Page 62 of Secret Baby for the Mafia Don

I don’t want to have to figure out how to miss her each day. I don’t want to be reminded of her presence each day over and over with sadness because she’s gone.

“Don’t give up on her yet,” Grazia says to me kindly, placing a hand on my wrist. “She’s young, strong and she wants to be here.”

I nod and sigh. I look down at the spread of delicious food and force myself to get interested in eating.

“Any woman who thought she could jump on Luca’s back and kill him with a letter opener won’t be dying in a hospital bed,” she says with a light laugh.

I manage to chuckle as well. She makes a good point about Kate’s fierce determination. She is not the kind of person to give up in the face of a challenge, but this isn’t the kind of challenge that she has a significant amount of control over.

My phone pings and I glance down at the screen. My brother has sent me an email. I open the message and scowl.

The Baldini boys have sent him a demand for him to surrender the trade routes that they have been demanding because they allowed Mateo to leave the house and come to be with his mother here.

I clamp down on my anger. It’s not Grazia’s fault that her brothers are despicable and I don’t want to give this mess energy when I have much more important things to worry about.

I’m typing back a short note to my brother to just ignore them, when Grazia pops up at my elbow. “I know that look,” she says. “That’s the look everyone on earth wears when they are trying to deal with my idiot brothers. What have they done now?”

I’m too tired to explain anything to her, so I just pass her my phone. She scrolls through the message, opening the documents and looking at them.

She mutters something under her breath in Italian, and hands me back my phone.

“Where are you going?” I ask her as she starts marching toward the door to leave Kate’s room. She glances back at me, her expression intense.

“To deal with this. I was going to go get Mateo, but I’ll have the staff drive him over here. I’m sure you’d like to see him and he’s been asking about his mother.”

“Thank you,” I manage to say despite my surprise.

She nods, her phone already pressed against her ear, and then she leaves. I glance over at my mother, knowing that my expression is a little shocked.

“All of you think you’re running the business singlehandedly,” she says to me. “But we women take care of a lot of work that you never even know about.”

I smile at my mother, realizing just how true her words are.

Grazia has made so many things possible for Kate and she has helped protect our business from her brothers ever since she arrived in town.

She’s a formidable woman, just like my mother. Just like Kate.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Kate

My head feels fuzzy and my body feels strangely weightless, yet stiff at the same time.

I crack my eyes open and wince immediately at the glare of fluorescent lighting. I try to figure out what happened.

Did I drink too much last night? Is that why I’m feeling so woozy? I feel the threat of pain hovering around the edges of my consciousness, which I would usually associate with drinking too much wine.

I try cracking open my eyes again and manage to keep them open this time.

I look at the commercial ceiling tiles in confusion. That’s not right. I was at the Baldini house, I remember. Did they drug me and move me somewhere? No, that can’t be right either.

I hear some beeping sounds, the hum and whir of machines nearby. I have been all over that huge mausoleum of a house cleaning and there isn’t a room like this on the property that I know of.

I open my eyes a little wider, and turn my head cautiously. It hurts a little, but not as much as I expected. Maybe I haven’t been drinking then.

Still confused, I realize that I feel pressure on my fingers. I force my head to tilt slightly to try and see what is touching my hand and I realize that I see long, slim, tan fingers gripping mine.

My brain struggles to understand. Who is holding my hand? Whose hand is this? Then I smile as I remember. Oh, it’s Elio’s hand. That’s right, Elio came to stay with me at the house.

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