“Natalia.” Ben steps over to me, holding my arms and peering into my eyes. “What is he talking about?”
Gino clears his throat. “Shall you tell him how you shit all over our most revered traditions and lied to my face about it, or shall I?”
Briefly, I close my eyes before easing out from the protection of Leo, Ben, and my sons. I step in front of Gino, my eyes blazing, as I hold my head up. The game is up. It’s going to come out now, so I might as well try to have some control over it. “How did you know?”
“The story was far-fetched, but I believed it at first.”
“Yet you still treated me like shit and blamed me. Things didn’t have to be like this, but you never even tried.”
“Because you tricked me!” he shouts, waving his finger in my face.
Leo is beside me in a heartbeat, pulling me back. “Do that again, asshole, and I’ll fucking kill you with my bare hands.” He wraps protective arms around me from the side.
Ignoring him, Gino continues. “I signed up for a virgin bride not some used-up knocked-up whore.”
Heavy silence fills the air, and I’m terrified to look at Leo. “You’re just pissed I outmaneuvered you,” I snap at Gino.
“What’s going on,dolcezza?” Leo asks in a low tone, and my heart is ripping in two.
“I have always known you have a thing for my wife.” Gino’s lips kick up, as he enjoys sticking in the knife in. “You’re pathetic the way you moon over her when you think no one is watching, but I’ve got to hand it to Natalia. She never showed you the time of day, so I didn’t suspect it was you. In recent times, I’ve begun to wonder if I was mistaken, but your reactions today confirmed it.”
Gino is going to say this in the worst possible way if I don’t get the words out so I stuff my nausea and my fear down inside and turn to my lover. “I found out I was pregnant a week before my wedding.”
“What?” Ben’s tone is laced with disbelief.
I look between Leo’s shell-shocked face and my brother’s hurt one. “I wanted to tell you, but I couldn’t see how that would end well.”
“So, instead she married me and told me on our wedding night that she was pregnant with another man’s child. The result of an assault in the city by some random rapist. He threatened her loved ones if she told anyone, and she was too scared to speak up, blah, blah.”
“You were pregnant with my baby?” Leo whispers, clasping my face in his hands. “Is it true?”
I nod as a silent tear rolls down my face.
“She wanted me to send her to Italy to have the baby and give it up for adoption,” Gino continues, slamming his fist into the wall, proving he is still worked up over something that happened years ago. “As if I’d ever let my wife give birth to another man’s baby, rapist’s or not.”
Tears cascade down my cheeks as I shake all over. Leo is frozen in place, and Ben doesn’t know what to think, judging by the look on his face. Caleb and Joshua too.
“I wish I had known it was yours when I aborted the bastard,” Gino says with an evil grin plastered on his face. “I would have enjoyed her screams all that much more.”
46
Natalia
Leo lunges at Gino, wrapping his hands around his throat and squeezing. Gino’s eyes scream amusement, not fear. “I should have put a bullet in your skull years ago,” Leo growls, shoving Gino back into the wall, keeping his hands locked around my husband’s neck.
“Do something!” Joshua cries, holding on to my arm and pleading with his eyes.
“Kill him,” Caleb says in a cold inhuman voice. “It’s what he deserves.”
“No one is killing anyone.” Ben steps forward, placing his hand on Leo’s shoulder. “Let him go, Messina.”
“Caleb is right,” Leo says in a clipped tone. “He fucking deserves to die.”
“Do you want the cycle to continue?” Ben asks, his voice calm and controlled. “Because that is what’ll happen if I let you kill him with your bare hands. Where does it end?” Ben’s intelligent gaze drills into Leo, and they silently communicate while Gino is turning a delightful shade of blue.
If it were up to me, I’d tell my lover to do it.
Gino murdered my baby, and I have never forgiven him. I never will. Though he claimed to believe my lie about the rapist, he still held it against me. He turned from a man I thought was open to compromise into a cold, hard, detached husband hell-bent on keeping me at arm’s length.
