Chapter Eighteen
Gemma
I resisted clapping a hand over my mouth. For fucks sake ! What had I been thinking? Now I had to brazen my way out of the verbal mess I’d created. “You met my mother, she is my family.”
I couldn’t tell him the truth. Not now. Perhaps not ever. It would mean exposing my true identity, one that would then expose my mother’s deception. I couldn’t live with myself if she was harmed—or worse—because I hadn’t kept my mouth shut.
She’d hidden me from my father because she’d known he would have used me to his advantage. Marrying off daughters to rival mafia families was common practice. Daughters were used in the worst way, made to submit to men who were all too often little better than animals.
“Gemma, I’m not asking you again.”
He wasn’t going to back down, not unless I gave him the ultimate diversion. Another secret that would undoubtedly shake him to his core and make him hate me forever.
So be it.
Hating me might end his fixation with me.
If only I could find a way to end my fixation on him.
I blinked up at him, then whispered, “My stretchmarks...they weren’t from weight loss, not really.” I swallowed hard, my mouth and throat going sawdust-dry. “I-I was pregnant.”
He inhaled sharply, his nostrils flaring and his face draining of all color. “You have a child?”
I shook my head. “I had a child. He was stillborn.” I struggled to breathe as the memories crystallized in my head, startling and horrifically painful. “He was your son, Evander.”
He shook his head. “That’s...impossible. You had an implant.”
“Which obviously wasn’t one hundred percent effective.”
He took a backward step, then another. His eyes grew cold, stony. I gasped when he reached for the non-existent gun he usually wore on his holster beneath his suit. Something broke inside of me at the realization he might have shot me if he’d had his weapon on him.
“You took my baby away from me,” he ground out.
“No, I never...it wasn’t like that, I—“
“Stop!” he roared. He shook his head, then reached into one of the shopping bags he brought inside. Withdrawing the sanitary packets, he pushed them into my hands. “Put these on.”
I clutched them against my chest, grief ripping at my insides, but there were no words that could soothe the chasm opening up between us, nothing I could say that would bridge it and make things right. I bit my bottom lip until I tasted blood, then said, “You’re not the only one who lost a son.”
“Just tell me one thing,” he rasped. “Did you ever plan telling me?”
I opened my mouth, but no words came out. Nothing I said would excuse what happened, nothing but the truth would do, and I couldn’t reveal that. I shook my head, slowly, forcibly.
“That’s what I thought,” he snarled. He grabbed my forearm and directed me toward the bathroom. “Take care of your immediate needs.”
I was numb, retreating into self-protect mode when he took off my towel, then pushed opened the bathroom door for me to step inside. I was on the toilet when he came back and handed me panties, then stood inside the door, waiting for me to finish.
I choked back sudden tears. I wouldn’t cry, not now. I’d done all my crying a long time ago. I’d cried and cried until I’d wrung out every drop of moisture from my body, leaving me dried up and desiccated inside.
Little wonder I hadn’t connected with another man since my loss. Not only hadn’t anyone measure up to Evander, my emotions had been wrung out of me as effectively as my tears.
It wasn’t until I stood that I realized he held the handcuffs in one hand.
I looked up at him. It was like looking at a stranger. Whatever he’d felt for me was no more. He was all mafia now, a man without a conscience, without an ounce of love or compassion.
“On the bed,” he commanded.
I didn’t have the strength to argue. I was wretchedly tired and weak. Even worse, a part of me decided I deserved his ire and whatever retribution he dished out. An even bigger part of me was relieved I’d finally unloaded the truth, even if Evander hated me now.
I walked woodenly into the bedroom, then sat on the bed, shivering a little in just my panties. I lay down and lifted my arm for the cuff he snapped around my wrist, attaching its other end to the bedhead.
Stalking around to his side of the bed, he bent and opened his bedside drawer and retrieved his holster and his gun, along with more bullets than seemed necessary. I was too tired at that point to care. Whatever he was going to do I couldn’t stop him.
He stalked away without looking back, and I knew I was in trouble. The front door slammed shut behind him, his Harley Davidson thundering into life a minute later. It roared then as he swung it away from the cabin at full speed.
Tears threatened yet again, but I refused to allow them to pour out and cleanse any of the guilt from my conscience. I deserved to keep it all bottled up inside. I deserved to relive the pain all over again.
Rembrandt jumped on the bed and sashayed over to me, his tail waving in the air like a feather duster. He butted my chin with his fluffy head and I lifted my free hand to stroke his back.
He purred and snuggled against me.
“Looks like it’ll be just you and me again, bud,” I said hoarsely. I laughed, but no joy filled the hollow sound. Rembrandt seriously loved being here as much as he appeared to love Evander.
Join the queue.
I inhaled sharply. It wasn’t true...it couldn’t be true.
Except I was past the point of denial now. The truth hit me in the face harder than the force of a sledgehammer.
