Her pulse was a frantic, flurried beat she couldn’t seem to control, and she took an unsteady step backward. “You’re right,” she agreed breathlessly, staring up into all that black heat. “It’s history under the bridge. You have moved on and so have I. So maybe we should agree on that and call it a night.”
A myriad of emotions flickered across his hard-boned face. As if he was debating whether or not to agree with her. She drew in a breath and waited, only to have his attention captured by something behind her, a bemused expression moving across his face.
An ominous thud started somewhere in the region of her heart. Warning bells rang in her head as she turned around slowly to find Leo padding out onto the porch, his thumb stuck in his mouth, his blue blanket trailing behind him. Clearly woken by their raised voices, he directed a big dark-eyed stare at Santo.
Gia stepped toward him, desperate to head off disaster. But there was no way to prevent it. Her son, cheeks flushed from sleep, golden hair ruffled, took his thumb out of his mouth, walked the last couple of steps toward her and held his chubby arms out to her. “Up.”
She picked him up and cuddled him close to her chest, her pulse pounding so loud in her ears it was like a freight train running through her head. Santo took in the scene, a frown creasing his brow. The curiosity in his gaze deepened as he stared at Leo. Then his eyes widened, shock flaring in those midnight depths.
It was like looking at two mirror images of each other.
She saw the moment realization dawned in Santo’s eyes. Watched the blood drain from his face.
* * *
Santo took an unsteady breath as he stared at velvety dark eyes that could have been his own. At the noticeable cowlick that had infuriated all three of the Di Fiore brothers as they’d grown into adulthood. He ruffled the hair of the child in front of him.
It could not be. The child could be Lombardi’s... Except there was no sign of the angular-faced Italian in the little boy clinging to Gia—there was only the identical image staring back at him. A bone-deep recognition echoed through him—a deep, primal pull in his gut unlike anything he’d ever felt in his life.
And then there was the panic arrowing through Gia’s eyes. The stark fear painted across her face as she held the little boy close. The events of the night started piling up in quick succession, bombarding him with the impossible. Why Gia had been so terrified to see him. Why she’d been so anxious to get rid of him.
Because she’d been guarding a secret she’d spent four years preserving.
Somehow, he found the presence of mind to pull himself together. “I didn’t know you had a little boy.” He set his gaze on Gia’s stricken face. “How old is he?”
She didn’t answer. For so long, so damn long, his heart climbed into his throat. “Dannazione, Gia. Answer the question.”
“He is three years old.”
The earth gave way beneath his feet, any reality he’d thought he’d ever known replaced by a grey haze that threatened to envelop him whole. But the little boy had settled now and was staring at him with big, dark, curious eyes that held the slightest bit of apprehension, and the silence on the porch was deafening.
“Friend?” the little boy whispered, looking up at Santo.
Friend? Santo almost choked on the word.
A strangled look crossed Gia’s face. “Yes,” she murmured. “A friend. And you should be in bed.” She glanced at Santo. “I need to—”
“Go,” he instructed curtly, as if she wasn’t about to carry his son away from him. As if the world wasn’t disintegrating beneath his feet. “We’ll talk when you get him settled.”
It was the longest ten minutes of his life as he paced the length of the porch, a chorus of cicadas keeping him company as a red haze built in his head. He had used a condom that night—he was sure of it. Except the night had been long, condoms had been known to fail and, quite honestly, the last thing he could remember was Gia stripping down to a skimpy piece of lace and then there had been nothing after that except the hot, sensual explosion that had followed.
Uncertainty dogging his every step, he forced himself to keep a lid on the violent emotion coursing through him until he confirmed what he already knew.
Gia’s face was deathly pale when she returned, slipping quietly onto the porch. Dressed now in cropped yoga pants and a T-shirt, she smoothed her palms over her thighs as she came to a halt in front of him.
“He is mine.”
The muscles in her throat convulsed. “Yes.”
A fury, unlike any he’d ever known, rose up inside of him. He clenched his hands into fists at his sides, attempted to control it, but it escaped his bounds, rising up into his throat until all that emerged was a primal sound of disbelief.
“Santo,” Gia said haltingly, “you need to let me explain.”
“Explain what?” he exploded. “That I have a three-year-old son you haven’t told me about? There isn’t one possible reason on this earth you could give me which would explain why you would keep something like this from me.”
“Franco,” she choked out. “He was going to kill you.”
His jaw dropped. “What are you talking about?”
She sank back against a pillar. Pressed a hand against her temple. “I found out I was pregnant a couple of weeks before I married Franco. I was scared, terrified. It was a disaster, given the circumstances. I had no idea what to do. I couldn’t go to my father—that was inconceivable. So I went to my mother. She told me I had to tell Franco.”
“You should have come to me,” Santo grated out. “It was the obvious choice, Gia.”
“And done what?” Fire flared in her eyes. “I was about to marry one of the most powerful men in the country. A pivotal match that would cement my father’s business interests in Las Vegas, which were, at the time, in jeopardy. There was no way out.”
He gave her a thunderous look. “And so you simply chose to marry Lombardi instead, when you were pregnant with my child?”
“There was nothing simple about it.” She threw the words at him with a ragged heat. “Franco was beside himself with fury. My impulse, my walk on the wild side had put the entire partnership in jeopardy.” She dragged a hand through her hair. Sucked in a deep breath. “Once Franco had finally calmed down, he told me we would have to make it work. That he would take my son as his own and give him his name. As long as no one ever found out the truth. As long as I never saw you again.”
Her eyes glittered a deep green as they lifted to his. “He said if I did, he would find out, he would hunt you down and he would kill you.”
Maledizione. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “I can protect myself,” he rasped. “You should have come to me, Gia.”
She shook her head, eyes bleak. “Nothing would have protected you against him. He had the power to eliminate anyone he liked. He could and would do it. There was no doubt in my mind he would.”
His brain buzzed with incomprehension. He understood Gia was intimidated by her powerful, charismatic father. Always had been. It was why she’d married Lombardi in the first place. To humiliate her father by walking away from her marriage would have been unthinkable. But to have passed his son off as Lombardi’s? To lie to the world about his parentage? It was unfathomable to him.
He fixed his gaze on hers, his fury a hot pulse against his skin. “So you allowed my son to be raised by Franco Lombardi? In the same culture of violence you were brought up in? That same culture of violence you hated so much?”
She shook her head. “I protected Leo. He was never exposed to any