He looked at her with dark searching eyes. “If you are happy, why do you cry?”
“I’m not crying,” she denied, blinking hard to keep her eyes dry.
“Has my son made you so very unhappy?”
“No.”
“I may be paralyzed, but I’m no fool.”
“I promise you, it’s not Vitt. He’s been very good considering…considering…”
“Considering all the drama?” Salvatore finished for her, eyes watering with the effort it cost him to speak.
She nodded.
His brow furrowed. “You look so very familiar. I can’t help but think I know you.”
She shook her head. “I would have remembered you.”
“Perhaps I know your family. You are Sicilian, aren’t you?”
“No. American.”
“Yes, but your family is Italian, from Sicily, I am sure of it.”
Again Jillian shook her head but then her composure cracked and murmuring excuses, she slipped from the room, rushing past everyone to push through the hall door to the outside terrace. It was a quiet night, the terrace lit by just the moon. Jillian paced back and forth before leaning against the stone balustrade to draw great gasps of air into her lungs.
Of course her family was Italian, and she still took pride in her Italian heritage. But her father…
She was so ashamed of her father. And so disgusted, too.
He’d sacrificed Katie to save his own skin. How could he do that to her? How could he do that to all of them?
What kind of monster was he?
“What did my father say?” Vittorio asked quietly from behind her, his footsteps so silent she hadn’t even heard him approach.
She shook her head. “Nothing.”
“Then why are you so upset?”
She turned to face him. “He was so kind to me, but he wouldn’t be if he knew who my father was.”
“He probably wouldn’t like who your father was, but he wouldn’t hold it against you, cara. My father is a bigger man than that.”
“How did he get hurt?”
Vittorio leaned against the balustrade next to her. “He decided to leave the mafia.”
“So they shot him?”
“Yes.”
“How old were you when it happened?”
“Seventeen.”
“Just a teenager!”