A Dark Sicilian Secret(29)

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.

“Yes.”

“Then come. Maria will be here any moment to spend the night with him—”

“I don’t want to leave him!” she whispered.

“He’ll be fine.”

“Vitt, please. I’ve never slept away from him—”

“You’ll have to sooner or later.”

She glanced down at her baby in his blue pajamas. Her heart ached. “But not yet.”

He studied her a moment, his expression inscrutable. “That’s fine. We’ll both sleep here then.”

She’d thought at first he was joking—Vittorio was a man who loved his creature comforts—but it turned out he was serious, and left to go to his room to change into pajamas.

While Vittorio was gone, she slipped into the only nightgown she owned, a pink floral-sprigged flannel gown with a ruffled neckline, buttons down the front, and a long hem. It’d been a perfect gown for breast-feeding but it was far from glamorous or sexy.

Jillian brushed her teeth quickly and was just scooting into bed when Vittorio returned in dark gray pajama pants and a black silk robe. He glanced at her huddled in the bed and smiled briefly before turning out the light.

Nervously she turned on her side to face Joe’s cot. With her eyes closed, she listened to Vitt approach, her ears straining to catch every sound he made from his heavy footsteps to the tug on the covers to the soft thud of his robe falling to the floor.