A Dark Sicilian Secret

“No—”

“Yes. If we’re going to do this again, we better do it right, which means making sure it’s the wedding every girl dreams of.”

He left them then, excusing himself to get some work done, and after he’d gone, Jillian gave Joe a bottle and then tucked him into his travel cot.

But after putting Joe to bed, she didn’t know what to do with herself. Was she supposed to join Vittorio? Was she supposed to stay here? What did one do when you were married but didn’t feel like a wife?

She ended up staying with Joe. After dimming the lights as much as she could, she curled up on the bed to watch him sleep.

Awake, Joe stole her heart. Sleeping, Joe broke it. He looked peaceful and impossibly sweet in his little cot with his arms stretched out above his head. His soft skin was flushed pink and his long eyelashes rested in dark crescents on his round cheeks.

Hard to believe that just a year ago she was pregnant with him. Hard to believe life could change so much in one year. From birth to boy in just eleven months. Impossible. Magical.

Although the early weeks of her pregnancy weren’t magical. Those weeks were filled with panic, and denial.

In the beginning, she didn’t believe she was pregnant. She didn’t feel pregnant. She didn’t feel like anything, certainly not as though she was carrying a child, much less Vittorio’s child.

There were times she nearly convinced herself that it wasn’t so. She hadn’t changed her clothes size. She didn’t have any cravings. She didn’t feel queasy or headachy or emotional. But her period never came, and her breasts grew fuller, heavier, and her flat, taut belly took a gently rounded shape. Finally she went to the doctor and he told her everything she needed to know. She was approximately seventeen weeks, the baby had a strong heartbeat, development looked good, and unless the doctor was mistaken, it appeared to be a boy.

A boy.

Another male d’Severano.

In that moment, lying there in the paper gown, with the ultrasound machine at her side, she vowed her son would never become his father. She vowed her baby would not become her father, either. Her baby, this unborn son, would have a normal life. A happy life. A life as far from organized crime as possible.

For the rest of the pregnancy she felt secure, confident she’d made the right decision.

She felt so confident, she left Banff when she reached her seventh month, returning to the States so that when Joe was born he’d be American.

Jillian settled on Bellingham, Washington, a university town just across the border from Canada. She found a reasonably priced apartment close to Fair Haven, Bellingham’s charming historic district filled with coffeehouses, bookstores and antiques shops.

Joe’s birth was uncomplicated and she returned to her apartment ready for the next phase of her life.

But then fate intervened.

Just a month after Joe’s birth, Jillian was pushing him in his stroller, enjoying the May sunshine when she bumped into a woman she’d worked with in Istanbul. The woman had neither been a friend nor foe, just an acquaintance, but they both exclaimed at the amazing coincidence of meeting like this, so far from Turkey, in the most northwest corner of the United States.

Jillian had initially been alarmed by the meeting but realized the woman knew nothing about her relationship with Vittorio and therefore would have no stories to tell.

Jillian was wrong.

Within a week of bumping into her former colleague, Jillian received the first phone call from Vittorio. He’d heard about the baby. He wanted to know if the baby was his.

She told him no.

But he persisted, demanded a DNA test.

She ran.

He chased.

And that began the ten months of cat-and-mouse games.

If she hadn’t bumped into that woman from the Ciragan Palace Hotel, Vittorio might never have found out about their son.

That had been her hope. That had been her plan.

The jet’s bedroom door noiselessly opened and Vittorio stood in the doorway, his face shadowy in the dim lighting. “He’s asleep?” Vitt asked quietly.