AllFreeNovel
Share Us
My heart leaped out of my chest when I found his name. I clutched it against my chest and looked at each of them. Then my eyes fell on Damian and stayed there until he stopped moving and glanced down at me.
Reading the truth from my face, he shook his head. “No.” He kept shaking his head. “No, I can’t be…”
“You’re the father, Damian.”
Luca took the paper from my hand and read it thoroughly, inspecting the DNA analysis.
I stretched out my hand. “Damian, come here.”
He stared at my fingers as if they were diseased. My heart broke for him as I watched the wheels turning in his head. The darkness inside him was telling him he wouldn’t be a good dad. That he couldn’t do this.
“Please, Damian.” I wiggled my fingers. “I need to know you’re okay.”
He tugged at the ends of his black hair and sighed, turning away from me. “No, I’m not fucking okay!”
His sudden outburst caused Bastian to stiffen beside me. I could feel all of them going into battle mode as they read Damian’s body language. It looked as if he had gone to another place, somewhere deep inside his mind. His green eyes looked even darker than normal and narrowed into slits.
Bastian shot up from the couch and inched toward him. “D, we talked about this.” He held out his hand. “Alex is having your baby. It’s okay to be scared. None of us know how to do this. But we’ll do it together.”
As Bastian advanced on him, Damian turned away from us. Bastian tried to grab hold of him, but before he could latch onto his arm, Damian stormed out of the room.
“I’m going to snap his fucking neck,” Luca growled through clenched teeth. In unison, he hopped up from the couch with Marcello. “I warned him not to fuck this up.”
Bastian and Luca attempted to go after him, but I yelled, “No, leave him alone!” I got up from the couch and moved in front of them. “It has to be me.” I pushed out my palm. “Let me talk to him before you do something you will regret.”
“I won’t regret smashing his head into the fucking wall.” Luca bared his teeth. “He’s not ruining this for you, Drea. I won’t let him.”
I stood on my tippy toes in front of Luca and hooked my arms around his neck, pressing a kiss to his lips. “I got this, Luca. I can get through to Damian.”
“You don’t have to baby him,” Luca challenged. “He doesn’t deserve your attention for running out on you.”
“Luca, I don’t expect you to understand.”
“No, I don’t. You should be mad at him. “
“Just let her go,” Bastian cut in. “They have their own way of sorting things out.”
“That’s not how we handle shit in this family,” Luca fired back. “If we’re going to do this together, Damian needs to get on fucking board.”
“I will handle him,” I assured him. “Pour yourself a glass of scotch and calm down.”
Bastian laughed at my suggestion.
Breathing through his nose, Luca dropped into the armchair and waved his hand. “Go after Damian. But if he hurts you, I’m going to kill him.”
“He won’t,” I said with absolute certainty.
Marcello tipped his head, telling me to go. He understood as much as Bastian I needed to do this alone. I couldn’t reach Damian with Luca yelling at him.
And here I thought Luca was making progress. Maybe he was just angry he wasn’t the father and resented Damian.
I took one last look at them and then headed down the main hallway. My search of the first floor was uneventful. So I headed upstairs to the second floor and went straight to his bedroom.
I found Damian flat on his back, staring up at the ceiling with his dress shoes dangling off the bed. If the others had acted this way, I probably would have beaten the shit out of them. But because it was Damian, and I knew he was different, I wasn’t as mad as I should have been.
I strolled into his bedroom and sat on the mattress beside him. “I’m not mad at you for running away, Damian. I understand this will take some time for you to adjust.” I slid my hand across the duvet and placed it on his thigh. “But I need you to be here for me and the baby.”
When he sat up, I noticed he had a picture in his hand. It was the ultrasound image Dr. Ferguson had printed out for each of them.
