choices went, this one had been easy. There had been risks involved, but then, Joey Masado was used to taking risks. He was a suit-and-tie businessman, considered the best moneyman in Chicago. But tonight, unshaven, wearing jeans and a sweater, he’d been simply a father on a mission to claim what was rightfully his.
Joey reached out and straightened the blanket that covered his sleeping son. He was smaller than he’d expected. He couldn’t help but worry about that. What if the boy was ill, or had been born sickly?
When he’d learned he had a son—a son he hadn’t known existed until his brother had waltzed into his office three days ago and slapped the proof down on his desk—he hadn’t believed it was possible. But the proof was no longer just a glossy photo, a flat image of a black-haired little boy walking on the beach hand-in-hand with his mother. The boy was flesh and blood.
His flesh and blood.
If the boy’s mother had been anyone other than Rhea Williams, Joey would have refused to believe the child was his. He had always been careful when he’d climbed into a woman’s bed. He’d never lost his head or forgotten himself. That is, not until he’d laid eyes on the sexy blond with the sad blue eyes.
No, Niccolo was definitely his son. He was as certain of that as he was of why Rhea had run away from Chicago three years ago. He had always thought she had vanished out of fear of her ex-husband. But now he knew that wasn’t the case. Pregnant with his child—a Masado child—she had run to escape him and what their son would surely become if she stayed.
As hard as it was to accept, the proof was asleep in front of him—the proof of Rhea’s betrayal.
“He looks just like the pictures of you hanging on the wall in the old house. I remember thinking that, the day I photographed him on the beach with Rhea.”
“That’s what Jacky said, too. The picture, I mean.” Joey turned to his brother, who stood in the doorway leaning heavily into the jamb. “Jacky just left. But for the past hour, he’s been sitting here staring at Niccolo and shaking his head.”
“The likeness is amazing,” Tomas agreed.
Joey studied his brother. Tomas’s eyes were bloodshot, which meant his back pain was giving him hell again, which meant he’d been drinking to compensate. He hated to see his brother drinking so much. He’d survived a serious beating a few months earlier. Hospitalized, he’d lost a kidney in his fight to survive. He had been cheating death since he was fourteen, a streak that had earned Tomas the nickname Nine-Lives-Lucky. Eventually it had been shortened to just Lucky.
Joey glanced back at Niccolo. “I never realized how small a two-year-old is. He looked bigger in the picture.”
Lucky grinned. “He’s going to take some work. You up for that, or do you want to take him back, fratello? Have you changed your mind?”
Joey admitted he didn’t know the first thing about raising his son, but the boy was his. That’s all he’d been thinking about for three days. And all he’d had on his mind when they had slipped into Santa Palazzo under the cover of darkness.
His brother had told him in the plane that he would back him in whatever decision he made concerning Niccolo. He’d said, “I’ll be behind you or in front of you. Walking in the front door, or going in through a window. Two of the guards on the estate are mine. I put them in place before I flew back here. We should be able to enter the grounds without any trouble. Then again, if you want to make trouble, I brought along the lupara. Capiche?”
They hadn’t used the sawed-off Italian shotgun. They’d gone in quietly through an open window off a balcony on the second floor. They were going in after his son, not to start a war. He hadn’t wanted to frighten Niccolo or endanger him by flying bullets.
It had only taken a few minutes to locate his son’s bedroom. Rhea’s room, too, though he hadn’t found her inside. His window of opportunity had been tight. They had ten minutes max to get in and back out. That’s why he had left behind the cross on Rhea’s pillow. If she cared at all about their son, he knew the cross would bring her back to Chicago.
“I need to hire a live-in nanny. Can you help me arrange some interviews tomorrow?”
“I’ll get on it first thing. If we leave him alone, you think he’ll be all right? We need to talk.”
Joey looked down at his son. “He’s finally sleeping, but he keeps asking for his bear.”
“There’s a kids’ store in the lobby, I’ll see what I can find. Are you ready to listen to what I have to say?”
“I was ready three days ago. You’re the one who wanted to wait until after Niccolo was here.”
“I didn’t want what I had to tell you to interfere with what was most important.”
“Meaning my decision to claim my son?”
“He’s yours.” Lucky hung his scarred hand on his jeans-clad hip. “If I had a son, I would want him with me.”
“I’m ready for whatever comes at me,” Joey told him. “I’ll fight the devil, or anyone else who tries to come between me and what is mine.”
“He’s a good-looking boy, fratello. Worth fighting for. Come, let’s talk and make some plans.”
Joey’s gaze went to his son. “I’ll leave the door open and the hall light on. If he wakes up in the dark and starts crying, I don’t know what I’ll do.”
“Guess you’ll get your chance to play daddy. Rub his back and tell him a story.”
Joey glanced at Lucky, then scowled when he saw his brother wearing an amused grin. “I don’t know any stories.”
“Sure you do. Remember the one Vina used to tell us? The one about the purple badass dragon who turned out to be a nice guy?”
Lavina Ward was their best friend’s mother. As young boys they’d spent countless hours with Jackson and Lavina Ward. They had adopted Vina as the mother they never had, and Jackson as the once-in-a-lifetime friend who hadn’t cared one bit what their name was, or what their father did for a living.
Twenty-eight years later, nothing had changed. Lavina was still baking her boys apple pies and buying them birthday presents. And Jackson, recently promoted as head of the CPD Special Investigations Unit, was still their best friend.
Joey tucked the blanket under his son’s chin, then followed his brother to the living room. When Lucky made a detour and slipped behind the bar, Joey said, “I thought you were going to give up the booze. Or, at least, back off a little.”
“I’ve rethought that. The way I see it, what’s the difference if I get addicted to painkillers or scotch? You might need a stiff one yourself once you hear what I have to tell you.”
Joey eased himself down on the red damask sofa that snaked around a massive Italian-marble coffee table.
Forty-nine stories up, Joey’s penthouse covered the entire top floor of Masado Towers. The ceilings were eighteen-feet high, and the furniture was plush and oversize in shades of Italian bloodred and gold. The long bar was imported cherry wood. A collection of large mirrors surrounding it and throughout the apartment opened up the already extravagant space, as did the floor-to-ceiling
