Chapter 19
Bianca
These walls aren’t paper-thin, but sounds carry, especially in the dead quiet of the night in this secluded neighborhood. The guest room I’m occupying sits right on top of the front door, and the loud knocking shook me out of the light dozing that’d taken over me as I sat in bed thinking about the evening, how my family took my return.
Hana has terrible jet lag and took a sleeping pill. Enzo sleeps like the dead, only waking if there are loud voices nearby. Mattia and I, we heard the loud pounding. He came to my room, told me it’s Leo outside—he must’ve seen the footage on the doorcam app on his phone.
When the knocks grew louder, I panicked. Does Leo know I’m back, and this is why he’s intent on breaking Mattia’s door? My brother told me to stay put—it sounds to him like Leo’s just super-drunk. He’ll deal with him, and how do I feel about meeting him tonight itself?
My gulp then my subsequent nod gave him my answer. The more I dally with this matter, the worse it’s going to be. Leo’s here, so we might as well get on with it and reveal my presence. I’m not sure about Enzo yet, if Leo will be in the right mind to be introduced to a ghost first and then a son he never knew he had, so I’m playing it by ear right now.
The voices grew really loud and vociferous outside for a moment. I checked my boy, and he didn’t stir. The trip must’ve exhausted him. Then the sounds died down, picking up again inside the house this time. My door opens right onto the landing of the stairs leading down and just around the open kitchen, so the sound is making it up through my ajar door. I can pick up every other word so the conversation doesn’t really make sense, but I can feel a vibe of peace below, of things settling down.
When silence settles again, I stand up, and meet with Mattia on the threshold of my door.
He nods at the first floor. “He’s below. I haven’t told him you’re here, though he knows to expect something big.”
I glance at Enzo on the big bed. I don’t want to leave him alone; what if he wakes up in a room he doesn’t know, without me there?
Mattia’s hand lands on my shoulder. “I’ll stay with him. You need to do this.”
I bite my lip and nod, though the courage is draining out of me suddenly. I’ve forbidden myself to think of this moment all this time I was away, of how it would feel when—if—I ever saw Leo Pellegrini again. And now, the time has come.
“How…how is he?” I murmur.
“Not okay,” my brother confesses. “But he is in his right mind. And we talked, smoothed things out between us. Listen, this can be a new beginning, for all of us. If it’s my blessing you need, then you have it. You’ve had it since…”
Since you left. We both know this is what he’s saying.
Had I waited, would he have blessed a relationship between me and Leo at the time? Would my father have, as well? I don’t think so, and either way, we’re here now, and we can’t turn back time.
I clasp his hand where it rests on my shoulder. “Thank you.”
He presses a soft kiss to my cheek, so like when we were younger. I smile and burrow into him a little before he lets me go, and I find my feet moving soundlessly on the wooden floor and then the stairs.
My heartrate accelerates with every step I go down, beating in trepidation when my foot lands on the first floor. From this angle, I can see into the kitchen if I lean a little forward, and that’s what I do. And as luck would have it, Leo decides to look at the stairs at the same time, and our gazes collide.
He’s on his feet in a blink, then stands stock-still, the color draining from his face as he stares at me. I can only stare back, unable to move, my hand frozen on the banister as I clutch it tight, every cell inside me constricting with need and loss as I see him there and I allow myself to feel all those moments, all those minutes, seconds even, when I haven’t been able to have him in my life, when I’ve had to forego him to spare all our lives.
Time stops, and we remain like this, still as statues while our eyes, they convey a world of feelings and emotion and turmoil.
He’s just as I remember him, though he looks tired, a little beaten if I’m honest. There’s a bit of tightness around his eyes—maturity, I reckon—and age has tautened his features, making them look harsher, sharper, as if one stroke against his face and you’d risk a cut on your hand. This is not a man to mess with. Leo has always had this vibe to him, but now, it’s deeper, inbred almost, the Don inside him radiating out in all his infinite power and ruthless strength.
He's scary, I have to say, but he doesn’t scare me. He never has, because I know him. I know the gentleness that can lighten those dark eyes, the beautiful smile that can move the almost-cruel lines of his mouth into something so magical, it needs to be experienced and can’t be described.
Then that mouth, it tightens, his jaw clenching.
“Bianca?” he asks.
“Leo.”
I can’t move, can’t say anything else. His voice, his name flowing from my lips, it all makes me stop. I reveled in the sound while listening to him earlier. Even when reverberating with anger, the sound of his voice made me feel safe. Again, I know this man, intimately, and I mean this in both the literal and figurative sense. Leo, he’s my person.
