Married For His One-Night Heir. Дженнифер Хейворд

myself. So I ran.”

      He bit back the surge of anger that coursed through him at the thought that his son could have been in danger. “To Delilah?”

      “Yes.” Her lashes lowered. “I had known Delilah from some work I’d done on Franco’s hotels. We’d become friends even. I think she always knew there was something wrong with my marriage, but she never said anything. She just said if I ever needed anything, I could come to her. So I did. I explained my situation with Leo, that I didn’t want him to live that kind of a life, and she offered to get us out.”

      “So your mother knows where you are?”

      “Yes,” she acknowledged. “She’s the only one who does. We keep in contact via Delilah.”

      He rubbed a hand against the stubble on his jaw, brain reeling. Addressed the one point he couldn’t wrap his head around. The obvious, simple choice she should have made. “If Franco was out of the picture, what stopped you from coming to me then?”

      Color rode high on her delicate cheekbones. “You were with a different woman every week. In a different city on a different continent building Supersonic, Santo. You were not, in any way, prepared to settle down, that was clear. And you had obviously moved on.”

      “Gia,” he growled, feeling himself slipping over the edge of reason. “Tell me the truth.”

      Her beautiful eyes shone a luminous green. “I was afraid,” she admitted quietly, “that you would never forgive me for what I’d done. That you might take Leo away from me.”

      She might have been right. Because right now, all he could feel was the fury burning through his veins. The anger that rose in a wild flood, stripping him of the ability to think.

      He was a father. He had a three-year-old son. He had missed so many moments, so many milestones, things he would never get back. Priceless memories.

      It was so far from the vision of the perfect family he’d had for himself, he couldn’t even begin to contemplate it. Because that was what he’d always wanted—the family he’d never had. A family like his best friend Pietro’s growing up—a warm Italian brood he’d been enveloped in when his own family had been shattered apart. Instead, he had a son he hadn’t known about, a woman who’d chosen another man over him, a woman he couldn’t trust. A woman with whom the complications ran a mile deep.

      He wanted to scream.

      Nothing should have prevented Gia from telling him the truth about his son no matter what the circumstances had been. Nothing. But he was also smart enough to know that he wasn’t in any condition to be attempting rational thought at the moment.

      He turned and braced his hands on the railing while he stared out at the sparkling bay. He was supposed to be leaving in the morning. He could safely say that wasn’t happening. In fact, he didn’t want to let his son out of his sight. But Gia and Leo—who he assumed had been named after her grandfather—were safe for the night, since Delilah’s security was second to none. And he needed a chance to breathe.

      Gia set a nervous gaze on him as he turned around, clearly attempting to anticipate his next move. “What are you thinking?”

      “That I need time to think.”

      She gave him a beseeching look. “We have a good life here, Santo—Leo and I. He is happy. Well adjusted. He plays on the beach every afternoon and he loves his friends. He won’t ever have to suffer the stigma of being a Castiglione.”

      “He should be a Di Fiore.” The thick surge of emotion in his voice reverberated through the stillness of the night. “Goddammit, Gia. Have you any idea of what you’ve taken from me? Stolen from me?”

      She blanched. Lifted her chin. “Yes, I do,” she said quietly. “But I did what I thought was best for Leo.”

      A harsh sound choked its way out of him. “I know you think you did. That’s what astounds me. You think so much like a Castiglione, you don’t know the difference between what’s right and what’s wrong.”

      A shattered look spread across her face. He ignored it, his brain too full to think. “Here’s how this is going to go,” he said tersely. “I will contact you tomorrow. At which time you will be there, Gia, or I will use every legal resource I have to find you, and when I do, you can kiss your son goodbye, because there isn’t a court on this earth that wouldn’t award me custody of Leo with your criminal past. The time for running is over.”