Italian Mavericks: Forbidden Nights With The Italian: The Forbidden Ferrara / Surrendering to the Italian's Command / The Unwanted Conti Bride

‘No!’ Her chest rose and fell, her breathing shallow. ‘He adores Luca.’

Santo raised his eyebrows in disbelief. ‘He adores a child who is half Ferrara? You expect me to believe that age has finally gifted a Baracchi with tolerance?’ He broke off, alerted by something in her eyes, some instinct that went bone-deep. And suddenly it fell into place. Finally he understood the truth and the reality was another blow to his already aching gut. ‘Cristo, he doesn’t know, does he?’ It was the only possible explanation and one that was confirmed by the look in her eyes.

‘Santo—’

‘Answer me.’ His voice didn’t sound like his own and he saw her take a step backwards. ‘You will tell me the truth. He doesn’t know, does he? You haven’t told him.’

‘How could I tell him?’ Underneath the desperation was a profound weariness, as if this issue were a heavy weight she’d been carrying for too long. ‘He hates everything about your family, and he hates you more than any man on the planet. Not just because your surname is Ferrara, but because—’ She didn’t finish the sentence and he let it hang there because to get involved in a discussion about her brother’s death would mean being sidetracked, and he refused to be sidetracked.

They had a child.

A child that was half Ferrara, half Baracchi. An unimaginable bloodline.

A child born out of one night that had ended in tragedy.

And the old man didn’t know.

He wondered how her grandfather could not have seen what he himself had seen instantly.

White-faced, she stared at him. Santo was so shell-shocked by the enormity of the secret she’d been carrying, he was reeling from it. How had she done it? She must have lain there every morning wondering whether today would be the day she’d be found out. Whether today would be the day a Ferrara would come and claim their own.

‘Madre de Dio, I cannot believe this. When the child is old enough to ask about his father, what did you intend to tell him? On second thought, don’t answer that,’ he said thickly, ‘I am not ready to hear the answer.’ He knew as well as anyone that life was no fairy story, but belief in the sanctity of family ran strong in his veins. Family was the raft that kept you afloat in stormy seas, the anchor that stopped you from drifting, the wind in the sail that propelled you forward. He was the product of his parents’ happy marriage and both his brother and sister had found love and created their own families. He’d assumed that the same would happen to him. Not once had he considered that he would have to fight for the right to be a father to his own child. Nor had he dreamt of his child being raised in a family like the Baracchis. He wouldn’t have wished it on anyone. It was a nightmare almost too painful to contemplate.

Her breathing was shallow. ‘Please, you have to promise me that you will let me deal with this. My grandfather is old. He isn’t well.’ Her voice shook but Santo felt no sympathy. He felt bitter and angry and raw.

‘You have had three years to deal with it. Now it’s my turn. Did you really think I’d allow my son to be raised in your family? And without a father in his life? The notion of family is alien to a Baracchi.’ He jabbed his fingers into his hair, his stress levels turning supersonic. ‘When I think what the child must have gone through—’

‘Luca is happy and well cared for.’

‘I saw your childhood.’ Santo let his hand fall to his side. ‘I saw how it was for you. You don’t understand what a family should be.’ And it broke his heart that his son had been raised in a family like that.

Her face was ghostly pale. ‘Luca’s childhood is nothing like mine. And if you know what mine was like then you should also know that I would never want that for my son. I don’t blame you for your concern but you are wrong. I do understand what a family should be. I always have.’

‘How? Where would you learn that? Certainly not in your own home.’ Her home life had been fractured, messy and unbelievably insecure because the Baracchi family didn’t just fight their neighbours, they fought amongst themselves. If family was a boat built to weather stormy seas, then hers was a shipwreck.

The first time they’d met properly she’d been eight years old and hiding on the far side of the beach. His side, where no Baracchi was supposed to tread. She’d taken refuge in the disused boathouse, amongst jagged planks of wood and the acrid smell of oil. He’d been fourteen years old and totally at a loss to know what to do with his wild-haired intruder. Was he supposed to hold her captive? Ask for a ransom? In the end he’d done neither. Nor had he blown her cover.