“Bianca, what the fuck?” he throws out. “You’re alive? What’s this game?”
His voice is rising crescendo. I throw a glance upstairs, as he might wake Enzo with his shouting.
“You’re looking for Mattia?” he shouts. “Me, too. Where is he? Mattia! Come back here and explain this!”
“Leo, stop,” I start, my soft voice getting drowned in his yelling.
I’m not getting through to him, and he’s now pacing in front of the island. I’m worried he might overthrow a stool or something in his apparent distress, and I can’t let this happen.
“Is this a joke? What’s going on? You can’t be real,” he continues. “You’re not real, I’m losing my mind…”
The turmoil in his tone makes my heart clench, and I throw caution to the wind as I draw close to him and place a hand on his forearm. The contact of my palm against the hair-roughened skin shocks me, and I think it shocks him, too, because he goes abruptly quiet.
Time seems to stop again, and we’re staring into each other’s eyes.
He blinks. “You’re real.”
“Yes,” I murmur.
I’ve hardly finished saying the word when his arms wrap around me and he’s pulled me to him, clutching me to his chest tight, as if he won’t ever let me go. This? This is the welcome I dreamed about whenever I’ve allowed myself to think of him since I decided to come back.
A sob clogs in my throat as I release the tension inside me and fall into his embrace, melting against his big, hard, warm body. Without a word, we mold against each other, finding the groove that says we belong together, that we’re made for each other.
Leo has buried his face in the crook of my neck, and I can feel his sharp inhale against my skin as he lifts his head and presses a kiss to my ear.
“You aren’t dead. I knew you weren’t. I never believed it,” he’s saying rapidly now. “But I stopped looking. I should never have stopped looking. I let you down. I didn’t… Forgive me, Bianca. I should have—”
“Shh, my love,” I soothe as I hold him tighter to me. I can’t bear the self-loathing in his words, this flagellation he’s inflicting upon himself. “I chose to disappear, and I made sure no one would find me.”
He chokes on some air, then he’s breaking free only enough to stare down into my face.
“Why? Why did you do it?”
I swallow, hard. The time for truth has come.
“I couldn’t…”
He frowns. “Couldn’t marry that fucker? I told you I’d take care of it.”
My heart breaks as I look at the earnestness on his face. “There’d be a war, Leo.”
“The war came and went anyway.”
“At what cost, though?”
“Every cost would’ve been one I’d pay to have you.”
I shake my head, lose threading through me. “I wasn’t ready. Not for you to die.”
He frowns. “What are you saying?”
“They would’ve killed you, then forced me to marry him anyway. I can’t live in a world where you don’t exist anymore, where the man I love is dead because of me, because I dared to choose him and choose love.”
Silence meets my outburst, until suddenly, Leo starts to laugh. I can’t believe this. He is shaking with laughter, and in my frustration, I slap him on the shoulder and try to wiggle out of his arms.
He won’t let me, though, and he pulls me in even tighter against him.
“Why are you laughing, you boar?”
After another laugh, he catches his breath. “You could’ve just told me you loved me, Bianca. There are easier ways than running God knows where and letting everyone, including me, believe you were dead.”
I gulp softly. He won’t understand my real reasons. Not unless he comes to know about my pregnancy, about his son. And I can’t tell him that. Not yet. We’ve already opened a can of worms between us. There’s too much emotion here, and the air is volatile, charged. Everything can explode all too quickly. I can’t take this chance right now, not when it might have dire repercussions for Enzo.
“Bianca?”
“Hmm?” I tune back to him, peering into his face.
“Where did you go?”
I owe him answers, I know this. But every answer I’ll give him will bring me closer to the revelation that we have a child I’ve kept hidden ever since I found out I was pregnant.
“Does it matter?” I ask.
He stares at me for long seconds. His body is solid against mine, his arms strong around my back. I revel in this sensation of being close to him even though a little voice in my head is telling me this is all I might have from him. These secrets between us, they bide nothing good. How will I ever fill this gap between us, one I ultimately dug myself? Can I even build a bridge we can cross?
“It doesn’t,” he finally says. “But Bianca, don’t disappear on me again.”
There’s no menace in the words, no threat, and I don’t feel anything like this. Still, trepidation joins the wild dance my heart starts when I hear these words.
“You won’t let me go?” I voice the thought out, eager to see his reaction.
His arms tighten around me, and though it feels possessive, it’s not alarming. It just feels…safe, I’d say, and a part of me goes liquid as I melt into his embrace even more, placing my head in the hollow where his shoulder meets his pecs.
