Chapter 0003

Vasco

The wheel turned soft as butter beneath my callused hands. Of course it did. The Bentley hadn’t come cheap, but I’d settle for nothing less for my Layla.

Music hummed from the speakers, soothing and subtle. Jazz, for driving mountain roads, Layla had said when she’d picked the station, and I hadn’t had a reason to protest. I’d never had a reason to argue with her.

The landscape unfolded around the winding mountain road in a breathtaking wash of green and brown and gold. Gorgeous, awe-inspiring natural beauty for the woman who’d inspired me at every turn, with every word.

Pines sailed up over the car as I guided it down, down, down into the city. Towards the plane that would carry me away from the life I’d crafted from nothing.

Me—and the other woman currently seated beside me. The wrong woman. The woman who’d ruined everything.

I’d made this life for us, for me and Layla. Painstakingly and lovingly. So willingly. And yet, one phone call had left me unraveling all the threads of the beautiful tapestry I’d woven.

Your father has been killed … My mother’s voice played on repeat in my head, like a broken record. Your father has been killed. We don’t know where your brother is … You have to come home.

You have to come home

She didn’t realize I already was home. That I was driving away from my home.

“You know.” Aurora’s voice tore me away from my wandering thoughts and slammed me back down to earth. She gazed at me from the passenger seat. “I never expected you to fall for such an … innocent … woman.”

My teeth gritted together so hard I thought they might crack. I opted not to answer. I wasn’t sure I could, without saying something I might later regret. I couldn’t so much as look at her, kept my eyes fixed on the road.

“But now that you’re free …” Her fingers slid across my knee. Soft and warm and sweet. Inviting. “We can be together again. Like we were meant to.”

If I were any more of a dog, I might have snapped. “Take your hand off me, Aurora.”

Those fingers paused halfway up my thigh. They burned like fire—wrong. Unwelcome. A brand that might leave a permanent mark on my skin. “I told you to take your hand off.”

She sighed, but lifted her fingers away. Turned her face away, too, to stare through the side window at the passing landscape.

My skin felt cold in the absence of her warmth.

When she spoke, it was to the glass. “I might not be from a Mafia family, but I know how it works. You don’t get to choose, Vasco. Not like normal people.”

My fingers tightened on the wheel, but I couldn’t even hate her for those words. For the truth of them. It wasn’t her fault I was born into one of the most powerful Mafia families in New York.

It wasn’t her fault that even after I’d cut ties, walked away, crafted a new life for myself, the past had still come calling.

Your father is dead.

The godfather of the Marcello family was gone.

Your brother is missing.

His heir was unaccounted for.

You need to come home.

The family was in shambles. Weakened. At risk of falling prey to the infighting and attacks of other families, should anyone catch wind of that weakness. And though I’d walked away, turned my back, left it behind …

One never, truly, left their family behind.

Not when that family was the Marcello family. Not when my mother and sister needed someone to protect them. Save them. Not when I still had more to lose.

You need to come home. And I was. With the wheel under my hands and the road twisting out in front of me, I was leaving behind the lie of the life I’d made. I was heading back to where I belonged—willing or not.

“Did she know?” Aurora’s question was little more than a whisper, almost lost to the soft jazz beneath. “About who you really are?”

And for the first time in a long, long time, I opted for truth. “No. I never told her anything.”

“And you thought you loved her,” Aurora snorted softly. “You couldn’t even tell her the truth.”

But how could I, how could I, after she’d told me her truth?

I blinked against the memory that crawled at the corners of my mind. Layla, clad in a fitted black sweater that brought out the blue of her eyes, the white-blonde of her hair. Leaning over the table to meet my gaze. Earnest.

My parents were killed when I was five, she’d told me. They said it was a car accident, but I know the truth. Everybody knows the truth. Nobody will admit it.

The truth is a dangerous thing, I’d warned her. You should be careful who you tell.

But she’d trusted me with it. That night, the soft mood lights of the five-star restaurant setting her smile aglow. She’d trusted me with her truth. Her family’s truth.

