Chapter Thirteen

I drive too fast as I head back to my penthouse apartment in town.

Kate is infuriating with her demands for some kind of emotional intimacy that she thinks is necessary before she allows me to meet my son.

I'm still not willing to make any kind of deal with the Baldini boys without getting to see Mateo and she knows it. Why is she working so hard to assure herself that I feel something deeper for her?

And the hell of it, is that I do care about her.

I'm just not capable of the kind of love that she clearly wants. The part of me that loved other people died the day I shot Gianni. I'm not capable of the kind of loving, trusting relationship she wants to demand from me.

"What the fuck does she think life is, anyway?" I scoff, taking a corner too fast and correcting sharply. "Does she think that any of the other men in my line of work are spending all day sharing their problems, thoughts, and business deals with their wives?"

I growl in annoyance and slam my hand against the steering wheel of my Porsche. Fucking women. The adage that you can't live with them and you can't live without them has never seemed more true.

As I slow down to join traffic on the freeway, my phone starts ringing. I check my caller ID and see that my mother is calling me.

I smile in spite of myself. If there is any woman on earth that I love, it's my mother. When my dad died a couple of years ago, she decided to take over his share of the work, and has been a brilliant administrative partner to myself and Gabriel.

Esther La Rosa was a woman of many talents. She ran a nonprofit in my father's name, she helped my brother and I run the business, and she also helped take care of my brother's herd of children.

She spoke multiple languages, had a head for numbers, and always told you the truth. She was also loving and gentle, and the best mother that anyone could have asked for. I didn't deserve her, and I knew it.

"Mom," I say warmly to her as I pick up her call.

"Elio, where are you?" she asks me. She sounds a little perturbed.

I change lanes and flip off the guy next to me after he honks at me for crowding him. "Coming back from taking care of some business," I answer her.

She sighs. "You forgot," she states, matter-of-factly.

I frown a little. Was I supposed to be somewhere? "Forgot what?" I ask.

She sighs again. "Family dinner," she says. "It's Wednesday, Elio."

"Oh shit," I mutter, looking at my watch to check the date.

"Language," she chides me gently. "I can hold dinner for another twenty minutes. Start heading this way so that you can join us."

"Yes ma'am," I say, changing lanes again and getting honked at by the same asshole driver that I cut off before.

I flip him off again and start weaving through rush-hour traffic to take the exit that will lead me to my mom's house.

Family dinner night has been a tradition in my family since I was a teenager. As myself and my brothers started to get busy with sports and dating, my mother decided that all of us needed the chance to reconnect at least once a week.

At first, we all whined about having to make time to eat a meal together, but over time, we all came to love having the chance to talk, eat one of my mother's home-cooked meals, and just be a normal family.

As I take a secondary highway and head toward my mother's house, I ponder what they will all think if I show up to family dinner with Kate.

I wasn't willing to talk to anyone about what happened to her seven years ago, and my family knew me well enough to stop asking. I assured them that we were still engaged, but that we needed some time apart.

I had believed at first that I would find her within a few months and bring her home with some excuse about a quarrel. When it started to become clear that I might not find her again, I had simply stopped mentioning her.

Occasionally, my mother would invite a family friend's daughter or someone she met at the nonprofit over for dinner. I was always polite but disinterested in these women.

Over the course of the past year, my mother had stopped throwing pretty women in my direction and had resigned herself to enjoying one set of grandchildren.

It would light up her life if I could get Kate out of the Baldini house and bring Mateo to meet his grandmother.

I wondered why I trusted Kate that the child was mine. I had mentioned the paternity test to gauge her reaction, sure, but I believed her already that he was mine.

Marco might be many things, but I knew that he would never let his child be raised in secrecy. He would also never let his child be taken to the States as leverage for a business deal.

I turn onto my mother's street and try to decide how much to tell her about my current predicament. She is an essential part of all of our business dealings, and the situation with Kate is actually a business deal in its own way.

I hate to have to admit to her that I let Kate get kidnapped as soon as I found her again, but I don't see any way around it. She deserves to know what is going on with the Baldini boys, even if she will probably lecture me about my stupidity.

I pull up to the front gate of the cozy stone house that I grew up in. We had had enough money to invest in a huge, sprawling mansion like the Baldinis, but my mother insisted that we live like a normal family.

We still had security around the clock, and an electrified fence around the yard, but the house was modest.

The little bit of time that I had just spent in the Baldini mausoleum made me realize just how much I would have hated growing up in a home that felt more like a hotel than a place for a family.

"Good evening, Mr. La Rosa," the security staff member at the gate says to me.

"Evening," I say as he opens the gate.

