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“Neither do I, Jody, but I need to do this. You stay with the car.”
“Sir, I don’t know what you’re going to face in there. I’d rather stay close to you.”
/> “I’ll be fine.”
“Sir!”
“That’s an order, Jody.”
He left the man standing near the cars, radiating his displeasure. Romy entered the building and checked his phone again. Apt D was in the basement. He walked down the single flight of stairs and pressed the bell. Behind the opposite door, a baby wailed. He wondered just how disordered their household would be with an infant in it. Ezio’s son hadn’t been born yet. His wife had a few more months to go.
“Coming,” he heard Sonya call and recognized her voice.
The door wrenched open, and he frowned upon seeing her. “Do you always open the door in this neighborhood without checking to see who it is?”
She clutched the front of her blouse, which she hadn’t buttoned all the way, giving him a vision he preferred not to muddle his senses with. Too late, his mind replayed the image of the smooth cocoa skin and the valley between twin peaks. He bit off a grunt of annoyance.
“Romy, what are you doing here? I mean Mr…”
“Romy is fine, and I’m here to see the baby.” He strode by her into the tiny apartment and glanced at her over his shoulder. “You were going to insinuate that he’s mine, weren’t you?”
“Insinuate? Who do you think you are coming in here uninvited and accusing me of lying?”
“So none of what you told me was a lie?”
She didn’t say a word. He waited with an eyebrow raised and his hands locked before him.
“I didn’t lie.”
“You didn’t tell the real reason you came to work for me.”
She jammed a hand on her hip. “So what? You did a background check on me, and you think you know all about me now?”
“I will get straight to the point.” He was proud of the fact that he sounded calmer than he felt inside. If he told himself this was all business, he could present a confident exterior. “I’ve come to confirm if you will claim Arron is my son.”
He paused for her to answer.
“And if he is?”
“Then he will come with me now.”
“What?” Her voice cracked in alarm. “You’re not taking my baby. I thought you would at least want some kind of proof. I have his papers from the hospital, my sister’s records, including pictures of you and her when you two were hot and heavy. And I assumed you would want to get DNA tests done.”
He nodded. “So you’re confirming?”
She sighed. “Yes, Charlize said he’s yours.”
“And you believed a sister you didn’t know well?” He couldn’t keep the doubt from his tone.
Sonya pursed her lips, drawing his attention to them. “She left a will and a kind of journal for me. Having Arron changed her, from what I read. He meant the world to her, and she wanted to be sure he was going to be okay. She wrote that she didn’t intend to tell you about Arron, but if anything ever happened to her and he wasn’t grown, you should know about him.”
Her words shocked him. He didn’t for a moment believe her sister never intended to tell him about the baby, but if it were true and the baby was his, the thought of the loss tore him up inside. Not knowing his own son? Nothing could be worse.
The bell rang, and directly following it someone banged hard on the door. Romy could guess whose knock it was. At the forceful sound, Sonya jumped and almost lost her balance. Romy caught her arm, but she jerked away and hobbled to answer the door. Jody stood in the hall behind a terrified young girl and a man, who seemed to be working hard not to look frightened.
“I followed him in, sir. He looks shady, and I was right because he was coming here.” Jody made this observation in Italian, and emotions flitted over Sonya’s face as she worked out what he said. When she understood the gist, she glared at him.
Romy did his best to hold back his amusement. “Do you know this man, Sonya?”
