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Rafaele stared at Milo for what seemed like an age. He frowned and then looked as if someone had just hit him in the belly...dazed. He looked up at Sam and she knew exactly what he was seeing as clearly as if she was standing apart, observing the interplay. Her eyes were wide and stricken, set in a face leached of all colour. Pale as parchment. Panicked. Guilty.
And just like that, something in his eyes turned to ice and she knew that he knew.
CHAPTER TWO
‘MUMMY, CAN WE watch the cars on TV now?’
Sam put her hand to Milo’s head and said faintly, ‘Why don’t you go on and I’ll be there in a minute, okay?’
Milo ran off again and the silence grew taut between Sam and Rafaele. He knew. She felt it in her bones. He’d known as soon as he’d looked into his son’s eyes. So identical. She hated that something about his immediate recognition of his own son made something soften inside her.
He was looking at her so hard she felt it like a physical brand on her skin. Hot.
‘Let me in, Samantha. Now.’
Feeling shaky and clammy all at once, Sam stepped back and opened the door. Rafaele came in, his tall, powerful form dwarfing the hallway. He smelt of light spices and something musky, and through the shock Sam’s blood jumped in recognition.
She shut the door and walked quickly to the kitchen at the end of the hall, passing where Milo sat cross-legged in front of the TV watching a popular car programme. His favourite.
She was about to pull the door shut when a curt voice behind her instructed, ‘Leave it.’
She dropped her hand and tensed. Rafaele was looking at Milo as he sat enraptured by the cars on the screen. He was holding about three of his favourite toy cars in his hands. If his eyes and pale olive skin hadn’t been a fatal giveaway then this might have been the worst kind of ironic joke.
Sam stepped back and walked into the kitchen. She couldn’t feel her legs. She felt sick, light-headed. She turned around to see Rafaele follow her in and close the door behind him, not shutting it completely.
Rafaele was white beneath his dark colouring. And he looked murderous.
He bit out, ‘This is where you tell me that by some extraordinary feat of genetic coincidence that little boy in there isn’t three years and approximately three months old. That he didn’t inherit exactly the same colour eyes that I inherited from my own mother. That he isn’t my son.’
Sam opened her mouth. ‘He is...’ Even now, at this last second, her brain searched desperately for something to cling onto. Some way this could be justified. He was his father. She couldn’t do it. She didn’t have the right any more. She’d never had the right. ‘He is your son.’
Silence, stretching taut and stark, and then he repeated, ‘He is my son?’
Sam just nodded. Nausea was churning in her belly now. The full implications of this were starting to hit home.
Rafaele emitted a long stream of Italian invective and Sam winced because she recognised some of the cruder words—they were pretty universal. Her belly was so tight she put a hand to it unconsciously. She watched as Rafaele struggled to take this in. The enormity of it.
‘No wonder you were so keen to get rid of me the other day.’
He paced
back and forth in the tiny space. She could feel his anger and tension as it lashed out like a live electrical wire, snapping at her feet.
Suddenly he stopped and looked at her. ‘Are you married?’
Sam shook her head painfully. ‘No.’
‘And what if I hadn’t decided to pay you a visit? Would you have let me remain in blissful ignorance for ever?’
Stricken, Sam whispered, ‘I don’t...I don’t know.’ Even as she admitted that, though, the knowledge seeped in. She wouldn’t have been able to live with the guilt. She would have told him.
He pinned her to the spot with that light green gaze which had once devoured her alive and was now colder than the arctic.
‘You bitch.’
Sam flinched. He might as well have slapped her across the face. It had the same effect. The words were so coldly and implacably delivered.
‘You didn’t want a baby,’ she whispered, unable to inject more force into her voice.