Instead, intrigued by her defiance, spurred on by the lure of the forbidden, he’d let her hide there until she’d chosen to return home.

Weeks later he’d found out that the day she’d kept her solitary vigil in his boathouse had been the day her mother had walked out, leaving Fia’s violent Sicilian father to cope with two children he’d never wanted. He remembered being surprised that she hadn’t cried. It was years before he realised that Fia never cried. She kept all her emotions hidden inside and never expected comfort. Which was probably because she’d learned there was none to be had in her family.

Santo’s mouth tightened.

Maybe she did shut people out, but there was no way in hell he’d let her shut him out. Not now. Not this time. ‘You made your decision, by yourself with no reference to anyone else. Now I will make mine.’ He cut her no slack. Didn’t allow the beseeching look in her eyes to alter him from what he knew to be the right course of action.

‘What do you mean?’

‘When I’m ready to talk, I’ll contact you. And don’t even think of running because if you do I will hunt you down. There is nowhere you can hide. Nowhere on this planet you can take my son that I can’t find you.’

‘He is my son, too.’

Santo gave a humourless smile. ‘And that presents us with an interesting challenge, doesn’t it? He is possibly the first thing our two families have had in common. When I’ve decided what I’m going to do about that, I’ll let you know.’

As the furious growl of the Lamborghini disturbed the silence of the night, Fia just made it to the bathroom and was violently sick. It could have been panic, fear, or some noxious combination of the two, but whatever it was it left her shaking and she hated the weakness and the feeling of vulnerability. Afterwards she sat on the floor with her eyes closed, trying to formulate a plan but there was no plan she could make that he couldn’t sweep aside.

He would take control, the way the Ferraras always took control. His contempt for her family would drive his decision-making. And part of her didn’t blame him for that. In his position she probably would have felt the same way because, now, she understood how it felt to want to protect a child.

Fia wrapped her arms around her knees and pulled them closer, tucking herself into as small a space as possible.

He hadn’t listened when she’d tried to explain herself. He hadn’t believed her when she’d told him that she’d made sure that Luca’s childhood was nothing like her own.

His mission now was to rescue his son from the Baracchi family.

There would be no softness. No concessions. No compromise.

Instead of being raised in a calm, loving atmosphere, Luca would be subjected to the intolerable pressures of animosity and resentment. He’d be the rope in an emotional tug of war.

And that was precisely why she’d chosen this particular rocky, deadly path and she’d lived with the lies, the worry and the stress for three years in order to protect her son.

‘Mamma sick.’ Luca stood there, his favourite bear clutched in his arms, that dark hair rumpled. The harsh bathroom lights spotlighted every feature and for a moment she couldn’t breathe because right there, in her son’s face, she saw Santo. Their child had inherited those unforgettable eyes, that same glossy dark hair. Even the shape of his mouth reminded her of his father and she wasn’t going to start thinking about his stubborn streak …

Realistically, it had only been a matter of time before her secret was out.

‘I love you.’ Impulsively she dragged him into her arms and kissed his head, letting the warmth of him flow into her. ‘I’m always going to be here for you. And Gina, and Ben. You have people who love you. You won’t ever be alone.’ She held him tightly, as she had never been held. She kissed him, as she had never been kissed. Perhaps it wasn’t fair to blame Santo Ferrara for assuming that his child was being raised in a toxic atmosphere. He had no idea how hard she’d worked to ensure that Luca’s childhood was nothing like her own.

And as he snuggled against her, happy and content, she felt her eyes fill.

What had she lacked, she wondered, that her own mother hadn’t felt this same powerful bond? Nothing, nothing, would induce her to walk away from her child. There was no price, no power, no promise that could make her do such a thing.

And there was no way she was going to let Santo take her son.

Blissfully ignorant of the fact that their lives were teetering on the edge of a dangerous chasm, he wriggled out of her arms.

‘Bed.’

‘Good idea,’ she croaked, scooping him up and carrying him back to his bed. Whatever happened, she was going to protect him from the fallout of this. She wasn’t going to let him be hurt.

‘Man come back?’

