Kidnapped For Her Secret Son. Andie Brock
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shoving them in the case too.
In truth, she had very few belongings. Since coming to London nine months ago she had moved more times than she could remember, going from one dank and dingy room in a grotty shared house to another, finding jobs wherever she could to try and make ends meet, before finally swallowing her pride and signing on for state benefits.
When the council had found her this flat—literally days before Gabriel had been born—she had wept with relief. It wasn’t much, but it was a home, and that meant everything to her.
‘Are you done?’
She turned to see Jaco silhouetted in the doorway, all dark, menacing authority.
‘Jaco, why are you doing this to us?’ She walked towards him, keeping her voice calm, firm. If there was one last chance to stop this madness she was going to seize it. ‘If you will tell me what’s going on I’m sure we could work something out between us.’
‘Could we, now?’ Sarcasm scored his voice.
‘Yes—why not?’
‘Because I have no interest in working things out with a woman who has been so deliberately deceitful...’ his gaze fell on the sleeping baby in the crib ‘...that she has kept from me the fact that I am a father.’
‘Jaco... I...’
‘Save it, Leah.’ He raised his hand. ‘You will have plenty of time to explain yourself later. First we are getting out of here.’
‘But where are we going?’ She was pleading now.
‘You’ll find out soon enough. Give me your passports.’
‘Passports?’ A fresh wave of panic washed over her.
‘That’s what I said.’ Jaco fixed her with a punishing stare.
‘No—you’re not having them.’
‘Hand them over, Leah.’
‘No.’ She squared up to him. ‘You can’t make me.’
‘Keep me waiting any longer and you will find that I can.’
Leah glared at him in desperation. Whatever had happened to the charming man she’d once thought she knew?
‘Jaco...’ She tried again. ‘Why are you behaving like this?’
‘Passports.’ He held out his hand impatiently. ‘Now.’
With no alternative but to do as she was told, Leah ducked past him and, going into the tiny kitchen, opened a drawer and took out two passports, holding them against her chest. Too late she realised she could have lied—told Jaco that Gabriel didn’t have a passport. The only reason he had one was because she had wanted to be prepared for any eventuality—including fleeing the country to get away from Jaco if necessary.
Over the past twelve months Leah had spent far too much time thinking about Jaco Valentino—he had crowded her head, pervaded her thoughts day and night as if there was no escape from him. Finding out he was a cheating, two-timing bastard had broken her heart, and if that wasn’t enough a darker worm of doubt had begun to eat away at her. About his background, his business dealings, the sort of people he associated with.
She had found herself remembering things that had barely registered at the time. The skilful way he had avoided talking about his past, for example, and the set of his jaw—just a little too firm—when she had threatened to pry too much. His obsession with work—constantly checking his phone, working late into the night...
On more than one occasion she had come across him at two or three in the morning, having stealthily removed himself from her bed, his fingers flying across the keyboard of his laptop, a look of grim determination on his face. With the laptop hurriedly closed at her approach, she had politely but firmly been ordered back to bed, any attempt to ask him what he was working on dismissed with a kiss on the lips before she had been shepherded away.
In retrospect, his need for privacy had been excessive, and now Leah had another word for it—secrecy. Jaco was a man with secrets. She didn’t know what they were. But something told her they were bad.
Which was why she had made the decision to flee to the anonymity of London, to keep her pregnancy a secret, to tell no one about Gabriel. The more she’d examined Jaco, the more convinced she had become that she had to protect Gabriel from him at all costs. As long as he didn’t know of his son’s existence, Jaco could do him no harm.
Doing it alone had been so hard, but keeping the secret from her twin sister had been the hardest thing of all. Harper was used to Leah packing up and leaving on a whim—usually chasing a dream that never materialised. So she hadn’t been that surprised to hear her sister was on her travels again.
Keeping it deliberately vague, Leah had rung her every now and then, assuring her that she was fine, that she was having the time of her life, in fact, and then ending the call and sobbing her eyes out.
Somehow she had managed to keep the pretence going through all those long, lonely months. But deep down she had always known she would crack in the end—and crack she had. Just recently, after yet another mind-numbingly sleepless night with the baby, she had reached for her phone, scrolled to her sister’s number and, taking a shuddering breath, called and confessed to her about Gabriel.
Fending off the barrage of concerned questions, Leah had kept the details to a minimum, saying that he was Jaco’s child, but that she wanted nothing whatsoever to do with him. That under no circumstances was Harper to say anything. She had sworn her sister to secrecy.
And look where that had got her.
Leah’s eyes travelled from the passports in her hand to the implacable face of the man who was waiting for them. With a shaking hand she passed them over to him.
‘There. Happy now?’ She tried for defiance as she watched Jaco flick through the pages, his grim features hardening still further as he found the grainy photo of his baby son.
‘Gabriel McDonald.’ He spat out the name in disgust, barely leashed anger holding him taut. He looked up, thunder clouding his face. ‘This is my son, my flesh and blood—’ he jabbed at the photo with his finger ‘—and yet not only did you not see fit even to tell me of his existence, but he bears your name.’
‘Yes, he does.’ Leah flinched beneath his furious scrutiny, but she refused to show her fear. ‘And that’s because I don’t want you to have anything to do with him.’
Jaco gave a hollow laugh. ‘That much I had worked out for myself.’ He speared her with his eyes. ‘But let me assure you, Leah, your solo rights over this child are very much at an end. The child’s name will be changed—this passport will be changed.’ He held it aloft. ‘My son is a Valentino and that is the name he will bear.’
Leah felt a wave of panic surge inside her. This was exactly what she had been dreading—Jaco storming in, taking over. As a proud Sicilian man, family meant everything to him—she knew that.
From the few scraps of information he’d thrown her she had managed to piece together the fact that his parents had died when he was five, that he’d lived in a children’s home for several years, along with Vieri, and then been adopted at the age of eleven. She knew he was estranged from his adopted family, but any attempt to find out why had been met with a chilling refusal to say any more, Jaco’s urbane mask slipping, ever so slightly, to reveal a darker, more shadowy side.
But his heart was firmly embedded in the small Mediterranean island that he called home—that much was obvious. She had seen it in his eyes when they had been at Capezzana, heard it in his voice. And Leah had no doubt that with such lineage came the primitive sense of possession, the unilateral decision that his child would live in his country and obey his rules. To him blood ties were the strongest tie of all—binding. Impossible to break.
‘Jaco...’