* * *
Gwyn didn’t know what to say, and Vito’s profile gave nothing away as he moved to unlock a door and hold it for her.
She entered a private suite that was much smaller than his penthouse in Milan, but had such a similar decor, was stamped so indelibly as his, she felt as though she had come home.
“I don’t understand,” she told him, and the phrase covered many topics. Why had he told her that; why did it matter?
He moved to a photo on the wall in his lounge. The midnineties fashions weren’t quite as painful as the seventies had been. A stout man wore a dark suit with a narrow tie that made his barrel chest seem more pronounced. His wife wore a black dress with a scoop neck. Young Vito actually pulled off the red suspenders over his white shirt, but his sisters’ hairstyles, all wisped to look like a sitcom star’s, were priceless.
She studied his image, realizing he looked...unlike the others.
Maybe she wouldn’t have noticed it if he hadn’t told her this was not his biological family, but he was taller, leaner, more intense as he gazed into the camera while the rest of them beamed warmly. They seemed relaxed the way a family should when they were together, but he had that smoldering personality that never stopped emanating danger.
“Mia famiglia. I love them. My parents taught me generosity and acceptance. They love me every bit as much as they love their daughters. I would die for any of them. But my sisters have never been told,” he said, making her swing her attention to him in surprise. “Paolo knows, but he’s likely the only one in our generation or lower who does. He hasn’t even told Lauren. I know some of my great-aunts and uncles have suspicions, but none has ever breathed a word...” He shook his head and shrugged. “This is something that was put in the vault and meant to be left there.”
“Because your mother was young? Unmarried?” she guessed. His grandfather might have progressed to including his daughters in his will, but illegitimate babies had still been a scandal for a man in such a lofty position. It wasn’t a big deal now, though. Was it? Why continue to hide it?
“My mother was eighteen. I’m a bastard, yes. And I won’t tell you the name of my father, but that’s for your own protection as much as mine. He was mafioso, cara. A truly dangerous and reprehensible man.”
She blinked, shocked, and moved blindly to sit on the edge of the sofa. “How—?”
“—does the daughter of a banker get mixed up with a thug? He singled her out. I’m sure he had his moments of charm. I’ve seen photos and I imagine any woman would call him attractive. According to my uncle, my mother might as well have been the youngest daughter of a church minister, rebelling at her father’s attempts to keep her cloistered. My grandfather was ready to disown her, but my uncle kept fighting to bring her home. I mean that literally. He had scars. She went back, regardless. Again and again.”
“Got pregnant.”
“Indeed.” He pushed his hands into his pockets, rocked on his heels, scowl remote and dark. “Even though she came away bruised at different times. I will never understand—”
His profile was hard and sharp.
“She was late into her pregnancy when he bashed her around and she left for the last time. She called my uncle to come take her to the hospital, but she was far into labor when he got there. He caught me and held her as she died. She begged him to keep me from my father. If you could have seen his face when he told me these things...”
“Oh, Vito,” she breathed, rising to go to him, hand reaching for his arm, but he was a statue, unmoved by her touch, barely seeming to breathe, face still and harsh as though carved into marble.
“This is what I am, cara. A mixture of impetuous Donatelli rebellion—have you met Paolo? I have that same cursed need to dominate and it is a monumental task to hold all of that back. Then I have this streak of brutality on top of it. My father killed people. And the dead ones are the victims who got off easy. His other son turned out as conscienceless, trafficking in women and drugs, winding up dead in the gutter outside his own home, like a rat. I even have a nephew. He’s already been arrested for assault. There but for the grace of the Donatelli family go I.”
“Vito,” she chided. He didn’t really think he would have turned out like that, did he? She frowned, hurting for him, feeling how tortured his soul was by a bloodline he didn’t want and couldn’t escape.
He ran his hand down his face. “I cannot perpetuate that sickness into another generation, not into the very family that took me in, kept me this side of the law and out of the hands of a man who would have turned me into himself. I won’t risk it. Do you understand? Do you see now why I can’t marry you and give you that dream I see in your eyes every time you rock a baby or hold a child’s hand?”