Her insides churned again. ‘Yes, he’ll come back.’ She was in no doubt about that. And when he returned he’d bring serious legal muscle. She had no doubt about that, either. Events had been set in motion and there was no stopping them. No stopping a Ferrara from getting what he wanted.

And Santo Ferrara wanted his son.

She sat on the bed, watching her son fall asleep, her love for him so huge that it filled every part of her. The strength of that bond made it all too easy for her to imagine Santo’s feelings. Deep inside her, the guilt that she worked so hard to suppress awoke.

She’d never been comfortable with her decision. It had haunted her in the dark hours of the night when there were no distractions to occupy her mind. It wasn’t that she regretted the choice she’d made. She didn’t. But she’d learned that the right decision could feel completely wrong. And then there were the dreams. Dreams that distorted reality. Twisted the impossible into the possible. Dreams of a life that didn’t exist.

Blocking out images of black, silky lashes and a hard, sensual mouth, Fia stayed until Luca was safely asleep and then returned to the kitchen to clear up. Because she’d sent the staff home she had to do it herself, but the mindless work helped calm the panicky knot in her stomach. She poured her anxiety into each swipe of her cloth until every surface in the kitchen shone, until sweat pricked her brow, until she was too bone-tired to feel anything except the physical ache of hard labour. And then she grabbed a cold beer from the fridge and took it to the small wooden jetty that butted out from the restaurant.

Fishing boats bobbed quietly in the darkness, waiting to be taken out onto the water.

Usually this was a time to be calm, but tonight her nightly ritual failed to produce the desired effect.

Fia kicked off her shoes and sat on the jetty, feet dangling in the cool water, her gaze sliding to the lights of the Ferrara Beach Club on the opposite side of the bay. Eighty per cent of her customers tonight had come from the hotel. She had reservations for plenty more, booked months ahead. Twisting off the cap, she lifted the bottle to her lips, realising that by being good at what she did, she’d inadvertently drawn the eye of the enemy.

Her success had brought her out from under the radar. Instead of being irrelevant to the all-powerful Ferraras, she’d made herself significant. This was all her fault, she thought miserably. In pursuing her goal of providing for her family, protecting her son, she’d inadvertently exposed him.

‘Fiammetta!’

Her grandfather’s bark made her jump and she sprang to her feet and walked back towards the stone house that had been in the family for six generations, a feeling of sick dread in her stomach. ‘Come stai?’ She kept her voice light. ‘You’re up late, Nonno. How are you feeling?’

‘I’m as well as a man can be when he sees his granddaughter working herself to the bone.’ He scowled down at the bottle in her hand. ‘A man doesn’t like to see a woman drinking beer.’

‘Then it’s a good job I don’t have a man I need to worry about.’ She teased him lightly, relieved that he had the energy to spar with her. This was their relationship. This was Baracchi love. She told herself that just because he didn’t express it didn’t mean he didn’t feel it. On some days she actually believed that. ‘What are you doing up? You should be asleep in bed.’

‘Luca was crying.’

‘He had a dream. He just wanted a cuddle.’

‘You should leave him to cry.’ Her grandfather gave a grunt of disapproval. ‘He’ll never grow up to be a man the way you coddle him.’

‘He’s going to be a fine man. The best.’

‘The boy is spoiled. Every time I see him, someone is hugging him or kissing him.’

‘You can’t give a child too much love.’

‘Did I fuss over my son the way you fuss over yours?’

No, and look at how that turned out. ‘I think you should go to bed, Nonno.’

‘Can I cook for a few people? That’s what you said to me—’ he winced as he walked stiffly towards the waterfront ‘—and before I know it my home is full of strangers and you are serving good Sicilian food on fancy plates and lighting candles for people who wouldn’t know the difference between fresh food and fast food.’

‘People travel a long way to taste my cooking. I’m running a successful business.’

‘You shouldn’t be running a business.’ Her grandfather settled himself in his favourite chair at the water’s edge. The chair he’d sat on when she was a child.

‘I’m building a life for myself and a future for my child.’ A life that was now overturned. A future that was threatened. Suddenly she didn’t trust herself not to betray what she was feeling. ‘I’ll fetch you a drink. Grappa?’

