“Alone?” Dante’s voice was sharper, laced with disapproval, and something else that Raf really hated. Concern. He could take their anger, he could take the fact they were pissed off with his lifestyle choices, but he really couldn’t handle them worrying about him. He sat up straighter, dragging a hand through his hair.
“Do we have a meeting?” he asked, knowing for a fact they didn’t. He might have let himself go, but he didn’t forget a thing when it came to business.
“We were supposed to have dinner last night. Everyone’s here in London,” his brother Francesco said, his tone softened by another emotion he didn’t want to hear. Pity. “Willow said you were planning to come.”
“I was.” He had been, too. When Willow had popped in yesterday—had it really only been yesterday?—he’d agreed to go to Marco and Portia’s for dinner. It had been a while since they’d all been together, and with Salvatore and Emme in London for a series of meetings, even he knew the importance of seeing them. Salvatore’s marriage to a Valentino had damn near splintered the family for good. They’d all messed up there, making Salvatore choose between the woman he loved and his family. In the end, he’d done what was right by Emme, and it had nearly destroyed them all. But as proof of how much Salvatore and Emme cared about each other, bit by bit they were coming back to both families, and even Raf wasn’t going to miss being a part of that. He’d wanted to show Salvatore that he cared. It had been important, and he knew to his family, it would just look like he’d bailed.
“Listen,” Dante’s voice held its usual authoritative tone. “This has gone on long enough. We know you’re hurting. We know why. But you are going to drink yourself into a coma or wake up with all your organs stolen by some woman you’ve fallen into bed with. You need to sort your shit out.”
Raf couldn’t help the cynical half-smile that crossed his face. He was not amused by the statement, nor the situation of being scolded by his whole family. But Dante was right: he’d thought he could live his lifestyle without consequence, and he’d been wrong.
“You think this is funny?” His brother Rocco chimed in with disbelief. “Seriously, bro?”
“No.” He shifted his gaze towards the view over the tumbling Tuscan countryside, frowning then as he realized how bright itwas. How late in the morning. He’d ended up working until almost five, as was his routine. Except, he didn’t usually have anyone else to think about, anyone else to accommodate in his life. Elodie was somewhere in this house and he had no idea where. Had she found her way to the kitchen, to coffee, to food? Did he have things pregnant women could eat? Hell, could she even have coffee? He’d willfully blocked everything to do with pregnancy from his brain, after Marcia. It seemed to be permanently forgotten.
“So, what’s your excuse?” Dante demanded. “Or do we not even get the courtesy of that?”
“Actually, something important came up,” Raf said. He saw their reactions and knew they didn’t believe him. His gut twisted at that, but could he blame them? He’d spent more than two years ploughing hard off the rails and pushing his family away at the same time.
“More important than being together?” Salvatore asked, his features taut.
Raf closed his eyes, a pounding behind his temple that had nothing to do with scotch for once. Ordinarily, he knew the wisdom was to wait until the end of the first stage of pregnancy had passed before telling people, and there was a part of him that knew the smart thing would be to wait for confirmation of paternity, at least. But the words were tearing through him before he could stop them, and there was a small part of him that was forcing him to acknowledge he believed Elodie, even without the medical evidence of his involvement in the pregnancy. Trust didn’t come naturally to Raf, for obvious reasons, and he cautioned himself that he could be wrong about her, but in that moment, his instincts were telling him that she had only been with her ex-fiancé, and with Raf, just as she claimed.
“A woman came to see me yesterday.”
“Yeah, Willow mentioned that,” Francesco nodded. “That’s not unusual for you, though, is it?”
Again, he heard the judgement in his brother’s tone, and knew it wasn’t unwarranted. The way he’d chosen to live his life must have seemed incomprehensible to all of them. Even Marco, who’d had his fair share of bachelor days.
“So, you’re saying you ditched us to get laid?” Rocco was shaking his head, obviously irritated.
“No. Elodie’s someone I…met a while ago.” He cleared his throat, knowing they’d all see through the euphemism and feeling weirdly protective about it. Protective of Elodie in a way he absolutely hated. They were all quiet, waiting for him to continue, and so he did, aware that afterwards, his life would never be the same again. “She came to tell me that she’s pregnant. And I’m the father.”
Silence.
Shocked, absorbing silence. And then, Dante leaned forward perceptibly, so his face took up more of his window on the screen. “Could you repeat that?”
“You heard.”
There was no joy, though. They all knew what he’d gone through with Marcia. They all knew he still wasn’t over it. The baby hadn’t been real, but his love for it had been, so too his grief when they’d allegedly miscarried. It had all been fake, but he’d still grieved.
A moment later, Dante’s wife Georgia had come onto the screen, her pretty face over his shoulder, lined with concern. “How’re you doing with that, Raf?”
It didn’t bother him that she’d heard. He’d presumed their other halves were likely somewhere in the picture, partly because they were speaking in English, which was usually a sign that they were including their wives. And also, partly, because that’s the way it was with them. His brothers and cousins, andSofia, had done what he’d never aspired to: they’d met their equal matches and were madly in love. The kind of love that grabbed on and never let go. The kind of love Raf didn’t believe in.
“It’s complicated,” he admitted.
Georgia nodded sympathetically, and Dante reached up to take her hand in his. Their story had been a little like this. A one-night stand that had led to a surprise pregnancy, only Dante had insisted on marrying Georgia and Georgia had turned out to be the best thing that had ever happened to him. Then again, Dante had been wired to love, whereas Raf simply wasn’t.
“Tell us about her?” Georgia suggested, moving so she could sit on Dante’s lap, rearranging the laptop screen to fit them both in the one window.
“I barely know the woman,” he said, ignoring that same spear of betrayal that launched through his side. It didn’t seem fair to categorise his relationship with Elodie like that, but what else could he say? Up until yesterday, in the obstetrician’s office, he hadn’t even known her last name. “Elodie,” he amended. “Her name is Elodie.”
“Okay, so at least you know that much,” Salvatore pointed out, with a hint of a smile, but it died when no one else responded.
Raf dropped his head forward for a minute, the weight of this landing on him anew. “Obviously, it’s not what I planned or wanted.”
“Oh, Raf,” Georgia said softly. “A baby is always a blessing, even under these circumstances.”
