No, wait. I think she was dead. I tried to remember who was still alive in the family based on the information I had when I handled all their financial information. Interesting that I had to wonder if I even had any in-laws.
Wait. I’m not married. No in-laws.
Go to sleep, Hailey. Go to sleep and stop thinking about them. Stop!
I couldn’t remember the last time I had been this tired, and yet I couldn’t fall asleep. My mind wouldn’t cease for even a moment.
Why did they do this to me? How could they just leave without saying goodbye? I was carrying their child; shouldn’t they have at least escorted me across the world themselves?
How could I have gotten this so wrong?
Yes, it started off as me fucking up and them making sure I paid the price. But there was more between us. I truly believed that. Our bodies responded to each other… correction. My body responded. Clearly I was nothing more than just a fuck for them.
So why was I mad? They hadn’t broken any promises. They told me from the beginning what to expect. They were only following through with what they had always planned to do. Did I really have a right to be mad?
I wasn’t mad.
I was heartbroken.
Chapter Sixteen
Thomas
“Gio said they arrived safely,” I told Stefano as I hung up the phone. “He said that Hailey was sick for most of the trip.”
Stefano looked up from the stack of papers that scattered a large table that we used as a desk. “Sick? Is she all right? Do we need to get a doctor out to the villa?”
I wasn’t used to seeing worry cross Stefano’s face. He rarely showed any emotion, and worry was something he rarely did, and if he did, he did a damn good job concealing it. Our pops had taught us early on in life to not reveal emotions. They made us weak. The Bennato family would not survive if there was weakness present. A face that was impossible to read made a strong and feared man. That belief served us well up to this point.
“He assured me it was just pregnancy sickness, but I’m going to have a doctor check her and the baby out tomorrow. I’ll have someone come to the house,” I said. “I haven’t given the house staff any set rules or restrictions on whether we will allow Hailey out of the house or not. I wanted to discuss that with you first.”
Stefano took a long moment staring at me before he looked back down at the papers and got back to work. We sat in silence, which was something we had been doing since we left the manor. If we didn’t have to speak about business, then we pretty much kept to ourselves. We both didn’t want to talk about Hailey or the baby. That much was obvious.
“I’m concerned we may not have enough security there,” Stefano said casually without looking up from his reading.
“Then we’ll get more,” I said, making a mental note to have Gio arrange that before heading back to the States.
“It doesn’t seem fair to keep her locked away inside. We did that in the manor, and well… we had promised her that once her punishment was over, it was over.”
“True. But she’s carrying our baby. So, we have to take her safety into consideration from this point on. She’ll never just be a normal woman walking the streets of some Italian town again. It’s changed. Once people get wind that we have a mother to our child, she’ll be a marked and hunted woman from that point on.”
“She may be more of a prisoner now than she was in the manor,” Stefano said.
“It’s our reality. Her new reality.”
“I know Florence was my idea, but she’s a long way away if she…”
“Needs us?” I answered for him. “Yeah, I’ve been thinking about that.”
“And who is this Ricardo guy looking after her? Do we even know anything about him?” Stefano asked, obviously not focusing on work any longer.
“He’s vetted. But I already asked Gio to grill him and watch his every move while he’s there. We may want to have Gio stay in Italy a little longer than planned. Just to be sure,” I said, thinking out loud.
“I’ve been thinking about Pops a lot lately,” Stefano confessed.
“How so?”
“He was a feared leader of the family. No one gave him shit.”
“Yeah. So? We’re feared as well.”
“Right. Some would even say we’re feared and respected even more.”
“Your point?” I asked, not sure what he was getting at.
“Pops was able to rule with an iron fist, but he was never that way with Mama. He loved her. Cherished her. There wasn’t a thing he wouldn’t do for her. He was the same with us when we were young. He softened at home, but no one ever saw that side of him beyond our four walls.”