Page 35 of Secret Baby for the Mafia Don

“Why do you repeat everything I say to you?” Mary says with annoyance before shaking her head and leaving.

I clench my teeth. Mary is a prim, unyielding person and she doesn’t approve of my presence in the house.

She has made it very difficult for me ever since she was told that I was going to join her staff. She knows that I’m an enemy of the family, and she has been grudging toward me at best.

However, I can’t really blame her for being annoyed that I am being kept here. The Baldinis seem to be very good at imposing inconveniences on the women in their lives, even the staff who keep their household running for them.

My presence is probably just one of many difficulties that the Baldini boys have caused for Mary over the years.

I abandon the idea of taking a shower and I leave my room. I make my way through the echoing hallways of the huge house toward the foyer.

Two sweeping, curving staircases lead down to the front entryway and there is a table in the center of the large space. I notice immediately the large vase of flowers on the table.

I walk closer to it, and I’m stunned to see all of the expensive flowers in the huge arrangement. Roses, lilies, and all kinds of colorful flowers are clustered artfully in the pretty porcelain vase.

I finger the soft petals of a purple rose for a moment, remembering that I told Elio they were my favorite flowers back when we were dating.

My eyes fall on the envelope leaning against the base of the vase of flowers and my heart stutters a little in my chest. Did Elio send these to me?

I pick up the envelope which has my name written on it, and carefully cradle the fragile vase full of flowers in my arms as I walk back to my room.

The scent of the roses and lilies washes over me with cloying sweetness as I walk through the marble hallways toward the tiny room I have been given to stay in. The envelope in my hand feels like it weighs a ton.

I set the flowers on my bedside table and stare at them for a long moment, my heart still beating hard in my chest.

Once, I would have been aflutter with excitement to have received such a gift from Elio. He had almost never remembered to observe the niceties of dating. Getting a bouquet this large and impressive would have been very exciting to me back then.

Now, the bouquet just makes me sad.

Elio likely thinks that this gesture will win me over, but my heart is so battered that all I feel is regret. My eyes fall on the unopened envelope in my hand. I wonder if I should just throw it out without reading it.

I have already been looking for other solutions to my predicament. I feel like I will find a way out of this compound if I keep looking.

Maybe I don’t even need to continue to entertain my plan to win Elio over and convince him to let Mateo and I go free.

But then I think about the guards with dogs, the razor wire on the walls, and the way that the staff don’t trust me as far as they could throw me.

I can’t afford to cut off any possible assistance that might be offered to Mateo and I to escape the Baldinis.

I sit on the bed and open the envelope. My heart leaps a little again when I see that there are three sheets of paper folded up inside of it.

I can already see the slanting lines of Elio’s beautiful handwriting. I think of his graceful, sensitive artist’s hands writing this letter to me, and I smile in spite of myself.

Elio has always been a study in contradictions.

The same hands that can write this beautiful script can also kill people and deliver intense amounts of pain.

I unfold the letter and take a deep breath, trying to prepare myself for what Elio has decided to tell me.

Kate,

It occurs to me that I should have taken the time to do things like this more often seven years ago.

Maybe I didn’t think about it because we were betrothed and neither of us had any choice about getting married. Maybe it was because I was young and arrogant and I thought that sex was enough to keep a woman happy.

I can’t promise that I have changed for the better. I’ve probably gotten much worse in some ways. This is a hard life, but you know that.

What I can say to you, is that I have grown wiser over the past seven years. It means more than you know to find out that I have a son. I would love to get to meet him, but I understand why you might be hesitant to let him get to know me.

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