Chapter Six
Mia
Three months later
The days and weeks which followed drifted past in a fog. But the events of that night remained vivid, coming back to me in hyper-realistic dreams.
Everything that had happened with Vito—from the moment I had first met his searing gaze on the yacht until he had thrust me away from him, the scent of blood and gunsmoke permeating my senses.
I recalled every detail with startling clarity, like a movie in my mind playing on a loop, each overwhelming emotion mixed into the mêlée of images.
Vito’s expression—fierce with hunger, demand and then disgust. The harsh planes and angles of his face both bad and beautiful.
The helicopter ride above the city—the wind brushing my bare legs, the touch of his palm on my trembling thigh, the gush of anticipation like a drug.
His callused fingers gliding over my skin, his tongue demanding my surrender, that insatiable cock driving into me.
His husky voice, thick with appreciation, imagining me pregnant, his harsh plea for me to move.
And the terrifying sights and sounds at dawn.
The chaos, the blood, the hollow pop of gunfire something I’d never heard before and never wanted to hear again.
It all came back to me over and over again, waking me sweaty and scared each night, but also filling me with the vicious yearning which made my clitoris throb and my heart gallop.
But everything after that night and the dawn raid sank into an impenetrable fog once I had been escorted back to the UK.
The car which had left the estate had driven me to a small airfield outside Naples, where the truth had finally dawned on me.
Vito wasn’t just a billionaire businessman. And he wasn’t a phenomenally hot Italian aristocrat either. The secrecy, the violence which surrounded him spoke to something very different. I couldn’t get my head around it though, as I struggled to keep the stress and fear and nausea from consuming me.
A private jet had been waiting for us at the airfield.
I was still wrapped in the blood-stained sheet as I was escorted onto the plane and it soared into the early morning light.
We landed a few hours later in another private airfield in the UK…
Lorenzo had accompanied me on the plane, and once I’d managed to shake at least some of the panic and fear from my head, I asked him the questions whirring around in my tired mind.
Who was his boss really?
Why had those men been shooting at us?
Would Vito be okay?
Because even though I knew now Vito was not one of the good guys, I still couldn’t get the picture out of my head of him diving across that bed to protect me. Or the bright red blood coursing down his chest from the bullet wound in his shoulder.
Lorenzo hadn’t answered any of my questions, of course.
By the time we landed, I had managed to take a shower and change into some actual clothing—despite the shivers still wracking my body and the numbness in my limbs.
And I’d also managed to gather at least some of my wits.
Enough to know I would be better off if these men didn’t know where Evie and I lived.
When Lorenzo asked me for my address so the car which had arrived at the airfield could drive me home, I gave him a fake location.
He stared at me for the longest time, and I had the suspicion he knew I was lying.
Then he nodded and gave the fake address to the driver.
But before I could climb into the car, he grasped my arm to murmur in my ear, the veiled threat clear, ‘If you speak of this night to anyone, it will be bad for you and your sister. Do you understand?’
I nodded, because I did understand. I understood totally now.
‘Is Vito a mafia boss?’ I asked, the words echoing in my head, and sounding impossible even as I said them.
By then, though, my mind had become foggy.
I couldn’t seem to feel much of anything anymore.
I was living outside myself, in an alternative reality, where I’d morphed from being a teaching assistant finding her joy in Naples to a woman who had not only developed a sexual obsession with a mafia boss but had survived a shootout.
So even though I understood Vito was dangerous, I couldn’t seem to get it to settle into my skull.
Lorenzo’s face hardened, but he didn’t look surprised by the question. ‘Don Vito is the padrino of the Rocco family. And he will protect what is his,’ he said, the threat not even veiled anymore.
Then he nodded at the driver and let me get into the car.
The truth should have sunk in after that. The truth that I would be lucky never to see Vito again.
But my subconscious refused to play ball. It felt as if I was living my life on autopilot. Those vivid, devastating dreams which woke me up every night more real than the days I spent going through the motions of my safe but now hopelessly monochrome existence.
It wasn’t that I craved Vito’s attention anymore, or any man’s, for that matter. I’d had my wild night, and it had left me with a trauma I was struggling to process.
It hadn’t taken Evie long to get the truth out of me about Vito, even though I’d had to swear her to secrecy and get her to promise not to tell Becca or Jessie.
She’d had no idea what to do about my virtually catatonic state ever since.
At first, she’d searched for anything she could find out about the shootout at Vito’s estate on the internet to give me closure.
But there was virtually nothing, just a brief mention a week later on an Italian website about an ‘incident’ which may have involved a gang war in the city’s western districts.
But even those details were sketchy. Either the police weren’t releasing any details or they didn’t know what had happened either.
I waited for days for Interpol or the FBI, or the Home Office, or whoever the heck handled investigations of international crime syndicates to break down our door and interrogate me.
But no one did. Which was good, because I knew I would have kept my promise not to tell them anything…
not because of but despite Lorenzo’s threat.
Didn’t I owe Vito that much for saving my life?
But as the days stretched into weeks, the numbness, the nightmares—and those impossibly erotic dreams—didn’t disappear. They simply morphed into exhaustion—and this weird oversensitivity in my breasts, almost as if Vito was still there, still controlling my body.
It would have freaked me out if I’d been able to care. But I was still struggling to feel anything at all until the morning Evie came down to breakfast and placed a paper bag with a pharmacy logo onto the kitchen table.
‘What’s that?’ I asked.
She’d already suggested I go to see a doctor, or a trauma specialist—as if you’d be able to get one of those on the NHS.
