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‘Alicia, please don’t play your cryptic games. I’ve already asked you—’
‘And I’ve answered.’
‘So what is the point of your question?’
Alicia took a breath. ‘What would you do if you found out, years later, that your child had been left at the convent’s baby door?’
Dante frowned.
‘I’m really not talking about me,’ Alicia cut in.
Yes, you are, Dante thought, for her face was on fire and he was certain he knew why.
‘Have you found out more about your parents?’ he asked.
‘No.’
‘You have, haven’t you?’
‘No, I’m just asking you. If, years on, you found out you had a child, would you want to be a part of its life?’
He could still read her expressions, see the turmoil in her eyes, and given her search for Beatrice it would seem that Alicia was on a mission to gather up the people she had decided should love her.
And from the little he knew about her parents, this would likely not end well.
So he cut it off at the neck.
‘No.’
‘You don’t mean that.’
‘What? Because you don’t like my response it has to be wrong?’
‘I think youwouldwant to be a part of your child’s life.’ She was insistent. ‘Blood is thicker than water. There would be a pull—’
‘Not for me.’
‘Not even if you saw your own flesh and blood, face to face?’
‘I did,’ he reminded her. ‘Alicia, people use the baby door for a reason.’ His phone was buzzing, obligation calling, and he did not have time for Alicia’s hypotheticals. ‘Let it go, Alicia. Seriously.’
And then, to prove how easy it was to walk away, he left—just as he had a decade ago, with but a single word ‘Ciao,’ and not so much as a backward glance.
Just as the endless men he had seen leave his mother’s house had.
It had never entered his head that someone might watch them go.
His mother certainly never had.
‘Happy cocktail hour, Dante,’ she called to him.
He lifted his arm in a dismissive wave she knew only too well.
She would never understand him.
But she wanted to.
CHAPTER FIVE
