals she was most taken aback by. The idea of being forced into another marriage she had no interest in, that it would be with a man who now clearly hated her for what she’d done. Or the thought that he expected her to give up the life she’d made here to return to New York.

She shook her head. “I can’t do that. My life is here now, Santo. Everything I have is here. Leo loves it. You can’t just ask me to give all of that up.”

His face was unyielding. “I run a Fortune 500 company. My business is headquartered in Manhattan. I can’t base myself in the Bahamas, however enticing that prospect may be. It is not logical.”

She rubbed a palm against the back of her neck. Thought about how completely she’d severed herself from her life. How impossible, how undoable, it would be to simply pick it back up again. Her father had moved the family to Las Vegas a decade ago, when he had concentrated the business on the gambling end of things, but he still had business interests in New York. A collision would be guaranteed.

Her skin went cold. “I can’t go back to New York,” she said adamantly. “You know what that would mean, Santo. Leo would be exposed to my family. He would become a Castiglione.”

A cold fire lit his ebony eyes. “Leo will become a Di Fiore. He will be protected as such—as will you. Which leads me to the final part of my offer. Leo will have no contact with your family. Ever. Those ties will remain severed. Unless it’s your mother on a supervised visit approved by me. If you break that condition, our agreement will become null and void.”

And she would lose Leo. There was no need to even ask the question. She could tell from the look on his face. Ice formed on Gia’s insides. “My father will never tolerate such an arrangement, you know that. My brother, Tommaso, has never had a boy. Leo is his grandson—his future heir.”

“Your father has bigger things to worry about.” Santo picked up a newspaper that was folded on the breakfast bar and handed it to her. She scanned the page. Found the story he was referring to near the bottom.

Castiglione Thumbs His Nose at Congressional Hearings. Her heart jumped into her mouth. She skimmed the story, which talked about the new attorney general’s determination to crack down on the resurgence of organized crime in the United States with a series of congressional hearings set for next month in Washington. Her father, unsurprisingly, had been invited to testify on the subject. He had, also unsurprisingly, refused to attend, electing to take a lengthy sojourn to Calabria instead.

She inhaled a deep breath. This would kill her mother. Her father was everything to her. Her whole life was built around him.

“They will go after his business interests,” she said huskily. “My brother, next.”

“Perhaps,” Santo agreed. “But that would take time. Meanwhile Tommaso will run things in Vegas while your father lawyers up. Which, I’m assuming, he will do.”