I’d never stopped loving Evander.
It was as if that knowledge, along with all the drama and pain, the trauma I’d tried so hard to repress, slowly drained me of energy...of life.
I didn’t want to fight anymore, I just wanted peace.
I closed my eyes, darkness sweeping me away even as it took me back to the past I could no longer keep locked inside my head.
Though I was dry-eyed, I wanted nothing more than to burst into tears as I watched my mom zip up her final suitcase before she turned to me with deep concern in her tired, hazel eyes. “Gemma, are you certain you want to stay here?”
I nodded. “We’ve made this our home. I don’t want to leave. I feel safe here.”
She grimaced, her blonde hair that was threading with gray somehow more noticeable with her pinched face. “I was with the mafia long enough to know the men there don’t give up. Evander won’t stop searching for you, sweetheart. I saw the way he looked at you.”
I shrugged helplessly. “He hasn’t found me yet. With my name and career change I’m counting on him never finding me.”
“I hope you’re right. I don’t even want to think about the consequences if your true identity was ever uncovered.” She stepped toward me then and drew me in for a hug, my bump already large enough to get in the way. She stepped back, her hand gentle as she touched my growing belly. “You know where to find me if things suddenly change. Raising a baby alone isn’t easy. I can leave Craig—”
“That won’t be necessary, but thanks, Mom.” I huffed out a breath, then added, “I know it won’t be a walk in the park, but you raised me alone, I intend to do the same. I’ll be the best single parent possible.” I shrugged. “It’s got to be better than letting the mafia raise my child, right?”
My mom smiled sadly. “Right.”
A knock sounded at the door. I pulled back and went to step toward the man I’d yet to be introduced to. Mom stepped in front of me and shook her head. “It’s best for you both if you don’t meet him. If he doesn’t see you he can never confirm who you are...to anyone.”
I sighed heavily. She’d been dating Craig for nearly three months and she’d been deliriously happy. It hurt, more than hurt, that I couldn’t meet him and decide for myself if he was Mr. Right, but I understood her concern. The less he knew about me the better off we’d both be. That he likely didn’t even know I existed wasn’t something I wanted to think about.
“You’re right.” I barely held back tears when I said, “I love you, Mom.”
Her face pinkened, the faint lavender scent of her body wash making me want to hug her all over again. “I love you too, Gemma.” She winced and added, “ Fiona .”
My mother spiraled away in an oddly disturbing vortex of color, like smoke twisting up and around before it dissipated. Another scene righted itself in front of my eyes. I looked around. I was in the same house, but in my old bedroom. A canvas sat on an easel in front of me, where I was painting a landscape that had been filling my head for weeks.
I was due to have my baby any day. Lord only knew my nesting phase had hit a few days ago when I’d taken apart the spare bed and turned my bedroom into my personal art studio.
I’d been impatient to paint the landscape that had been filling my head, a scene that had featured a cabin beside a stream, with mountains rearing up in the distance. A faint trace of chimney smoke was the only indication anyone lived in the cabin.
I’d managed to portray someone living a lonely and solitary existence, even as I’d conveyed a rugged beauty to the landscape where many people would envy the homeowner his pristine solitude.
I put my paint brush down, a strange knowing hitting me front and center. It was as if I knew the place intimately, though I’d never visited it before in my life. Could it possibly be somewhere I’d lived in a past lifetime, or some parallel world?
I sighed. I was being silly and letting my imagination run away from me. Or perhaps my pregnancy hormones were taking over from all commonsense.
My mother had rung a few hours earlier, as though sensing from overseas my mental chaos, my psychological disturbance. I preferred to call it pre-baby jitters. I should have created a nursery in my old bedroom, instead I’d created my art studio and painted the landscape that had been haunting me.
I cleaned my paintbrush off with a wince. Perhaps I needed therapy after my heartbreak with Evander. If I hadn’t been pregnant with his child I might have tried dating someone else. I might have tried even harder to forget about Evander.
A pity he’d consumed me. He’d been my everything.
Fate had given me his baby to love.
I’d set up a cradle in the bedroom I’d taken over after my mom had gone. I’d placed it right next to my bed where I could monitor my newborn at all hours of the night.
I touched my stomach with a smile. I’d do everything in my power to nurture and protect my baby.
I turned around simultaneously to a piercing sharpness tearing through me. I gasped, pressing my hand harder against my stomach while my other hand moved lower, between my thighs. Sticky warmth coated my fingers before I lifted them to see the bloody evidence.
My heartbeat slowed, my vision blurring as disbelief filled me. Then a shrill whimper burst past my lips, a sound dredged from the deepest corner of my soul.
This wasn’t the start of childbirth. What I was experiencing was far from normal.
I took another step out of my studio and toward my cellphone that sat on the kitchen bench. Tearing, terrible pain lanced through me and I doubled over with a sharp cry.
“Evander, I’m...sorry,” I gasped brokenly.