Page 4 of Bound By Sin
Although Valentino didn’t know about Nia, and I covered my tracks as much as I could, even keeping Nia’s father’s identity from Brian, one of our closest friends, that didn’t mean someone couldn’t find out if they did enough digging and use her to get to him. Someone had already found out that there was a possibility Valentino was Nia’s father, despite all the steps I’d taken and the money I spent to keep it hidden.
My daughter’s safety was my top priority, whether she understood it or not. Whether she liked her school or not. And while I hated that she didn’t enjoy it, she only had one more year to endure it. Then, she’d be off to college, which brought a lot more problems I didn’t want to think about right now.
At least she was safe for now.
But for how long?
“Ma, you’ve been out of the game for so long, nobody will even recognize who you are, anyway.”
I put my hand against my chest, clutching my non-existent pearls. “I know you’re not calling me old, Nia Valentina Weatherly,” I said with as much indignation as I could muster without bursting into a fit of laughter.
I’d been “out of the game,” as she called it, for a long time, but my ass wasn’t as old as she made me out to be. I was nearing forty, but I looked damn good for my age and still turned down movie roles and modeling gigs to this day.
She rolled her eyes but couldn’t stop her laughter. “Ma, you haven’t been in a movie or on the catwalk in, like, years. Since I was born, right? I seriously don’t believe anybody will know who you are.”
“So, I’m not relevant anymore?” I nodded, trying to look as serious as possible. “Is that what you’re saying? Your mother, the former Supermodel who has graced the cover of Vogue and Sports Illustrated, among many others, as well as Hollywood screens, is too old to be relevant, so the kids or their parents won’t even recognize me?”
“You know what I mean,” she said after her laughter died.
Using the excuse of my fame, or lack thereof, was to keep her safe from her father’s enemies. I understood what she meant, but I couldn’t just say, “Your father’s a fucking gangster, and that’s why you can’t go to public school.” And Valentino wasn’t some regular, on-the-corner gangster slinging drugs. He was the head of one of the Five Families. Part of La Cosa Nostra.
When I heard he had taken over, I looked him up. The only person who had more power than her father was the now leader of the Rizzo Crime Family, Antonio Rizzo, Jr., whose father died a few days ago here in Chicago. Apparently, he was who the Italians called “the boss of bosses.”
Valentino Cavallaro had always been a dangerous man, even before he became the Don of a mafia crime family. I recognized it the first night I met him at a party after the premiere of one of my films he’d been invited to by Brian. He’d oozed so much power and danger, it made my skin tingle. You could taste it in the air. It was suffocating and intoxicating how men envied him. How woman fawned over him. It was one of the things that drew me to him. One of the many things that made me fall in love with him. His power, his dangerous aura, was damn near addictive.
Every woman loves the bad boy.
I sighed. “Let’s see how the rest of the year goes, and if you still want to leave, we’ll look into public schools for next year with input from Nathan. But I’m not making any promises, Nia. Your safety is my main priority.”
The way she smiled almost made my heart stop. The older she got, the more she favored Valentino. Besides her tawny complexion, which she got from me, she was the spitting image of him—the same dark hair, intense blue eyes, and smile that wasn’t quite a smile, but more like a smirk. The kind of smile that looked like they were up to something. If he ever came to Chicago and somehow saw her, there was no way I could deny she was his child.
She’d only asked about him once, about two years ago, when the school was having a father-daughter dance. I gave her some bullshit story about her father being some model I had a brief relationship with while in Milan for fashion week, the same story I told anyone when they questioned me about Nia’s father. Laila believed me, but I didn’t think Brian ever did. While he didn’t voice it out loud to me, the older Nia got, there was no way he couldn’t see Valentino was her father. He had to at least suspect there was a possibility, even if he had never asked me outright.
After I fed her that lie about her father, she didn’t ask anymore, to my relief, and I offered no more information. But to say the subject of Valentino was forgotten wasn’t the truth. I saw the longing in my daughter’s eyes when her friends were around their fathers, or when she had a soccer game and the dads sat in the stands, cheering on their kids. She wanted that, and I wanted that for her. Despite me being there, not ever missing one of her games or other important events in her life, I understood it wasn’t the same.
My heart ached because I couldn’t give it to her, but I had to put aside my motherly instinct to give my daughter the world, so I could protect her from that same world. A world that wouldn’t care that she was a loving, caring, super-intelligent person who wouldn’t hurt a soul. A world that would look at her as nothing more than the daughter of a crime boss and take advantage of that.
Valentino was now the head of the Cavallaro Family, not some ordinary criminal. He was the leader of an international criminal organization that controlled most of the east coast, mid-Atlantic, and the Midwest. Her heartache and longing for him, although heart-wrenching, was better than her being dead because of him if I gave her the one thing that could get her killed. I wasn’t going to do that, no matter how much it hurt her or me to deny her of him.
“Do you have any plans for the weekend?” I asked, trying to pull myself from the thoughts of Valentino.
Last I heard, he spent most of his time in Italy when he wasn’t in Philadelphia being a crime boss—not that I kept eyes on him or anything after he left me without a word, ripping my heart out of my chest in the process. But Brian always slipped in a comment here or there about his friend. I didn’t know if it was to just ease my pain, or whether he wanted to let me know because of Nia.
According to Brian, Valentino hadn’t gotten married and had no kids—other than our daughter, of course. Instead, he immersed himself in being a mafia Don and running multiple legitimate businesses. Either way, I hoped he stayed away. Valentino would probably kill me for keeping his daughter a secret from him, even though he wouldn’t answer my calls and had cut me completely out of his life.
“I’m gonna crash at Rosie’s for the weekend.” Nia pulled her head full of curls up into a loose, messy bun on top of her head. “A bunch of us are binging some shows.”
“Her parents are going to be there, right?” I asked with my brow arched.
She rolled her eyes and smacked her teeth. “Of course, Ma.”
My daughter was a straight-A student-athlete and gorgeous. I wasn’t stupid. I knew what girls her age did when they didn’t have eyes on them. And it was the weekend. Rosie’s parents worked late nights sometimes, especially on the weekends.
“Don’t roll your eyes at me, young lady,” I scolded. “Don’t forget I was your age once. I know what girls your age do when parents aren’t around.”
“I’m sorry, Ma. I didn’t mean to be disrespectful. It’s just been a long day.”
I nodded. “Apology accepted. Boys?” I asked, getting us back on track with our initial conversation.
