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The visitor made no reply, and Alessia made to shut the door. Suddenly, the door flew backward, narrowly missing Alessia as she stepped away with blinding speed. I had been listening to the entire conversation with a sense of dread and was out of my seat in an instant.
“What is your problem, Alessia? What do you gain by treating me this way?” I heard the visitor say as I crossed the hallway to the door in four powerful strides.
His eyes grew wide with surprise as he saw me towering behind Alessia. His shock turned to anger, then quickly to disgust. Alessia looked grateful to see me behind her. He spat to the side, stepping through the now open doorway. I regarded him coolly, prepared to end him quickly if he tried anything funny.
It finally hit me where I knew him. He was the ass at Alessia’s father’s birthday party, who Alessia had needed saving from. In retrospect, I had him to thank for everything.
Without warning, he grabbed Alessia’s arm, pulling her toward himself. “So this is the reason you treat me the way you do? Tell me, Alessia, is he a better man than I am?”
Alessia let out a cry, fighting his grip as he shook her violently. I held her arm firmly, then shoved Giorgio in the chest with more force than a defibrillator. He tumbled backward into the hallway, collapsing in a heap on the floor. Alessia instinctively covered her belly, shielding it with both hands as I stepped between her and the man on the floor.
“Touch her like that again, and I will make sure it is the last thing you do in this world.” My eyes were hard as flint, and I could feel the anger bellowing in my chest like a flaming forge.
Giorgio stared at me from the ground with a look of pure fear. He looked from me to Alessia, then back again. Alessia still held her belly, and I could tell how rattled she was. Giorgio’s eyes narrowed in confusion, then widened.
“You’re pregnant,” he said in a low voice. “You’re pregnant, aren’t you?”
I took a step toward him, and he scrambled backward into the hallway. He picked himself up, dusting his body off with false dignity. He cleared his throat, then walked away briskly. I watched the hallway until I stopped hearing his footsteps, then shut the door quietly behind me.
“We need to leave,” Alessia said, sitting on the floor, eyes wide like a deer in headlights. “We need to leave right now.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked, worried. I squatted beside her. “What was that all about? I thought we agreed to leave tomorrow.”
“You don’t understand,” she said, covering her eyes. “Giorgio is a terrible man, and he knows how my family is. You humiliated him; now he’s going to tell them what he just discovered. He’s going to tell Enzo. We need to leave before he does.”
I wanted to tell her she was overreacting, but I offered her a hand and helped her off the floor. All I could think of was how much worse it would be for Enzo to find out about Alessia and me from local gossip. I was grateful that the pretense would end soon.
I settled Alessia onto the couch. She looked terribly rattled, fear written all over her face. I couldn’t imagine what was going through her head right now. I got a blanket and draped it over her shoulders. She curved into a ball, covering herself. I stepped to the corner and rang my pilot. It would take a miracle to get the jet cleared for takeoff under such short notice, but there were perks to being a billionaire. What was the point of owning a jet if you couldn’t fly it at will?
17
Alessia
The world stopped spinning when I saw Giorgio standing outside my door. He was the last person I expected to see. I wanted nothing more than to shut the door in his face. I tried my best to keep him behind the door, but the fool had to get handsy. A part of me wished Michael had stayed where he was, but I was grateful when he appeared behind me, quick as lightning, to protect me from Giorgio.
You’re pregnant, aren’t you? The question still rang in my head as I quickly gathered my bags, moving up the timetable of my return to New York with Michael. I didn’t know how to make him understand how bad it was that Giorgio found out about my pregnancy. He moved with some urgency, to his credit, but I could tell he did not see the need for haste.
Jenna was livid when I called to inform her that we could not make dinner as planned. I tried to pacify her without success and endured a barrage of protests with an absent mind.
“What do you mean you’re leaving immediately?” she asked when I explained the urgency. “You’re leaving for good, Alessia. I have no idea what happens next or when I can hope to see you again. What is so important that you can’t give me one more evening?”
“I wish I could make you understand, Jenna,” I replied, pleading with her. “Giorgio knows I am pregnant! Don’t you get it? He’s probably on the phone now with Enzo, telling him what he has discovered. I didn’t plan for any of this to happen, Jenna. Please, try to understand.”
“I will not understand!” Jenna sounded angrier than I’d ever heard her before. “You know, Alessia, none of this would have happened if you had just listened to us and told your family the truth. You’re spiraling out of control, acting rashly. What’s the worst that could happen if you had told your family you found a man you planned to settle down with?”
I had heard these words a million times, and this was the worst time to argue with Jenna. I couldn’t help my friends understand why I kept the men in my life away from the men in my family. I had never told them about the incident and that night several years ago when my brother and father brutalized a man whose only offense was planning a tryst.
It was too shameful to tell girls who were so independent. All my confidence was fake. I had never stopped being the girl who struggled with her self-esteem and the fear of suddenly being abandoned by men. That was why I acted like I didn’t care to settle down. I was just scared.
The girls were completely confident and living life on their own terms. I felt like an outsider in their midst, but with the mask I put on and the new person I pretended to be in France, it seemed like I fit in. As the years passed, I could fully develop that false character to where I almost believed it myself. I was just like the girls.
This situation with Michael had blown my mask away, though, and now I was just that pathetic little anxious girl. Now that I had allowed myself to form something concrete with Michael, I was left with the fear of my father and brother destroying it. I had avoided them for years, so how was I suddenly supposed to grow the balls to confront them now?
It had never been so obvious to me before how different I was from my friends; they didn’t even know it.
“I’m sorry, Jenna,” I said. It was pointless to argue with her. She would never understand. “I wish things had turned out differently. I will let you know when I arrive in New York.”
“Do what you have to do, Alessia,” she said, resigned. “You know I love you.”