I drive through the gates and look in the rearview mirror to ensure that he has closed it behind me. Our security team has been managed by the same family for all of my life. This has prevented us from suffering the same kinds of security breaches that allowed me to get into the Baldini wedding.

My father might have been very bad at raising children, but he was very good at running an empire.

I didn't ever remember feeling like our safety might be in question as I was growing up. I know that my father's reputation was part of the reason that other families didn't try to kidnap us to force his hand. However, his commitment to creating a security team that we could actually count on was another essential part of why my family had always been safe and secure.

I climb out of my car and reflect on the fact that the Baldini compound also seems to be protected by a quality security system. This will make it much harder to get Kate out of their hands without giving in to their demands.

I sigh. Why did she run away seven years ago? Why didn't she tell me that she was pregnant? I have so many questions and she doesn't seem willing to provide me the answers that I am looking for.

"Elio!" My mother comes sweeping up to the door as I step inside, her arms spread wide to invite me into one of her warm, comforting hugs.

I believe that my mother is aware of the things that my brother and I must do to keep the family business prosperous, but she never acts like we are anything but a normal, happy family.

"Forgot about us again, did you?" Gabriel says to me as I follow my mother into the dining room. I take the seat at the head of the table that my father used to sit in and take a sip of the red wine that is waiting at my place setting.

"You know how it goes," I reply, leaning back in my seat so that a maid can set my plate down in front of me. "Business doesn't care about family commitments."

"Is this the ‘business' that we were talking about on the phone the other day?" Gabriel asks me before taking a bite of his pasta.

I nod as I put my napkin in my lap. "Seems to be the primary concern of most of my days right now."

"Are you working on a new deal you haven't told me about?" my mother asks. She gestures for one of the staff to pour us some more wine.

I sigh. I had hoped that I would be able to at least enjoy dinner before having to explain my mistakes from seven years ago to my mother. "You could say that," I say, sidestepping the question ever so slightly and taking a bite of my food.

My mother narrows her eyes at me. "Elio, out with it."

Jess laughs a little from her seat next to Gabriel before shifting in her seat and pressing both hands against her back. She looks like she could have the baby at any moment.

My mind briefly considers what Kate looked like when she was late in her pregnancy with Mateo. I keep realizing how much I have missed since she ran away and the thought creates a sense of loss I hadn't expected to feel.

"You remember Kate?" I say. I take another sip of my wine.

My mother smiles and nods. "My favorite of the Aguirre children and the girl your father decided to betroth you to? Of course, I do."

"Whatever happened to her?" Jess asks me. "I thought you two like, had to get married."

Gabriel makes a noise and we all look at him. "Sorry," he says, shaking his head. "It's just that Dad's idea about your betrothal to Kate was just so…medieval. I always assumed that you would just ignore his demands about that. I mean, I knew she was crazy about you, but I didn't think you'd really end up marrying her because our fathers decided that you two could help smooth business relations between our families."

I slant a glance at my sister-in-law, but I don't reply directly to her question or Gabriel's words. "I haven't been entirely honest with all of you about what happened between us."

My mother's expression grows serious, and she leans back in her chair. "What did you do?"

I frown a little at my mother. I hate her disapproval, which would probably make my enemies laugh at this weakness. "That's the trouble. I don't actually know. Seven years ago, I found her at Marco Rodriguez's house, and she told me she was pregnant with his child."

Jess gasps, and my mother's eyebrows lift at this. I look at Gabriel, and he nods at me to continue.

"I was so angry that I left before I did something rash. Marco hid her away and she had her baby. I have been trying to find her ever since. I finally managed to get access to one of Marco's guards who could be bribed and I found out that Kate was invited to Marco's wedding to the Baldini girl. I went there and found Kate, but she didn't want to leave with me."

"Why didn't Marco marry her if she was having his child?" Jess asks.

I look into the depths of my wine glass for a moment. "Because the child isn't Marco's. It's my child."

My mother sucks in a breath and leans forward again. "Seven years, Elio? The child is six now."

I nod. "I still haven't seen him. Kate won't let me meet him until she feels sure that she can trust me."

My mother looks at me steadily across the table. "There's more that you aren't telling me."

I smile a little. My mother was always far too perceptive. "You're right. There's more to the story. She's been here for a couple of weeks because the Baldinis realized that she is valuable to me and they have kidnapped her to try and force me to give up our trade in Russia."

"What?" my mother scoffs. "That's ridiculous. They must know that we won't do that for them."

I purse my lips. "They know the child is mine. They know that they have kidnapped the La Rosa heir. They are playing hardball and they are using Kate to trick me into giving in."

"It's a very bad situation," my mother says matter-of-factly. "Very sloppy of you."