‘I don’t need medication,’ I said. ‘I just need more time. I’m going to be fine.’
‘You forget, I was the one who persuaded you to hook up with a man who turned out to be a bloody mafia boss, Mia. I feel responsible for nearly getting you killed. And you’re not yourself. You’ve been weird ever since. I want to fix it.’
The guilt shadowing her eyes ripped away some of the fog. I covered her hand on the table and felt it tremble.
‘Evie, don’t you dare blame yourself. I was the one who made that choice…
plus you weren’t wrong about him giving me the night of my life,’ I added, the weird urge to laugh making me wonder if I was officially losing what was left of my mind.
‘And I didn’t die. So it’s all good. I’m starting to feel better now.
Honestly, I am,’ I said, trying to convince myself it was true.
What scared me more than the fog, though, was the realisation I still missed Vito, especially at night, the feel of his strong body holding me and the glitter of approval in his eyes.
I hadn’t lied to Evie. That one night had been the most alive I had ever felt.
Go figure.
From the sceptical look on Evie’s face, she wasn’t fooled. ‘Maybe, but I think you need to use this now.’
I glanced at the chemist bag again. ‘I’m not taking any happy pills. You know what that did to Mum…’
‘I couldn’t get those without a prescription, Mia,’ Evie said softly, then pulled a box out of the bag and placed it in front of me. ‘It’s not happy pills. It’s a pregnancy test.’
My mind blanked.
‘It’s been three months since that night,’ she continued gently. ‘And you’ve only had one light period. You’re tired all the time, and your tits are enormous.’
‘No way has it been that long…’
How could it have been three months? When it still felt like yesterday, because of those dreams dragging me back to Naples and Vito every single night?
The light period a week after I’d returned home had set my mind at rest about an unplanned pregnancy.
So I hadn’t bothered to sort out any emergency contraception.
Although to be honest, I wasn’t sure I would have been capable of arranging it, even without the light period, because I couldn’t seem to organise much of anything anymore.
But how could I not have noticed three whole months going by?
‘I know you’re not always regular, so I didn’t say anything. But Mia, the box with your tampons in it hasn’t been touched for eight weeks.’
I stared at the test sitting in front of me. ‘I can’t be pregnant. It must be stress.’
Evie picked up the box, took my hand and pressed the kit into my palm. ‘Just take the test. Then we can be sure. Okay?’
I held the box as if it were an unexploded bomb.
But strangely, for the first time in, well, three months, I could feel my extremities again.
I wasn’t numb anymore. The late July sun shining through our basement window felt bright instead of dull, my mind no longer vague.
Instead, all sorts of bizarre thoughts and emotions were racing through my head in vivid Technicolor.
The emotions didn’t make any sense, but at least I could feel every single one of them.
Panic and fear, of course, but also hope and anticipation.
Hope? Anticipation? Where were they coming from?
A pregnancy would be bad, very bad. What would I do if I was carrying Vito Rocco’s baby?
The man who—according to the little Evie had managed to discover about him—was rumoured to run the biggest crime syndicate in southern Italy. The man who had lit up my body like a firework, saved my life and then discarded me.
The tears I hadn’t shed for three months, but which had been scouring my eyeballs all this time, welled up and spilled over my lids.
Evie gripped my shoulders and gave them a soft shake. ‘Don’t cry, Mia. And don’t panic. Until we know. Then we can figure out what to do.’
I nodded like a scared child… When exactly had my reckless baby sister become the responsible adult in this family?
We trooped up to the bathroom together. And I peed on the stick.
Five minutes later, the bottom fell out of my world once and for all… But what replaced it wasn’t numbness anymore. It was fierce, abiding love. And determination.
Because if I was going to have a mafia boss’s baby, I was going to have to protect it.
I stroked my stomach, aware for the first time of the bloated feeling there. Why hadn’t I noticed that either? It was pathetic.
‘Will you tell him?’ Evie whispered, her eyes wet, too.
I swiped the tears off my cheeks. ‘I can’t tell him, Evie.’
‘Why? Because you’re scared of him, of what he’ll do…’
I shook my head. Even though I probably ought to be scared of Vito, I wasn’t. Not about this.
‘No, because I witnessed how dangerous his life is, and I don’t want that for me or my child. He said he wanted me gone, so I’m going to give him what he wants.’ Ridiculous to think it was that demand which had been the hardest to process, even after I’d finally figured out who—and what—Vito was.
Evie gripped my fingers. ‘You’re definitely going to have it, then?’
I nodded, knowing I didn’t have a choice.
I already loved the life growing inside me…
because the fact of its existence had given me back my self.
The fog I’d been living in since that night had cleared.
That hideous sense of being outside myself.
Even the guilt and recriminations which had haunted me—for being stupid enough not to question anything about that night until it was too late.
Vito could have told me who he was, but why hadn’t I asked? Even his dominant, entitled behaviour which I’d found so hot, I could now see was a byproduct of who he was. A man who lived outside the law, who didn’t abide by society’s rules.
If anything, the wealth and power and danger surrounding Vito had intensified the adrenaline rush which had made every aspect of that night so exhilarating.
But I wasn’t that clueless thrill-seeker anymore, looking to have one wild night. I would be a mother in six short months—and that gave me a purpose again. I’d once thrived on being responsible and pragmatic, on being a rule-follower. That would be my superpower now.
The strange pang in my chest I recognised from that night only plunged deeper into my chest as I realised I would never be able to see Vito again.
I ignored it. Because this was my reality now.
And if I was going to have a mob boss’s baby, my priority had to be keeping it safe—from its father most of all.