Chapter 5

Draco

***

I thought for sure after she scared the shit out of me by fainting that I would drop it, but as soon as I saw the white of her eyes I was on it again.

"Where is the father?" I wasn't sure what to feel when tears started seeping from the corners of her eyes before she turned her face away from me. Was she crying because they were apart, was she crying because he'd left her after finding out about the baby? What?

"Where?" I turned her face back to mine and the look in her eyes almost broke my heart. I felt a lump in my throat and a riot started in my gut. What was it about this girl that made me want to bundle her up and tuck her away somewhere safe?

"There is no father." She wouldn't look at me after saying this, but I was still no wiser as to what the fuck, so I couldn't leave it there, I needed to know. Something in me was unreasonably pissed that she'd let someone else give her a child. Which was the most fucked up thing ever since we obviously hadn't known each other when the deed was done, and even if we had…

"What does that mean, you obviously let someone fu…" what the fuck are you doing Draco? You didn't bring her here to treat her like this, take that shit down a notch; can't you see she's fucking scared?

"Sorry, please tell me what's going on. Why were you about to sleep in my stables? Are you in some kind of trouble? I can't help you if you don't tell me." And who the fuck is your man? Was, fucking was, not is.

She studied me for the longest time as if gauging my sincerity. "May I sit up?" I'd been leaning over her as she laid back on my bed. I shook myself out of my fog and grabbed the robe for her to put on. I didn't want to see the evidence of her...whatever it was, for some reason that little bump pissed me the fuck off.

When she was sitting up and well covered I placed the tray across her lap. "Eat." Even that she was skittish about until I threatened to feed her myself. When she'd eaten as much as she could and I was satisfied that she'd had enough, I put the tray back on the table.

Sitting on the bed beside her, I placed my hands next to her hips on either side of her, not touching but essentially caging her in. "I need to know what's going on with you. I'm not going to hurt you, but I need to know." She swallowed hard and looked down at herself before the tears started again.

"My papa, he is a very good man, well liked in our little village. Proud, my papa has lots of pride." Here the tears got even worst and I was getting a very nasty feeling in my gut.

"There is this family, they are well to do, wealthy yes? But my papa he does not like them, no good he says, stay away little Sofia."

She drifted away from me as she retold the story of her life. Being raised by a doting father after her mother had died, the wild and carefree childhood in the hill country, where she grew up in the old city. Her stories of picking wild flowers, and parties, and plays in the village square sounded so far removed from my reality as to not be believed.

I listened as she laid the foundation of the life she'd led before coming here. Then she got to the crux of it, the thing I wanted to know most. Her voice hitched and her body tensed as if expecting a blow.

"I had listened to papa like always. I stayed away from the Ricci, always avoiding them, especially the eldest as he seemed more of the troublemaker than the others." She swallowed hard here and pulled at the blanket I'd thrown across her lap.

"He said these things whenever he would pass me by in his fancy car, but I paid no heed. After all there were prettier girls in our little village. Girls who would've gladly returned his affections, but always he seemed to be watching me…"

I was getting a pretty good idea where this shit was going and the anger was all but full blown. I wanted to cry for her, wanted to go back there to her village and stop what I was almost certain she was about to describe to me, but I couldn't.

"Papa was late getting home, I don't know why that day of all days. It wasn't always that the Ricci were out and about in the village, they preferred the city, there was more there to do for the young wealthy men." Her silent tears broke my heart as they fell from her eyes.

"But that evening he was there. He somehow knew I was alone in the cottage. I was at the stove, I thought it was papa when I heard the breathing behind me…"

She started to shake then and her eyes were no longer focused, she'd gone away in her head. I listened and died a little as she told of the brutal attack. Of being taken down to the stone floor there in her father's kitchen and violated, of her father coming home to find her, his anger.

He'd sought justice for his only child but there was none, not for the poor farmer against the most powerful family in their little part of the world. When she told me about the fucker seeing her in the village a few weeks later and grinning, I almost lost my fucking mind.

Then she'd found out she was with child by her attacker and my brave girl had got up the nerve to go face her demon in his den. She'd been ridiculed and shamed by him and his family, barely escaping with her life when the animals tried to beat the child out of her.

"Papa, he was never the same after the day he found me, but when he learned of what they tried to do he became so angry, so full of hate. His friends got together and made a plan." Her eyes flew to mine then as if she'd said too much.

"It's okay, I won't repeat what you've told me, and besides there's nothing you can tell me that will make me hurt you or you papa. My father too would seek vengeance if someone hurt one of his kids or his wife; trust me, I understand.

"There was a wedding, the Ricci were all gathered that day. I don't know what the plan was, papa never said. All I know is that night he came back in a rush and told me I had to leave the village. He'd been planning all along. He'd sold what he could and begged where he could to get me passage to America.

I knew nothing of this plan, I had no time to even say goodbye. I was taken out of the village under cover of night and I still didn't know why. It was only days later that I learned the truth. An eye for an eye! Papa believed that they had killed his daughter, so he took theirs. It was her wedding day. She was blown to pieces at the altar."

She flew off the bed and ran to the bathroom with me hot on her heels. I held her hair and rubbed her back as she retched into the bowl.

There were a million emotions going through me at once. Anger, regret, pity, compassion, they all fought for place but anger had a head start. "You better now?" I helped her to her feet and over to the sink to get her cleaned up.

She was so pitiful, and weak. My heart squeezed in my chest and I faced the inevitable. It had been brewing for weeks and I should've known it would only be a matter of time. I'm not one of those men who need to have two or three women to feel like a man.

But I knew the way I felt about her wasn't going to be ignored for too long. The struggle I'd had with myself all this time, about calling off my two-year relationship with Charlotte, the girl that both our families expected me to marry, was at an end.

I can already imagine the uproar this shit's gonna cause, but there are going to be some changes in the Russo household pretty soon. I would never have pegged myself as the type to raise another man's child, but somehow with her, it didn't seem to matter as much.

There was no way I could leave her like this, to just let shit go on as before, she didn't deserve it. She'd suffered enough. And what about the kid? If I turn my back on her now, what will happen to her and the kid? Innocents, both of them.