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“Very well then,” he said after a long while, like a man facing the gallows. “It is done.”
Julienne could still feel that shaking thing, making her feel fluttery inside in all the wrong ways. But she made herself laugh anyway.
“It’s a baby, Cristiano. Not a harbinger of the end of days.”
It seemed to take him a lifetime for him to turn his head back to her. And she wished he hadn’t when that dark gaze of his landed on her with the weight of a great stone. Pressing the air from her lungs. Pressing the laughter out of her as if it had never been.
“I’m thrilled you find this so entertaining,” he said, every syllable an accusation. More than an accusation, a verdict. And if a man’s gaze could be a prison, she was sure she could see the metal doors clang shut all around her. Trapping her there in all that condemnation and cold. “I had no intention of continuing the Cassara bloodline.”
Her mouth was dry while curiously, her palms were damp. “Surely continuing the bloodline is the first and foremost responsibility of a man of your position.”
“Not for me.” Again, that muscle in his jaw told her long, involved stories about how furious he was without him having to say a word. “My grandfather had two sons. One of them was by all accounts a good man, a credit to my grandfather, and an excellent steward of both the Cassara name and fortune. The other was my father. Miserable. Vicious. And deeply committed only to the bottle, never his family. Never his responsibilities. My uncle died in his twenties in a boating accident, taking my grandfather’s dearest dreams with him. That left my father as the heir. To say that he was unable to live up to the expectations placed upon him would be to greatly understate the case.”
He shook his head, but it looked like fury to Julienne, not sadness or loss, or even disappointment. “He bullied my mother. He would have treated me worse, had my grandfather not taken me in hand. But I vowed to myself a long time ago that it would end with me. I would never, ever take the risk that I would produce more Cassaras like my father.”
“Then we won’t.” Julienne lifted her chin as she stared back at him. “This baby has just as much a chance to be a saint like your uncle as it does to turn out like your father.”
“If you knew my father, you would understand that the risk is unacceptable.”
“No one is born bad, Cristiano. They’re made that way. The good news is, that means we can do our best to make sure we go in the opposite direction.”
“Let us be clear what is at stake in this,” Cristiano said darkly. “It is not simply a fortune. A corporation. The world is filled with both. It is also all the lives that hang in the balance of those things. Do you know how many people I employ? If I had been a man like my father, they all would have been ruined years ago. And you should be aware, Julienne, that I am more like my father than you would ever wish to know.”
“That’s ridiculous—” she began.
“A good man would never have touched you,” he gritted out. “Much less the way I touched you, no matter what invitations you offered me after so many years. There is a darkness in me. There always has been, but you... You bring it out. And I can tell you from my experience with my own parents that such a darkness is no place to raise a child.”
Her throat hurt again, and she had the sudden, terrible fear that it was tears waiting there, threatening to come out.
“I’ve already told you this, but you don’t have to be involved,” she managed to say, trying not to let her voice sound so thick. So obvious. And ignoring that sharp, stabbing sort of pain in her heart. “No one need ever know you have a son but you and me. I will take this baby away and raise him in Seattle, where he will grow up wrapped in flannel and immersed in technology, and who knows? Perhaps he will never come to Italy at all. It will be like it never happened.”
And she could see that life stretch out before her, bright in its way and good, too—because she and Fleurette would care for this baby. They would devote themselves to him. They would do what they could to make sure he wanted for nothing.
But that sharp thing in her chest made it clear that wasn’t the life she wanted. For her or the baby.
How had she managed to hide that from herself before now?
“I’m afraid that is impossible.” And for a moment, Julienne could almost have sworn that the expression on Cristiano’s face was that sadness, that loss, she’d been searching for before. “I don’t know what you were expecting when you came here. But I will tell you now how it will be.”
A kind of foreboding struck at her then, turning over inside her like a hot spike of pain. Of heat. Of something in between the two she wasn’t sure she could name. “You don’t get to decide how it will be.”
His lips moved into something wholly mirthless, and darker than before. “My grandfather has an estate in Tuscany. It is quite remote, and will be a more than suitable place for you during your confinement.”
“My...what did you say? Mywhat?”
“I still don’t know what you meant about your sister and you taking turns, but if that means that she must remain in Seattle, so be it. I’m not convinced that I care for her influence over you anyway.”
Julienne let out something like a laugh. “You must have lost your mind.”
“We already know that you have a habit of disappearing, Julienne.” Those dark eyes glittered. “You will go to Tuscany. You will have the baby. And the two of you will remain there.”
She was panting, her heart punching hard in her chest, but when he only gazed back at her as if what he’d said was perfectly reasonable, she found herself laughing again. In amazement.
“And how long will we remain there? The rest of our lives?”
His eyes glittered, glacial and harsh. “I can’t say.”
“You can’t say because it’s absurd. You can’t really think that I’m going to let you hide me away somewhere. I have no desire to raise my child in a prison, thank you. Even one in scenic Tuscany.”
