It happened to be her mother’s birthday. Her period had arrived that morning, severing any crazy illusions she had been nursing that she’d have a lifelong tie with Vito. Then a knock at the door had announced her things from Italy. Not just the boxes from her flat that had gone into storage. All her things. Gowns that had hung next to Vito’s suits. Scarves and scent and sandals.
Her gaze had scanned the entire inventory list, from eyebrow tweezers to toe rings, seeing novels and anklets and flower vases, but no mention of “Vito’s heart.”
She had asked the men to stack the boxes in the den, closed the door on them, made a huge breakfast for Henry, ate none of it herself and had cried in the shower before forcing herself to leave for work, already thirty minutes late.
So when she parked her car outside her new job and saw the cameras running at her like laser-shooting weapons in a sci-fi movie, she was already on her last nerve. A million babbled questions washed over her, all of them prompted by some shred of news in the Jensen case that she no longer cared anything about. But when one of the voices said, “We deserve to know everything that happened between you and Vittorio Donatelli,” she lost it.
“You deserve to know? I’m supposed to betray his confidence and my own right to privacy and tell strangers about our personal relationship? What is wrong with you people? Do you understand what a relationship is? You rely on the other person not to talk about you. That’s why humans make connections, so we have a safe place to be ourselves. Vito Donatelli gave me that. That’s what happened between us, okay? Trust. What a kinky, filthy concept, right? I’m sure it is to you!”
She used her elbows to get through the crowd, rather pleased when she heard grunts of startled pain and anxiety for their precious equipment.
“You don’t deserve one damned thing.”
* * *
Vito started to replay the moment where Gwyn gave the paparazzi a piece of her mind, but heard a squawk through the closed doors to Paolo’s office.
He rose, not getting any work done anyway, and went through to find Lauren pacing in a light, bouncing step, patting the back of her fussing son.
“Hi,” she said with a warm smile, coming across to kiss his cheeks. “Paolo’s meeting me here with the other two, but I’m early. Sorry if we disturbed you. This one’s fighting sleep even though he’s overtired and grumpy.” She wrinkled her nose at her son, then kissed his crinkled little chin.
Vito took him and settled him into what he privately labeled The Sleeper Hold. He’d learned it from watching his many relatives comfort his many infant relations. If a baby didn’t take to the shoulder or a cradle hold in the arm, they wanted to lie on their stomach across a forearm, head pillowed in the crook of his elbow, limbs dangling.
Arturo made a stalwart effort to keep up his complaints, but settled in short order with one discontented kick of his leg and a weary sigh. Vito kept rubbing his back, pacing laconically to the window and back. Moments later, he held a warm, limp, sleeping baby.
“You’re such a natural,” Lauren said, stroking her son’s hair, stopping short of the words he’d heard from countless women in his family. Don’t you want children of your own?
“Paolo was visiting the old bank today,” Vito said. “He took Roberto and Bianca?”
Lauren nodded. “Your aunt was meeting them there with a photographer.”
Erecting this modern building and moving the Donatelli fortune into it had been a massive decision into which the entire family had weighed. While no one could dispute the practicality of bigger rooms and proper air-conditioning, or the SMART Boards and Wi-Fi and improved security, there was something to be said of the old financial district. The community was a tight one there. It had relied for centuries on old-fashioned networking in the narrow, cobbled streets of the city center.
It was how a young, beautiful daughter of an Italian banker had wound up catching the notice of a mafioso’s son looking to launder his own father’s ill-gotten gains.
“I’ve read there are hidden passageways under those old banks where secret deals were arranged back in the day. Paolo won’t tell me if it’s true.”
“If he did, we would have to kill you,” Vito said casually. It was a myth that all of Milan enjoyed perpetuating.
“You bankers,” she said, with a teasing grin. “You pretend to be so boring, but you’re walking secrets, aren’t you?”
Vito glanced down at the sleeping baby to disguise his reaction. “Hardly. What you see is what you get, cara.”
“So you won’t tell me yours,” Lauren said after a brief, decidedly significant pause.