Chapter Five
Ciro
IT’S A TEST, this dinner. The meal has been laid out, and I am sitting at the head of the table, dressed in a dark suit, waiting to see what she’s going to do in response to the invitation.
I do not go and fetch her for the meal. Rather, I send Lucchino to get her when the time is right.
So when she walks in with little delay, I know she’s putting on some sort of performance.
Even if I’m not entirely certain of what it is.
That is my first thought.
My second thought is not a thought so much as a visceral reaction that I have no control over.
She’s dressed in a white flowing gown that skims over her curves, her plump breasts, and the rounded bump that is evidence of the fact she’s carrying my child.
The outfit she had on before didn’t showcase it.
And I was so involved in getting here that I had not taken in the full reality of her.
She doesn’t have makeup on, and her hair isn’t fixed. Her blond curls are riotous, framing her face beautifully. Her mouth is pouty, her large eyes blue and clear, the sort of eyes that make it look as if the person can see directly into your soul.
But it’s that stark, undeniable evidence of pregnancy that grips me around the throat like a feral beast. My child. She’s pregnant with my child. I didn’t touch her. I didn’t put it there, but the truth remains.
That is my baby growing in her womb. Our baby.
I’m shocked by how much that matters to me. And filled with hatred that it’s possible my father knew exactly how I would respond to this.
My blood. My own. I had to turn my back on my family in order to break free of the demonic cycle my father has all of his children caught up in. This is a reminder that family does matter to me. That family once meant absolutely everything.
That I had to break part of myself into pieces to make it so that it didn’t, and now this child… This child. I am undone by this. What I began as a test for her has become a test for me that I am not certain how I might pass.
“I’m starving,” she says, and she moves to my end of the table, but does not sit in the chair directly to the right or left of me. Rather she chooses one with a healthy amount of space between the two of us.
“Well, then I’m sure you will find this a satisfying experience. My chef is very accomplished.”
“Oh, I know. Lunch was delicious.”
“I’m quite certain that you would’ve rather used my bones to pick your teeth clean in the end.”
“You aren’t wrong.” She looks at me, and there’s something overly assessing in her gaze. “Do you know, I don’t even know your name.”
I lift a brow. It’s been a very long time since I’ve had to introduce myself. My name precedes me. “Ciro Corretti.”
“Ciro,” she says, as if she’s testing it. “Corretti.”
“Say that in Rome, and you will most definitely get a response.”
“I watched the way that people reacted in the apartment complex when you were carrying me away. So I did gather that information for myself.”
“Information is power.”
Her eyes go sharp then. “I know.”
The dinner is an exquisite pasta, and she does take a break from her interrogation to start eating. “I’ve been thinking,” she says.
“Yes?”
“What if we did sort of a witness-protection thing? With the baby. What if I give birth, and neither of us puts our names on the birth certificate? We give the child up for adoption.”
Given the visceral response that I’ve just had to seeing her pregnant with my baby, her suggestion feels like an assault.
I didn’t realize how much I wanted to be a father.
And God, it makes no sense. My life is not conducive to raising a child, but if I can meet my ends, if I can finally rid the world of all of the poison that my father has injected into it, then I could be the father that this child needs.
I know that I can keep them safe. As I have kept myself safe all these years.
But it is not a life that I wish for anyone.
I want to change things. For now and forever.
And I have never felt greater motivation to do it.
“No,” I say.
“But…you don’t want the baby.”
“I do,” I say.
“Why? You live in a compound. You’re having to stash me away to keep from getting killed.
How are you possibly going to take care of a baby?
How are you going to make this happen? That is a very real question that I have for you.
Because the dreadful reality is that I know what it’s like to be raised by two people who shouldn’t have had children. ”
“You do not have to keep the child. In fact, I am determined to honor the original terms of the surrogacy agreement.”
“But I didn’t agree to give my baby to a mobster. To a single father who’s in danger of being assassinated at any moment. I didn’t agree to that.”
“But you will get paid. What does the rest of it matter to you?”