I cringe inwardly at her criticism, but she is right. "All I can say is that I was young and I must have missed something that was making her unhappy. I have tried and tried to think about what would have made her run away to get help from Marco. I thought everything was fine."

"Did you ask her if she was happy?" Jess says to me.

I shoot her a sharp look. "No. But it's a little late for that, now, don't you think?"

She shakes her head, then winces and presses a hand to her aching back again. "It's never too late to ask a woman what she needs in order to be happy, Elio." She looks at my brother. "Clearly I married the smarter son."

Gabriel chuckles and I give them a grudging smile.

It's easier being Gabriel. He wasn't asked to shoot our brother in the head in order to prove his value to the family. He wasn't asked to train like a soldier in foreign countries while our father criticized his every move.

But that is a wound that doesn't need to be poked at tonight.

"Do you want my advice?" my mother asks me.

I turn to look at her, and I nod. "It has never led me astray in the past."

She smiles a little at me and sips her wine. "Jess is right. Ask her what she wants from you. You might also ask her what went wrong that made her leave. She was besotted with you when you were children. You must have done something to hurt her so badly that she ran to Marco for help."

I blow out a breath and take another bite of my pasta.

I have thought about what I must have done wrong over and over again since I found Kate at the wedding and she refused to come with me. I just can't think of anything other than how rough I was with her in bed.

But I know that she loves rough sex, so it can't be that. I had thought that we were doing very well together. She had told me that she loved me over and over again, and she had even said that she didn't care if I ever said it back.

If I was being honest with myself, I had never given her the chance to express any real opinions, and I knew that I had been cold with her. Maybe she didn't appreciate being treated that way, and I could understand that.

But then again, we had been involved in what was essentially an arranged marriage for so many years. I think I assumed that what she felt was partially obligation rather than true love.

My mouth twists a little as I realize that Kate isn't the kind of person who would ever love someone blindly or dutifully unless she felt they deserved it.

She isn't the kind of person who can dissemble or fake her feelings. How was I so blind when I was younger?

"What are you going to do about the trade deal that the Baldinis want?" my brother asks.

I shake my head. "I haven't decided yet. I can't even discuss the deal with them until I manage to see my son. I want to know for sure that the child is real before I play ball with them."

"How are you going to know that he's yours?" Jess asks. "Surely you aren't going to force Kate to take a test to prove it?"

I clench my jaw. I have been turning this part of the equation over and over in my mind but I'm not sure what the answer is, to be honest.

I think in some obscure way that I will just know that he's mine, but that's probably silly of me. However, I do trust Kate, and I know that she is telling me the truth.

I don't know why I need to see the child for myself, but I just do. It might be that the idea of him just isn't real enough without laying eyes on him. After all, I didn't know he existed until just the other day.

That's a lot to absorb in a short timeframe and with complete and total trust.

"If he doesn't look like you, will you still believe Kate?" Jess asks me. She is giving me a hard look and I return it.

"I will," I say truthfully. "I guess it's just a lot to absorb, finding out that you have a son all of a sudden. Maybe it just won't be real to me until I actually meet him."

"Fair enough," she says with a little nod. She strokes her pregnant belly fondly. "Sometimes I'm not even sure what's in here until suddenly I'm holding a baby. I think having them delivered by stork would be a lot less confusing in some ways."

We all enjoy a little laugh at that. Gabriel asks for another glass of wine and one of my mother's staff fetches the bottle and tops up everyone but Jess.

"Be careful how you handle this mess," my mother tells me. "There's more at stake than losing money. If you hurt Kate again, you will have to keep her as a prisoner here just to be able to raise your child. I'm sure you don't want that."

I shake my head again, my mouth full of food. I'm being honest. I don't want Kate to hate me.

I want her to fall back in love with me.

I might not be able to offer her the love that she is looking for, but I can give her a life that is worth living. No more hiding away in a little house guarded by Marco's men and no more kidnapping attempts.

Surely that is enough? Can getting her freedom back make up for my faults and flaws? I had assumed she would accept me without questioning any of the ugly parts of life with me when I was younger.

Now I'm not so sure.

What if I work hard to set her free and then she wants to leave and take Mateo with her? Am I a big enough man to let that happen?

So many questions that I just honestly don't have answers for right now.

"You know what you have to do, Elio?" my mother presses me.

I meet her gaze across the table. I have known the answer for a while now, even if I'm not sure how I'm going to make it happen.

I take a sip of wine and set my glass down, twirling it and watching the ruby-red liquid sloshing around inside of it.

In for a penny, in for a pound, I suppose.

"I have to make her fall in love with me all over again."