He soon found out.
‘I’m doing you the courtesy, Falcone,’ he heard Cesare di Mondave say in cool, clipped tones, ‘of assuming that you have absolutely no knowledge of what I am going to tell you.’
Nic’s eyes narrowed. They were very blue. Very hard. ‘Which is...?’
Dark, unreadable eyes rested on him, and Nic realised the man was steeling himself to speak.
A second later, he knew why.
‘Are you aware, Falcone,’ he heard Cesare di Mondave ask, with sudden tension in the cool, clipped tones, ‘that Francesca—’ he took an intake of breath ‘—may be pregnant?’
The breath left Nic’s lungs as if a vacuum had sucked it out of him in one gigantic inhalation.
‘What?’ The word shot from him, propelling his body forward so that he was pressing down on the arms of his chair.
‘You don’t deny the possibility?’
There was something in Cesare di Mondave’s voice that registered in Nic and told him that he hadn’t been sure of what he’d announced.
Nic’s face hardened. Inside his head chaos had taken over. But his voice, as he spoke, was edged like a blade. ‘Do you really imagine it is any of your business?’
Now it was Cesare’s eyes that narrowed. ‘Donna Francesca will always have my protection,’ he bit out. ‘Which is why I’m here.’ His expression changed. ‘So, now that you know, you can do what you are required to do.’
Chaos was still raging in Nic’s head. But he couldn’t pay it any attention—not right now. Right now his adrenaline was running and his opponent was in his sights.
‘And what, Signor Il Conte di Mantegna, do you think that is?’ His hands had tightened over the chair arms—tightened with a deadly grip.
Then suddenly, moving with a lightning speed that Nic had not expected, Cesare was on his feet, the palms of his hands slammed down on the desk in front of Nic. Eyeballing him.
‘If you need me to tell you, Falcone, then I’d sooner throw you out of the window right now! Leave you to the street dogs to eat!’ He straightened. Looked down at Nic.
‘You’ve got twenty-four hours before I tell her I’ve told you. She’s in Rome today. At her parents’ apartment.’
He walked out of the room. Behind him, at his desk, Nic very slowly sat back in his chair. The adrenaline had drained out of him. He hadn’t the strength to move—not a muscle. In his head, the seething chaos suddenly was not there any more. In its place was only one thing. One emotion. One urgency.
He snapped his hand forward. Reached for his phone. ‘I need an address immediately!’ he bit out to his PA. ‘The Rome residence of the Marchese d’Arromento. Right now!’
* * *
Fran was on her laptop, drafting her resignation to her professor. She could not continue at Cambridge, nor even stay in Europe at all. Urgency impelled her. Her mind was too distracted to think about work, which was why she’d come here, to her parents’ Rome apartment, after the ordeal of attending Adrietta’s lavish engagement party, where she’d forced herself to appear carefree for her sister and parents’ sake.
But Cesare had been there too, with Carla, and grimly Fran had known that because she had not told him the pregnancy test had been negative he had realised that the opposite was true.
Instinctively, her hand glided to her stomach. There was nothing to indicate the profound, irreversible change that was happening in her. On the surface she looked just as she always had. It would take weeks for her pregnancy to show.
It’s like starlight...taking light years to reach us. So long that some stars have burnt out by the time their light reaches us.
Her pregnancy would be like that—she would be long gone before it showed.
Emotion rippled through her. But eventually, like starlight, the baby would arrive. Arrive and have to be coped with, with all the implications thereof. And the first, overwhelming implication was the one that she had known right from the very beginning.
I can’t tell him. I can’t. It doesn’t matter what Cesare said. Nic couldn’t have made it clearer that he wants nothing to do with me.
No, she could not tell him.
Heaviness, as if there were a weight crushing her, pressed down upon her. All she could do was what she was doing. What she was going to have to do. To go as far away as she could, make a new life for herself and her baby. Because there was no alternative.
The heaviness pressed down even more. She shut her eyes, trying to bear it.