Ti Amo (8 page)

“I haven’t,” she said. “Can’t you see how terrified I am now? All I know is that I have to do this his way so my daughter isn’t traumatized. I have to.”

Kei put his hands to the sides of his head. “You said if he ever found you, you would turn him away. You said you would never put Eve in danger by returning to Italy. Don’t you remember the nights I held you while you woke up in cold sweats screaming Fabiana’s name? They planted a bomb in his home. What next? In her crib?”

“Did Giovanni try to contact me? Before the bombing? To warn me about the Calderone’s?”

“No.”

“Kei, he said he left messages with my service.”

“He didn’t!” Kei shouted.

Mira paced away from him.

“What’s so hard about this, Mira? He’s a dangerous man, you have a baby, it’s really simple sweetheart. You can’t go anywhere with him. You’re acting like some battered woman that can’t seem to let go of her abuser!”

“You go to hell!” Mira snapped.

“I’m sorry—.”

“You want the truth. Here it is. If I don’t leave with him you won’t leave this cottage alive. Do you understand me? The man out there, I barely recognize him. Too much has happened between us, and he sees you as a threat.”

“Are you saying you’re doing this for me? Because I see the way you look at him. The way you handed Eve over to him.”

“I’m doing what I have to do. Period. For all of us.”

He tried to embrace her. Mira pushed him away. “Go damn it! I swear when we are settled I will call you. Let me get him calm and rational. If you love Eve and me then please just go. Please.”

“How do you expect me to do that? Just walk away?”

“I don’t know. I don’t have the answers. This is what we both have to do. I’ll contact you. I swear it.”

Kei turned and opened the door. They walked back out with Mira taking the lead. Giovanni was no longer in the room with Eve but Dominic and Lorenzo were there waiting.

Mira pushed her hair from her face. “Where are they?”

“The baby took him by the hand and led him that way.” Lorenzo said pointing toward the other end of the hall. Mira nodded, then turned to Kei, “I’ll call you.”

Kei looked at her for a long moment then kissed her forehead. She opened the door for him and held it, watching him go to his car. She remained in the doorway to make sure that Carlo and Carmine didn’t follow Kei as he pulled away. Closing the door she sucked in another breath.

“She’s beautiful, Mira.” Dominic said.

“Thank you.” Mira managed a sad smile.

“Mira?” Lorenzo called her name. “We saw your room of drawings.”

She stared at him. “Giovanni saw all of them?”

“Yes he did.”

She nodded, “Of course he did, he probably went through all my things,” she said bitterly.

Lorenzo touched her arm. “There’s a picture of Fabiana.”

Mira felt her stomach muscles clench with the mention of Fabiana. She looked into Lorenzo’s blue eyes and recognized the pain reflected there, mirroring her own. It wasn’t enough for her to summon sympathy or trust him. If it weren’t for his lies and the games he played that drew Fabiana in, her friend wouldn’t be dead. “I know that must have been hard for you,” she said with civility and forced restraint.

“I have no right to ask this of you, but I’d like to keep it.”

“Of course.”

“
Grazie
.”

Mira turned from the awkward moment between them and went to the kitchen. When Lorenzo said Eve had taken Giovanni down the hall she had an idea why. She found the two of them near the pantry. Giovanni had sat her baby on the counter and put the bag of cookies in her lap. Her daughter was eating cookies out of both hands.

“Giovanni? You can’t give her that!” Mira marched over.

“She likes it,” he laughed. “Besides she stops sucking that plug when you feed her. We should get rid of this thing.”

“Just try it. She’ll raise such a hissy fit you’ll beg me to give it back to her.”

“What does hissy fit mean?”

“She’ll cry, okay?” Mira pried one cookie from her daughter’s hand. Eve howled at her mother. Giovanni looked between them both amused. “See? She’ll eat them until she’s sick, and she’s not potty trained.” Mira put the pacifier back in her daughter’s mouth. Eve let fat tears roll down her cheeks and released the other cookie, while whimpering. Once the realization dawned on her daughter that the cookies were gone for good she let go another scream.

“You made her cry, Bella. Was it necessary to be so stern?” Giovanni lifted Eve and held her out in front of him. She wailed noisily. He studied her as if she was some new creature brought to the planet in a spaceship.

“Don’t hold my baby like that,” Mira reached for her.

Giovanni brought Eve back into his arms. He kissed her face until she blinked at him, curious over the affection, and again touched his beard. “So this plug. You put it in her mouth to keep her quiet?”

“I told you it’s not a plug. It’s a pacifier. She loves the thing.” Mira started cleaning the mess they made. It was stupid since she was leaving, but still it made her feel a bit in control over the situation.

“I understand. I will buy her a hundred pacy-fliers.” He rubbed Eve’s back, staring at Mira. She felt his gaze as she put the cookie bag up. “Your boyfriend leave?” he asked.

“
Siete un asino
.” She called him an ass. When she glanced over she saw the amused look on his face. She didn’t want him to discover she’d learned Italian this way. However, she couldn’t keep a smirk from forming over her lips.

Giovanni watched her go. Did she tease him? He thought she might have even smiled. Maybe not. Eve felt still in his arms. He leaned a bit to get a look at her. She turned her face toward his, resting it again on his shoulder. Her eyelids were droopy, she looked tired. She sucked on the plug in her mouth. He could hold her forever.

“Gio?” Dominic stuck his head inside the kitchen. “We need to be leaving soon. What do you want the boys to do about the Chinese man?”

“Put someone on him. I want to know his every move. Something about him I don’t trust. He lives for now. I have what I want.”

Dominic nodded. “I take it Mira and the
bambina
are coming with us?”

“Yes. They belong to me.”

Dominic entered. “May I speak freely?”