“It matters because I’m not dead inside.”
“You took payment for your own child.”
“I didn’t mean for it to be my own child. I was rushed through the process, then manipulated at the last moment.”
“And you want me to believe that you are an exceptionally brilliant woman, one who has spent all your life protecting yourself, but then you also want to play the part of vulnerable victim? One who had no chance or choice there in the last minute but to contribute their own genetic material to the baby.”
“I didn’t think I would care,” she says, conviction tugging at the words.
“I didn’t think I would care. I’ve never wanted children.
There’s never been any room in my life to even consider that.
And so I thought what does it matter, as long as I’m giving the baby to parents who will love it?
Giving it a better life than I had, and I thought maybe there was even something poetic about that.
About making a child and giving it a chance that I never had. But that isn’t true. And I hate that.”
“You can hate it all you want, but it is reality. And I am not a man who shares. The fact remains, even though your agreement with my father wasn’t all that honest, it is still an agreement made.”
“And you can’t do anything legally. I mean, not when all of this was coercive.”
“I can offer you more money.”
She looks like I’ve slapped her down suitably. There’s something possessive in me. Something growling and feral that wants to stake a claim on her. Wants to tell her that she can remain with me as the mother of the child, as long as she surrenders her body to me.
The idea of that is intoxicating. More thrilling than perhaps it should be. But it’s an offer I don’t make. Because I am loath to admit that she interests me at all. Because I’m the kind of man that can set aside his needs when the situation requires it, and I will not be led around by them now.
I already know that it is my weakness that has gotten me into this situation in the first place.
Because I saw the payment that went out from my father to a woman that I had a one-night stand with eight months prior.
It was the last time I indulged myself, and the consequences were disastrous.
I’m not the kind of man to be led around by appetites, but I am a man, and given to them when the situation presents itself.
I can only assume she stole the used condom after we were together. That she had been sent to collect it, in fact.
My indulgence had consequences.
I can only imagine that the consequences of tangling myself up in the woman carrying my child will be even further reaching.
“Money is not going to make this better,” she says, and even she looks surprised by that.
“Just so you know, I’ve never been one to cut corners or take the easy way.
I suppose I did that here, though very few people would call pregnancy taking the easy way.
I suppose anything that feels too good to be true is. ”
“Yes,” I say. “Though I don’t have personal experience with it.”
Very few things in my life have ever seemed too good. And anything convenient was definitely suspicious. As I should’ve been about that one-night stand eight months ago. But I have no trouble attracting women, and therefore had no reason to be suspicious of the woman who approached me in that bar.
Foolish to think there was ever a moment I shouldn’t be suspicious.
“With what exactly?”
“Anything seeming too good to be true. In my life, things usually seem dark, and then when you look deeply, you discover that they are actually even worse than you originally thought.”
“I guess that’s sort of the pessimist version of that.”
“Isn’t the entire concept of it pessimistic?”
She shrugs. “Maybe.”
“So. When did you first discover that your father was a horrible crime lord?”
It’s a strange question. And one I’ve actually never thought of. I was born into it. And I can’t recall ever having a revelation about what the family business was. What I can recall was the moment I decided that I wanted nothing to do with it.
“Violence was normal in my childhood. There was no talk of right and wrong. There was only family honor. There was nothing deeper than that. Anything that you did for the family, that was correct. Anything you did that was actionable against the family was punishable by death. From the time I was young, my father would bring me to meetings that he had to attend. Meetings where he would have to hurt someone, or dispatch them for not obeying him. It was as normal to me as finger-painting. Having tea with my mother in the garden.”
“What made you…what made you realize that it wasn’t right?”
“When he killed my mother.” Her eyes went wide, her mouth dropping open in shock.
“Yes. When I say that my father was an evil man, I mean it. And when I tell you that Vittoria was probably acting in her own interests, by which I don’t mean getting a new bracelet, or a pony, I mean it. He’s a dangerous man.”
“And he knew who I was,” she says in a hushed tone, as terrified as she should be.
“Yes,” I say. “He did.”