if the baby was his as he hoped, would it take after its lying, cheating mother? Was there such a thing as bad genes? He refused to accept that. His own life stood testament to that belief because he was the last in a long ruthless line of men, famed for their contempt for the law and their cruelty. There could be no taint in an innocent child, merely inclinations that could be encouraged or discouraged. He reminded himself that on paper his son’s mother had appeared eminently respectable. The only child of elderly, financially indebted parents, she had presented herself as a trained infant teacher with a love of growing vegetables and cookery. Unfortunately her true interests, which he had only discovered after she had run from the hospital with the child, had proved to be a good deal less respectable. She was a sociopathic promiscuous thrill-seeker who overspent, gambled and stole without conscience when she ran out of money.
Time and time again he had blamed himself for his decision not to physically meet with the mother of his child, not to personalise in any way what was essentially a business arrangement. Would he have recognised her true nature if he had? He had not expected her to want to see him either, when he came to collect the child from the hospital after the birth, but in the event he had arrived there to learn that she had already vanished, leaving behind only a note that spelt out her financial demands. By then she had found out how rich he was and only greed had motivated her.
‘I must ask,’ Charles murmured in the tense silence within the limousine. ‘Do you intend to tip off the police about the lady’s whereabouts?’
Luciano tensed, his wide sensual mouth compressing. ‘No, I do not.’
‘May I ask...’ Choosing tact over frank frustration, Charles left the question hanging, wishing that his wealthiest client would be a little more forthcoming. But Luciano Vitale, the only child of Sicily’s once most petrifying Mafia don, had always been a male of forbidding reserve. A billionaire at the age of thirty, he was a hugely successful businessman and, to the best of Charles’s knowledge, resolutely legitimate in all his dealings. And yet his very name still struck fear into those who surrounded him and they paled and trembled in the face of his displeasure. His loathing for the paparazzi, and the ever lingering danger of his criminal ancestry making him the target of a hit, ensured that he was encircled by bodyguards, who kept the rest of the world at bay. In so many ways, Luciano Vitale remained a complete mystery. Charles would have given much to know why a man with so many more appealing options had chosen to pick a surrogate mother to bring a child into the world.
‘I will not be responsible for sending the apparent mother of my son to prison,’ Luciano said without any expression at all. ‘There is no doubt in my mind that Jemima deserves to go to prison but I do not wish to be the instrument that puts her there.’
‘Quite understandable,’ Charles chimed in, although it was a polite lie because he did not understand at all. ‘However, the police are already looking for her and notifying them of her location could be done most discreetly.’
‘And then what?’ Luciano prompted. ‘The elderly grandparents receive custody of my son? And the authorities are forced to enter the picture to consider his welfare? You have already warned me that surrogacy arrangements receive a divergent and uncertain reception within the UK court system. I will not take any risk that could entail losing all rights to my son.’
‘But the Barber woman has already made it clear that she will only surrender the boy for a substantial sum of money...and you must not, you cannot offer her cash because that would put you on the wrong side of British law.’
‘I will find some acceptable and legal way to bring this matter to a satisfactory conclusion,’ Luciano breathed softly, lean brown fingers flexing impatiently on his thighs. ‘Without damaging publicity or a court case or sending her to prison.’
Warily encountering his client’s cold dark eyes, Charles suppressed a shiver and tried not to think about how Luciano’s forebears had preferred to clear their paths of human obstacles: with cold-blooded murder and mayhem. He told himself off for that imaginative flight of fancy but he could not forget that chilling look in Luciano’s gaze or his notorious ruthlessness in business. He might not kill his competitors but he had never been a man to cross and was known to exact harsh retribution from those who offended him. He doubted very much that Jemima Barber had the slightest comprehension of the very dangerous consequences she had invited when she had reneged on her legal agreement with Luciano Vitale.
Sì, Luciano brooded, he would achieve his goal because he always got what he wanted and anything less was unthinkable, particularly when it came to his son’s well-being. If the little boy proved to be his, he would take him whatever the cost because he could not possibly leave an innocent child in the care of such a mother.
* * *
Jemima tidied the flowers on her sister’s grave. Her crystalline blue eyes were stinging like mad, her heart squeezing tight with misery inside her.
She had loved Julie and hated the reality that she had never got the chance to get closer to her natural sibling and help her. Born to an unknown father and a drug-addicted mother, the twin girls had ended up in separate adoptive homes. Julie had briefly been deprived of oxygen at birth and had required major surgery soon afterwards. Her sister had not been available for adoption until her treatment was complete a full two years later. Jemima, however, had been much more fortunate in every way, she thought guiltily. Her middle-aged adoptive parents had adored her on sight, adopted her at birth and given her a wonderfully happy and secure childhood. Julie had been adopted by a much wealthier couple but her developmental delays and problems had disappointed and embarrassed her parents. Ultimately the adoption had broken down when her sister was a wayward teenager and Julie had ended up back in care, rejected by the parents she’d loved. It was no surprise to Jemima that from that point everything in her twin’s life had gone even more badly wrong.
The twins had not met again until they were adults and Julie had tracked Jemima down. Right from the outset Jemima and her parents had been captivated by her lively charming twin. Of course that had gone wrong as well for all of them, Jemima acknowledged reluctantly. But perhaps it had gone worst of all for little Nicky, who would now never know his birth mother. Her misty eyes rested on the eight-month-old baby in the buggy on the path and predictably brightened because Nicky was the sun, the moon and the stars in Jemima’s world. He studied her with his big liquid dark eyes and smiled from below the mop of his black curly hair. He was the most utterly adorable baby and he owned his auntie’s heart and soul and had done so since the moment she’d first met him when he was only a week old.
‘I saw you from the street. Why are you here again?’ a worried female voice pressed. ‘I don’t understand why you’re torturing yourself this way, Jem. She’s gone and I say good riddance!’
‘Please don’t say that,’ Jemima urged her best friend, Ellie, whom she had first met in nursery school. She turned to face the taller, thinner redhead with determination.
‘But it’s the truth and you have to face it. Julie almost destroyed your family,’ Ellie said bluntly. ‘I know it hurts you to hear me say it but your twin was rotten to the core.’
Jemima compressed her lips, determined not to get into another argument with her outspoken friend. After all, when times had been tough during the Julie debacle Ellie had regularly offered Jemima and her parents a sympathetic shoulder as well as advice and support. Ellie had proved her loyalty and the depth of her friendship many times over. In any case, it would be pointless to argue now that Jemima’s twin was dead. Even so, the pain of that loss still made such judgements wounding. Only a few months had passed since Julie had carelessly stepped out in front of a car and died instantly. Julie’s adoptive family had refused even to attend the funeral and the cost had been borne by Jemima’s parents, although they could ill afford the