“Never.”
That one word reverberates against my ear as much as I hear it inside my head.
“I always knew you were still out there,” he says.
I’m not sure I’ve heard him right or if I’ve imagined this. I pull away to peer into his face. The sincerity there comforts me I heard him right, just as much as it makes pain echo in every part of my being. Leo would’ve fought for me had I stayed.
But staying could have cost me Enzo, so I can’t regret my decision to leave. Even if Leo believed in me all along.
A sigh escapes me, and I extract myself from his arms only enough to grab his hand and start to lead him to the couches in the living area.
“Come,” I tell him. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“You better not,” he clips out.
It makes me laugh as much as it makes me hurt.
When we sit, I press my knee to his, knowing he’s eager for the contact between us. I take his hand and clutch it in both of mine. I do owe him answers, and there are some I can already give him. He’s being honest with me, so I need to open up, too, even if I don’t tell him everything right away.
“I found out Ardian had a girlfriend. I immediately knew I couldn’t be with him. I knew it would be a loveless marriage, but the fact he loved someone else, it meant he wouldn’t treat me right.” I swallow when I think of what he could have done to me. “I also found out he was into some sick shit.”
Leo grumbles in anger. “I saw that, too.”
“You did?” I’m surprised, but I shouldn’t have been. Leo leaves no stone unturned when he wants something, and he was out for Ardian’s blood all along.
“That’s why you ran.”
I nod, then take a deep breath. “And also because I already loved someone else, too. I took one look at you at Mattia’s wedding and it all came back to me. I couldn’t betray my heart like that.”
“Bianca,” he sighs. His large, warm hand settles over mine, and he brings our clenched hands to his lips to drop a kiss on my fingers.
I close my eyes and sigh, too, reveling in this loaded moment between us.
“Hana helped me escape,” I continue.
Leo jerks. “She knew?”
“And it’s not her fault she kept this a secret from all of you. I asked her to, and she was protecting me.”
“Where were you?” he asks.
“It doesn’t matter.”
If I tell him I was in Tokyo, he’ll figure out I was hiding as Bérénice. Hana told me she and Mattia let him on the secret of her family ties when she came over after I gave birth. I can’t have Leo put two and two together already and know I had a child. Not yet.
“You’re right,” he says. “It doesn’t. What matters is you’re back, and I’m never letting you go again.”
I turn to him, my free hand going to his cheek. His eyes close when I touch him, a look of reverence on his features as my skin meets his. It almost breaks me to see this vulnerability on him, to know he trusts me enough to let me see him so defenseless.
“Promise?” I ask softly, the word barely making it out audibly.
His keen dark eyes open to search mine, then his hand is on my jaw, long fingers threading behind my ear and into my hair, thumb brushing my cheekbone. His warmth seeps into my skin, heating up my blood, bringing to life all the places that had gone cold in the years we haven’t seen each other.
My lips part, a puff of air making it out like a gentle moan, and it seems to be all the invitation Leo was waiting for. His hand tenses on my cheek, then his head lowers as he tips my face up, his lips claiming mine in the next second.
It’s like an explosion goes off when our mouths meet. The contact takes me back four years, to the very first time he kissed me, when my world exploded into a landscape I knew would never return to whatever it was before ever again, when I became irrevocably changed.
I open under him, seeking more, welcoming his tongue when it brushes the seam of my lips, letting it slip into my mouth to taste me, to claim me, to elicit all those delectable sensations now running down my spine. My breasts grow heavy as the nipples tighten to hard peaks craving his touch, his tongue laving them, my core now pulsating with need, the emptiness inside raging to be filled by Leo, by his cock and his alone, by his loving, by his taking.
I moan against his lips, and his other arm comes around my waist as he pulls me to him. Leo reclines a little, pulling my body over his. There’s no mistaking the hardness in his pants pressing against my lower belly in this position. He wants me as much as I want him.
I return his kiss stroke for stroke, getting drunk on the taste of him, the feel of his large, solid frame under me, the possessive hold of his arm and the way his hand keeps my face just as he wants it, just as he likes it so he can plunder my mouth with his ever-deepening kiss.
This? This is where I’ve always belonged, and right now, I know I made no mistake when I ran. The alternative would’ve been me stuck in a loveless marriage to a man I couldn’t stand having the right to take from me as he wanted. No one has this right but Leo. Me and him, we belong together. And more importantly, something ineluctable binds us together.
Our son.
I have to tell Leo about Enzo. It’s the right thing to do.
It’s time.