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She looked away, focused on a point across the cabin. How could she not have seen who he was? How could she not have realized that behind his charm and his stunning good looks was a man of stunning power?
“Can I please go get Joe?” she said, fighting
to keep her tone neutral. “We’re about to take off and I’d be more comfortable flying if he were here with me.”
“But he’s fine where he is. Maria is taking good care of him.”
Jillian drew a deep breath, then slowly exhaled. Had she heard Vitt right? Was he making decisions for her? Was he deciding how and when she was to see her own son?
She fought the wave of nausea rolling through her. “I miss him, Vitt. I haven’t spent much time with him today—”
“—because you left him. You regularly left him.”
Again her insides lurched. “I had to work.”
“You didn’t. You could have come to me. I would have supported you, made sure you could have stayed home with him.”
The floor vibrated beneath Jillian’s feet. “I wanted the best for Joe. I wanted him to have what I didn’t—security. Stability—”
“And you think running and hiding and living with false identities is the way to accomplish that?”
“Joe wouldn’t have a false identity.”
“He already did! You told Hannah that all of his medical records were listed as Michael Holliday. That when you enrolled him in preschool, he’d be called Mike.”
Jillian flushed and shifted in her seat. He was right, and it did sound awful when put like that. “It hadn’t happened yet,” she said softly, uncomfortably. “It was just a thought.”
“No. It wasn’t just a thought. It was your idea of a good plan.”
She flinched, stung by his mocking tone. He didn’t understand that to protect Joe she had to think like a survivor. She had to be aware of danger, had to consider all the different possibilities. “Perhaps I’ve made mistakes,” she said huskily, tears roughening her voice, but she wouldn’t cry. Not here, not now, not in front of her enemy. “But I only wanted the best for him.”
“And now he has it. His mother and father together under one roof. What a lucky little boy.”
God, he was awful and hateful, bent on making her suffer. She blinked and ground her jaw together until she knew she had her emotions under control. “So can our lucky boy join us? Can he sit with his mother and father as the plane takes off?”
Vitt studied her pale face and hard, tight jaw for a long moment before reaching out to smooth a pale blond strand of hair back from her face. She shied away from his touch but he didn’t comment on it. Instead he smiled at her almost kindly. “Our son is quite comfortable and sleeping soundly in an infant cot in the staff room. Maria will bring him to us when he wakes.”
The jet began to move, rolling forward on the tarmac. “Please, Vitt. Please let me have him. I want him. I need him with me.”
“Even though he’s sleeping in his cot?”
She’d had her life ripped apart by her father’s deceit. Her only sister had been killed in an accident the police termed “suspicious,” yet they’d never brought charges against anyone. Her mother, terrified of further reprisal, had broken off all contact. Jillian’s only anchor in life was Joe. He was the reason, and the only reason, she’d been able to survive so many blows. “Yes.”
Vittorio studied her for a long, silent moment. “You really wish for me to have him woken up just so you can hold him?”
She heard condescension in his voice. Condescension and disbelief. Because what kind of woman would put her needs before her child’s?
“No,” she choked, lifting a hand to shield her eyes so he couldn’t see her tears. “No. You’re right. I don’t want to wake him. It is his naptime. He should sleep.”
Again Vitt subjected her to his scrutiny. “Sometimes it is difficult to do the right thing, but I have found that difficult or not, doing the right thing is the only real option.”
The jet was moving faster now, racing down the runway, picking up speed by the second. Within moments the jet’s front wheels left the ground and then the back wheels. They were airborne.
Dark pine trees dotted the ground. The blue of the Pacific Ocean came into view. In less than an hour they’d leave California far behind. In eleven hours they’d be in Sicily, in his world, and Joe, her baby, her child, would be living in Vitt’s home.
And if Joe were to live in Vitt’s home, where would she live? Would Vittorio keep her nearby, or would he set her up in her own house or apartment, someplace close by but not in his immediate household?
During the two weeks they’d spent together in Bellagio, Vitt had told Jillian a great deal about the twelfth-century Norman castle the d’Severano family called home. His family hadn’t always owned the property. Apparently his great-grandfather had purchased the crumbling fortress in the early 1900s and each generation since had spent a fortune restoring sections at a time. Over half the castello still remained uninhabitable but Vittorio had said that was part of the charm.
