“One month. No point in waiting.”
Some of the old rage burned through the desire that had settled inside of him. She had been engaged to Alessandro when he’d taken her into his bed. She’d intended, from the beginning, to marry another man the night she’d given herself to him.
And he, he had been forced to watch her hang on his cousin’s arm for the past month while his blood boiled in agony as he watched his biggest rival hold on to the one thing he wanted more than his next breath. The one thing he had always wanted, but never allowed himself to have.
He had craved violence watching the two of them together. Had longed to rip Alessandro’s hands off her and show him what happened when a man touched what belonged to him.
Even now, the thought sent a rising tide of nausea through him.
What was it Alessia did to him? This wave of possessiveness, this current of passion that threatened to drown him, it was not something that was a part of him. He was a man who lived in his mind, a man who embraced logic and fact, duty and honor.
When he did not, when he gave in to emotion, the danger was far too great. He was a Corretti, cut from the same cloth as his father and grandfather, a fabric woven together with greed, violence and a passion for acquiring more money, more power, than any one man could ever need.
Even with logic, with reason, he could and had justified actions that would horrify most men. He hated to think what might happen if he were unleashed without any hold on his control.
So he shunned passion, in all areas of life.
Except one.
He pulled his car off the road and slammed on his breaks, killing the engine, his knuckles burning from the hard grip he had on the steering wheel, his breath coming in short, harsh bursts.
This was not him. He didn’t know himself with Alessia, and he never had.
And nothing good could come from it. He had spent his life trying to change the man he seemed destined to be. Trying to keep control, to move his life in a different direction than the one his father would have pushed him into.
Alessia compromised that. She tested it.
He ran his fingers through his hair, trying to catch his breath.
Then he turned the key over, the engine roaring to life again. And he turned the car around, heading away from the airport, away from the city.
He punched a button on his dashboard and connected himself to his PA.
“Lucia?”
“Sì?”
“Hold my calls until further notice.”
It had been three hours. No doubt the only reason her father and his men hadn’t come tearing through the airport was that they would never have imagined she would do something so audacious as to run away completely.
Alessia shifted in the plastic chair and wiped her cheek again, even though her tears had dried. She had no more tears left to cry. It was all she’d done since she’d arrived.
And she’d done more since it had become clear Matteo wasn’t coming.
And then she’d done more when she’d suddenly had to go into the bathroom and throw up in a public stall.
Then she’d stopped, just long enough to go into one of the airport shops and pick up the one thing she’d avoided buying for the past week.
She’d started crying again when the pregnancy test had resulted in two little pink, positive, yes-you’re-having-a-baby lines.
Now she was wrung out. Sick. And completely alone.
Well, not completely alone. Not really. She was having a baby, after all.
The thought didn’t comfort her so much as magnify the feeling of utter loneliness.
One thing was certain. There was no going back to Alessandro. No going back to her family. She was having the wrong man’s baby. A man who clearly didn’t want her.
But he did once.
That thought made her furious, defiant. Yes, he had. More than once, which was likely how the pregnancy had happened. Because there had been protection during their times in bed, but they’d also showered together in the early hours of the morning and then … then neither of them had been able to think, or spare the time.
A voice came over the loudspeaker, the last call for her flight out to New York.
She stood up, picked up her purse, the only thing she had with her, the only thing she had to her name, and handed her ticket to the man at the counter.
“Going to New York?” he asked, verifying.
She took a deep breath. “Yes.”
CHAPTER TWO
HE’D NEVER EVEN opened the emails she’d been sending him. She knew, because she’d set them up so that they would send her a receipt when the addressee opened her message, but she’d never gotten one.
He didn’t answer her calls, either. Not the calls to his office, not the calls to his mobile phone, not the calls to the Palazzolo Corretti, or to his personal estate outside Palermo.
Matteo Corretti was doing an exceptional job of ignoring her, and he had been for weeks now while she’d been holed up in her friend Carolina’s apartment. Carolina, the friend who had talked her into a New York bachelorette party in the first place. Which, all things considered, meant she sort of owed Alessia since that bachelorette party was the source of both her problems, and her pregnancy.
No, that wasn’t fair. It was her fault. Well, a lot of it was. The rest was Matteo Corretti’s. Master of disguise and phone-call-avoider extraordinaire.
She wished she didn’t need him but she didn’t know what else to do. She was so tired. So sad, all the time. Her father wouldn’t take her calls, either, her siblings, the most precious people in her life were forbidden from speaking to her. That, more than anything, was threatening to burn a hole in her soul. She felt adrift without them around her. They’d kept her going for most of her life, given her a sense of purpose, of strength and responsibility. Without them she just felt like she was floundering.
She’d had one option, of course. To terminate the pregnancy and return home. Beg her father and Alessandro for forgiveness. But she hadn’t been able to face that. She’d lost so much in her life already and as confused as she was about the baby, about what it would mean for her, as terrified as she was, she couldn’t face losing the tiny life inside of her.
But she would run out of money soon. Then she would be alone and penniless while Matteo Corretti spent more of his fortune on sports cars and high-rise hotels.
She wasn’t going to allow it anymore. Not when she’d already decided that if he didn’t want to be a part of their baby’s life he would have to come tell her to her face. He would have to stand before her and denounce their child, verbally, not simply by