“Don’t you always?” Giovanni asked, rubbing his daughters back.

Dominic approached. He peeked at Eve and touched her cheek. “She’s the mother of your child. That changes everything Gio.”

He nodded. “I agree.”

“I suggest you go a little easy on her. If you want her again, she needs to know it’s not by force. I saw what losing her did to you.”

“She turned to another man, and she kept my child from me. I can’t necessarily forgive that.”

“He saved her life when you couldn’t. Think of it that way.”

Giovanni patted Dominic on the shoulder. “Forever looking out for me aren’t you?”

“Eve is beautiful. She named her after your mother. It looks to me she hasn’t completely cut you from your daughter’s life.”

Giovanni nodded. “Yes. She did. She never forgot about me. That’s a start.”

Chapter Four

When they first boarded the plane, her daughter grinned excitedly. She prattled on in baby talk to her father and his men reaching for each one of them. They all took turns passing her around, and finally she was strapped in the seat next to Giovanni for takeoff. Mira sat on the other side keeping an eye on her. Eve sucked her pacifier, mildly entertained by Giovanni’s platinum watch that he turned over to her. That was until the plane began to race down the runway, and then lifted to the clouds. She spit out her pacifier and screamed. Giovanni unhooked her seatbelt and tried to soothe her but she cried and called for her mother. Mira got up and took the seat next to him to hold her. Within minutes she was asleep in her arms. They then coasted through the sky on their way back to Italy, peacefully. At least on the surface, because underneath the tension between them was nuclear.

Giovanni told her he would send someone to pack up the rest of her things and have them shipped to Italy. What could she do but go willingly? She and her baby left behind the house of lies prepared to return to the house of secrets. She could have told him that Kei wasn’t her lover, but she was so angry that he assumed he was. He was supposed to know her. Yet every time she tried to explain her heart he lashed out at her, wounding her pride.

“Are you hungry?”

“No.” she answered in a dry monotone voice. Mira held Eve to her chest as she slept.

Giovanni reached to touch Eve’s little hand. “I have a question for you.”

Mira said nothing, keeping her eyes closed. “Why did you take on my mother’s name? If you were trying to flee me why name yourself Evelyn, name our daughter Eve Battaglia?”

“I thought it best, since she and I have something in common.”

His answering silence let her know she hit her mark. He hurt her. She wouldn’t make it easy for him. After several minutes of silence, she opened her eyes, turning her head slightly to look over at him. To her surprise his face was temptingly close to hers, and she immediately blushed and looked away. He was doing it again, and damn it he could do it still with little effort. Affecting her in ways she’d forgotten, and she definitely wouldn’t acknowledge now. “I wanted Eve to have a piece of you. I had to take the name as well.”

Giovanni continued to stroke his daughter’s tiny hand that rested on her mother’s breast with two of his fingers. “Is that the only reason?” he asked.

“You said my sin is unforgivable, what difference do my intentions make now?”

“I have missed talking with you, sparring with you, touching you.” He touched her chin with his index finger turning her face to his. Her pulse rate quickened, and she remained paralyzed by the desire banked in his unblinking stare.

“I never meant to hurt you,” she heard herself say weakly, as if he elicited the response with his own sheer will.

“But you did.”

“You hurt me too, Giovanni. Can’t you see that?”

“I do,” he said bringing his face closer. “I need you to not fight me on this Mira. It’s exhausting for us both. And I promise you
cara
, you won’t win this fight.”

“I need you to not pressure me. And don’t expect sex from me.”

Giovanni’s brow lifted.

“Sex was always easy for us. If we want to work through everything then you’ll have to do it without seducing me.”

Tracing his hand across her lower chin down to her neck he leaned in and kissed her cheek. The soft press of his lips to her cheek caused her lids to grow heavy and her gaze to lower. He moved her hair gently and tucked the long tresses behind her ear. His lips came so close to her ear she could feel the warmth of his breath. “No matter what the betrayal, and how greatly you have disappointed me, I want to seduce you,” he said dropping his hand to her knee and easing it between her legs as she held Eve in her arms.

“Don’t you dare. Move your hand.”

Giovanni clenched his jaw and his eyes darkened with anger. Leaning back he stared at her. “Who was he to you?”

“A friend.”

“I hear differently. I hear you were once engaged.”

“Well then why ask me if you aren’t going to believe me?”

“He acted like more than a friend. And whether you slept with him or not, eventually you were going to allow him to replace me. It was pathetic how you begged for his life.
Che peccato
.”

Mira rolled her eyes. Giovanni grunted, and mumbled something under his breath.

“What happened to you? You’re different.” Mira pressed.

“I’ll tell you what happened. I believed for two years that the woman I loved died horribly because of me. Yes. It was my fault. What happened to Fabiana I take the blame, without question? What became of you Bella? Was it easy to steal my child and let me suffer? Did you get your revenge? You took something even more precious than my life.” He glanced down at a sleeping Eve. Even in her sleep she sucked on the plug in her mouth. “I may have never known her if Lorenzo hadn’t discovered the truth. You will have to earn my forgiveness. I suggest you start working on it now.”

“I suggest you go to hell.” Mira unlocked her seatbelt.

“Where are you going?” Giovanni asked.

“Any seat is better than one next to you.” She rose with Eve.

Giovanni grunted and his fist clenched but he didn’t try to stop her. Lorenzo rose from his seat and plopped down in her place.

“Gio?”

“
Vattene!
Leave me in peace.”

“Things aren’t going well?”

He turned his gaze to the window.

For several long minutes they coasted through the clouds in silence. Giovanni finally relented and addressed his cousin. “I owe you a debt of gratitude. If it weren’t for you I would not know my daughter existed.” He glanced to Lorenzo. “How long have you known?”