thought to himself. Propping himself up on one elbow, he watched Nico line up his toy cars on the carpet. ‘Is Mummy still asleep?’
Nico nodded. ‘I got dressed,’ he said proudly, patting his shorts.
That would explain why his T-shirt was on back to front, Sergio mused. He smiled. ‘Clever boy.’
Nico lay on his stomach so that he could push his cars along the floor and Sergio suddenly froze. His eyes were drawn to the black bruises on the backs of the little boy’s legs. Bile rose in his throat. Santa Madre di Dio! The marks were sickeningly familiar. When he had been a child, his legs had often been covered in bruises after a beating.
Swallowing hard, Sergio noticed another mark on Nico’s body where his T-shirt had ridden up.
‘Hey, little guy, let me turn your shirt around for you,’ he murmured.
Nico obediently stood up and, as Sergio drew the shirt over his head, his breath hissed between his teeth at the sight of several more bruises on the child’s ribs.
‘How did you get hurt?’ He somehow managed to keep his tone light.
‘I was very naughty,’ Nico told him with an innocence that tore Sergio’s heart to shreds.
His head spun. He didn’t know what was happening here. Everything inside him rejected the idea that Kristen could have inflicted the bruises on Nico. It was true she hadn’t convinced him that she was an overly caring parent and he was deeply suspicious of her motive for finally deciding to tell him that he had a son, but it was hard to imagine that she would hurt her child.
But no one would ever have believed that his charming, beautiful mother had been capable of mental and physical cruelty, Sergio thought grimly. Patti had been the patron of a children’s charity, but to her own child she had been a confusing figure—at times overly loving so that he had felt swamped, but she had been prone to violence when she had succumbed to her personal demon, alcohol, and at those times he had been afraid of her. He remembered the sick feeling in his stomach whenever she had summoned him to her study to be punished for the most minor misdemeanour. No one had heard his cries, and no one had come to his rescue—including his father.
Deep within Sergio’s soul the scared, unhappy little boy he had once been took over his logical thought processes. A fundamental instinct to protect his child surged through him and he stood up and lifted Nico into his arms. ‘How would you like to fly on an aeroplane, piccolo?’ he murmured.
His heart turned over when Nico looked at him with his big, brown, trusting eyes. ‘I will always protect you,’ he promised his son gruffly, and was rewarded with a smile that somehow eased the loneliness that had haunted him since he had been a small boy who had longed to be with his own father.
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