Brunetti's Secret Son

For the second time, Romeo froze, his instincts screeching at him to keep walking, but his brain warning that to do as he so desperately wanted would be unwise.

Lorenzo held out a large manila envelope, which he slid across the desk with a smug look.

‘I told you I’m not interested in anything bearing the Fattore name. Whatever is in that envelope—’

‘Is of a more...personal nature and will interest you, mio figlio. I’m confident of it.’

Romeo abandoned the need to remind the old man not to call him son. Lorenzo was enjoying needling him a little too much, and Romeo was fast reaching boiling point.

Striding across the room, he snatched up the envelope and ripped it open. The first picture punched him in the gut, expelling a harsh breath. It showed him standing at his mother’s graveside, the only attendee besides the priest, as Ariana Brunetti was laid to rest.

He flung the picture on the desk, his mouth twisting as the next picture showed him in funereal black, sitting at his hotel bar, staring into a glass of cognac.

‘So Fattore had me followed for an afternoon five years ago. Perhaps he would’ve better profited using that time to tend his businesses.’

Lorenzo tented his fingers. ‘Keep going. The best is yet to come.’

Dark premonition crawled up Romeo’s spine as he flipped to the next photo. It showed him walking out of his hotel and down the street that led to the trendy cafés near the waterfront.

He froze at the next picture and stared at the image of himself. And her.

Maisie O’Connell—the woman with the angelic face and the tempting, sinful body. The combination, although enthralling enough, wasn’t what had made her linger in his mind long after he’d moved on to other women, and other experiences.

Something had happened with her in that hotel room, above and beyond mind-obliterating sex. He’d walked away from her feeling broken, fighting a yearning that had terrified him for a long time, until he’d finally forced it back under control.

He had no intention of resurrecting those brief, unsettling hours. He was in control of his life. In control of the fleeting moments of emotion he allowed himself these days.

He threw down the pictures, not caring when they fanned out in a careless arc on the desk. Eyes narrowed at Lorenzo, he snapped, ‘It’s almost laughable that you think documenting my sex life would cause me anything but acute irritation. Irritation that might just push me into having this house torn to the ground and the whole estate turned into a car park.’

The old man reached across, shuffled through the pictures, then sat back again.

Exhaling, Romeo looked down and saw more pictures of the woman he’d shared his most memorable one-night stand with. But these were different. Taken in another country, judging from the street signs. Dublin, most likely, where Maisie had said she was from during one of the brief times they’d conversed in that electric night they’d spent together.

Still caught up in riotous emotions, he nudged the picture impatiently with his fingernail.

Maisie O’Connell, striding down a busy street in a business suit and high heels, her thick, glorious hair caught up in an elaborate bun. A vision far removed from the sexy little sundress and flip-flops she’d been wearing the first time Romeo had seen her outside a waterfront café in Palermo. Her hair had been loose then, hanging to her waist in a ripple of dark fire.

Romeo unveiled the next picture.

Maisie, hailing a taxi outside a clinic, her features slightly pale and drawn, her normally bright blue eyes dark with worry.

Maisie, sitting on a park bench, her face turned up to the sun, her hand resting on her belly.

Her very distended belly.

Romeo swallowed hard and picked up the last picture, his body suspended in shock as he brought it up to his face.

Maisie, pushing a pram down a quiet Dublin street, her mouth tilted in a postcard-perfect picture of maternal bliss as she reached into the stroller.

‘Madre di Dio, what is the meaning of this?’ he breathed, his voice cold enough to chill the whole mausoleum of a mansion.

‘I will not insult your deductive powers by spelling it out for you,’ Lorenzo answered.

Romeo flung the photo down, but he could not look away from them. Spreading his fingers through the glossy images, he found further evidence of surveillance. Apparently his father had decided to stop following Romeo and focus instead on the woman he’d slept with on the day of his mother’s funeral. A woman whose goodness had threatened to seep into him, to threaten the foundations of his carefully barricaded emotions.