She had to tell her grandfather about Santo, but first she had to work out how. How did you tell someone that the father of his precious great-grandchild was a man he hated above all others?

Fia walked back to the kitchen and grabbed the bottle and a glass. It was a long time since he’d mentioned the Ferraras. And that was because of her, of course. Concerned for Luca, she’d insisted that if he couldn’t speak the name positively then he wasn’t to speak the name at all.

At first she was just grateful that he’d taken her threat seriously, but now she was wondering whether it meant he’d actually softened over time.

Please. Please let him have softened—

Fia put the glass on the table in front of her grandfather and poured. ‘So what’s wrong?’

‘You mean apart from the fact that you are here every night slaving in that kitchen while someone else looks after your child?’

‘It’s good for Luca to be with other people. Gina loves him.’ She didn’t have the family she wanted for her son, so she’d created it. Her son was never going to be lonely in the way she’d been lonely. He had people he could turn to. People who would hug him when life threw rocks.

‘Love.’ Her grandfather grunted with contempt. ‘You are turning him into a girl. That’s what happens when there is no father to teach a boy to be a man.’

It was the perfect opening for her to tell him what she needed to tell him. But Fia couldn’t push the words past her dry throat. She needed time. Time to discover what Santo intended to do. ‘Luca has male influences in his life.’

‘If you’re talking about that boy you employ in the restaurant, there’s more testosterone in my finger than he has in his whole body. Luca needs a real man around.’

‘You and I have very different ideas about what makes a real man.’

His bony shoulders slumped and the lines on his forehead were deep. In the past month he appeared to have aged a decade. ‘This isn’t what I wanted for you.’

‘Life doesn’t always turn out the way we plan it, Nonno. When life gives you olives, you make olive oil.’

‘But you don’t make olive oil!’ He waved a hand in frustration. ‘You send our olives to our neighbours and they make our oil.’

‘Which I use in my restaurant. The restaurant that everyone in Sicily is talking about. I was in the paper last week.’ But somehow the buzz that she’d got from that fleeting moment of success had gone. Recent events had diminished it to nothing. ‘The week before I was mentioned in an important travel blog. The article was called “Sicilian Secrets”. I’m doing well. I’m good at my work.’

‘Work is what a woman does before she finds a husband.’

Fia put the bottle down on the table. ‘Don’t say that. Soon, Luca will be old enough to understand you and I don’t want him growing up with that opinion.’

‘Men ask you out! But do you say yes? No, you don’t. Dark, blond, tall, short—it’s always “no”. You shut everyone out and you have done since Luca’s father.’ He looked at her intently and Fia’s fingers tightened on the bottle.

‘When I meet a man I’m interested in, I’ll say yes.’ But she knew that wasn’t going to happen. There had only ever been one man in her life and right now he despised her. And worse, he thought she was an unfit mother.

Barely able to think about that, she focused on her grandfather and felt a flicker of worry as she saw him absently rub his fingers across his chest. Impulsively, she reached across the table and touched his hand. When he immediately withdrew, she tried not to mind. Her grandfather wasn’t tactile, was he? It was silly of her to even try. He didn’t hug her and he didn’t hug Luca. ‘What’s wrong? More pain?’

‘Don’t fuss.’ There was a long silence while he glared at her and something in his gaze made her stomach clench.

Was it just her guilty conscience or did he—?

‘You weren’t going to tell me, were you?’ The harshness of his voice shocked her and she felt as if the earth had shaken beneath her feet.

‘Tell you what?’ Her heart was suddenly pounding like a drum in a rock band.

‘He was here tonight. Santo Ferrara.’ He said it as if the name tasted bad on his tongue and Fia put the bottle down before it slipped from her hand.

‘Nonno—’

‘I know you banned me from mentioning his name but when a Ferrara walks onto my property, that gives me the right to talk about him. You should have told me he was here.’

How much did he know? How much had he heard?

‘I didn’t tell you because I knew this would be your reaction.’

He thumped his fist on the table. ‘I warned that boy not to step onto my land again.’