My father refused to treat a Mafia drug lord, she’d said, and my heart had ceased its beat inside my chest. Crawled up into my throat and sat there, like a rock, forbidding me from speaking my own truths.

The bastard needed surgery, and my father said no. Her mouth hardened into a firm line. Three days later, my parents’ car went off a bridge.

No tears ran down her cheeks as she told that story. The wounds were old, scarred over, harened. But her hands curled into fists, and the hate in her eyes burned clear as day. She didn’t need to voice the words for me to hear them.

I swallowed my own truth that night.

It wouldn’t matter, I told myself—lied to myself until even I’d believed it. I was never going back. Never.

Except, it had always been a lie, hadn’t it?

I should have known I could never run from who I was. From my true family.If my brother couldn’t claim his position as heir, that meant I would have to. For the sake of my mother, my sister, my family.

“You’re right,” I murmured. “She never really knew me, did she?”

She hadn’t known who I was. Nobody had—but if they’d found out … Hell. If they’d found out, would that have put Layla’s life in danger? Now that I was heir to the Marcello family, it would.

So I was leaving.

Once again.

Leaving.

Running.

From family, to family.

“It’s for the best, Vasco,” said Aurora, turning to flash me a smile. “You’ll be back where you belong.”

Those words sat in my gut like cold, heavy rocks—until the sudden wail of a siren pulled both our attention to the driver’s side of the car. An ambulance tore around a curve in the mountain, nearly veering off the road in its haste.

Layla

White.

White all around. I blinked, trying to push away all that damn white, but even as my vision started to clear, to focus, the white didn’t retreat. Oh.

It was because I was literally in a white room. Ceiling, walls, the blind pulled down over the little window. Tile floor … Even the narrow bed—

Shit.

The bed. The blanket. My hand laid atop it, stuck with a needle and bound in a hospital bracelet. I traced the line from the needle to the blinking machine over my left shoulder.

I was in the hospital.

Slowly, my memory returned pieces of itself.

The pain, the darkening vision. The beautiful woman. Vasco.

My fingers clutched at my stomach, like I could possibly feel that microscopic baby inside. Panic clawed its way through me. Had something happened to my baby?

“Layla.” The door—also white—flew open and a man in a—surprise!—white coat sailed in like Superman come to save the day. Except, it wasn’t Superman. It was Adam Springer, my colleague, friend, and a very welcome face.

“Adam. What’s—why am I here?” Surely, Adam, calm, stoic Adam, would assuage my fears. Save the day in his own, very un-Superman-like, way. He was the calmest, kindest person I knew.

Adam pulled the rolling chair to my bedside. “Layla. I’m going to talk you through what happened, and I need to to keep breathing and stay calm for me, okay?”

“What?” Sudden panic spiked in my chest. “Adam,what happened? What aren't you telling me? Did I lose the baby?"

He huffed out a soft, ironic laugh. “No, you didn't.”

Relief coursed through me in a heady wash, like a warm waterfall. Until—

“But that doesn't mean you should keep it.”

That warm bath turned suddenly icy. “What do you mean? What does that mean?”

“Layla …” Adam dragged his fingers through his unruly red curls. “The pregnancy is tenuous at best. Your uterine lining is very thin. And a miscarriage could further damage your uterus.”

“What does that mean?” The words clawed from my throat, too high. Panicky. I should know—I was a damned doctor for Christ’s sake—but I couldn’t think through the panic.

“It could make future pregnancies … difficult.”

His meaning sank down though my thick skull and into my brain. “You're saying I might not be able to get pregnant again, if I try to keep this baby.”

He nodded, somber. Grim, almost. “Without this child, your chances of getting pregnant could improve.”

My chances of getting pregnant—with another man. A future husband. A potential family.

More pain, clawing at what was left of my heart.

He was telling me that I had to choose between this baby and my future family. This baby, whose father was nothing short of a scumbag. Who'd literally left me at the altar.

Why should I carry that man’s child?

Still, there was no hesitation in my words. “I'm keeping the baby.”