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 of it, Santo. I wouldn’t tolerate it. Franco knew that.”
Leo. His son’s name was Leo. He absorbed that mind-boggling fact. “Why leave then? After Franco died? Why walk away from your family?”
An emotion he couldn’t read flickered over her face. “Franco was murdered in broad daylight. I didn’t feel safe. I didn’t trust Leo’s safety with anyone but 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?”