Fia thought about the width and power of those shoulders. The haze of dark stubble accentuating that hard jaw. ‘He’s not a boy. He’s a man.’ A wealthy man who now ran a global corporation. A man with the power to shake up everything she loved about her life. A man who had gone off to talk to lawyers and think about the future of her son.

Their son.

Oh, God—

Her grandfather’s eyes glowed bright with rage. ‘That man walked into my home—my home—’ he stabbed the air with his finger ‘—with no respect for my feelings.’

‘Nonno—’

‘Did he have the courage to face me?’

‘Calma! Calm down.’ Fia was on her feet; the emotion was a burning ball at the base of her ribs. If her grandfather was this upset now, how much worse was it going to be when he found out the truth? It was starting again, only this time Luca would be in the middle of it. ‘I didn’t want him to see you and this is why! You’re getting upset.’

‘Of course I am upset. How could I not be upset after what he has done?’ His face was white in the flickering light from the candle and Fia was sure that hers was equally pale.

‘You promised me when Luca was born that you would let the past go.’

He gave her a long, long look. ‘Why are you defending him? Why is it that I’m not allowed to say a bad word about a Ferrara?’

Fia felt the heat pour into her cheeks. ‘Because I don’t want Luca growing up with that animosity. It’s horrible.’

‘I hate them.’

Fia breathed deeply. ‘I know.’ Oh, yes, she knew. And she’d thought about that every day since she’d felt the first fluttering low in her abdomen. She’d thought about it as she’d pushed her son from her body, when she’d first looked into his eyes and every time she kissed him goodnight. There were days when she felt as if she couldn’t carry the weight of it any more.

Her grandfather’s eyes were fierce. ‘Because of Ferrara, you will be alone in the world when I’m gone. Who will look after you?’

‘I will look after us.’ She knew he blamed Santo for her brother’s death. She also knew it was pointless to remind him that her brother had barely been able to look after himself, let alone another. It had been his own reckless irresponsibility that had killed him, not Santo Ferrara.

Her grandfather rose unsteadily to his feet. ‘If Ferrara dares to come back here again and I’m not around you can give him a message from me—’

‘Nonno—’

‘—you can tell him I’m still waiting for him to act like a man and take responsibility for his actions. And if he dares set foot on my property again I’ll make him pay.’

CHAPTER THREE

SANTO sat and waited in his office at the Ferrara Beach Club—an office hastily vacated in his honour by the manager of the hotel. If he needed an indication as to why this hotel was less successful than the others in the group it was right there on the desk. Lack of discipline and organisation was visible everywhere, from the scattered papers to the dying plant that drooped sadly in the corner of the office. Later, he’d deal with it. Right now he had other things on his mind. Mocking him from the wall was an enlarged photograph of the hotel manager, posing with his wife and two smiling children.

A typical Sicilian family.

Santo stared moodily at that picture. Right now he felt like tearing it down. He’d never considered himself idealistic, but was it idealistic to assume that one day his family would look much like the one in the picture?

Apparently it was.

He glanced at his watch.

Not for one moment did he doubt that she would come. Not because he had faith in her sense of justice but because she knew that if she didn’t, he’d come and get her.

His face expressionless, he waited as darkness gave way to the first fingers of dawn; as the sun rose over the sea, showering light across the smooth glassy surface.

He’d sent the text in the early hours, at a time when most people would have been asleep. It hadn’t occurred to him to try and sleep. There had been no rest for him and he knew there would have been none for her, either.

Exhaustion fogged his mind and yet his thoughts were clear. As far as he was concerned the decision was clear. If only the emotions were as simple to deal with.

He checked his phone again and found a message from his brother, another person who had been frequenting the early hours. Just four words—

What do you need?

Unconditional support. Unquestioning loyalty. All those things that a family should offer, and which his did. He’d been raised with that support, surrounded by love. Unlike his son, who had spent his early years in the equivalent of a pit of vipers.

Sweat beaded on his brow. He could barely allow himself to think about what his son’s life must have been like. What was the long-term impact of being raised in an emotional desert? And what if the abuse hadn’t just been emotional? Although he’d been young, he still remembered the mutterings and the rumours about the Baracchi family. Remembered seeing Fia sporting bruises almost all the time.