The Innocent's Secret Baby

He dropped Loretta’s hand and brushed past her, then shrugged off someone else who moved to try to stop him.

‘Raul!’ The priest shot him a warning. ‘Not here—not now.’

‘Then he should have stayed away!’ Raul responded as he strode through the cemetery towards the man who had sent his mother to an early grave.

Raul picked up speed—and God help Bastiano because hate and fury catapulted Raul those last few steps.

‘Pezzo di merda...’ Raul shouted out words that did not belong in such a setting.

Any sane man who saw murder approach would surely turn and run, but instead Bastiano walked towards Raul, hurling insults of his own. ‘Your mother wanted—’

Raul did not let him finish, for Bastiano had already sullied her enough, and to silence him Raul slammed his fist into Bastiano’s face. He felt the enamel of Bastiano’s tooth pierce his knuckle, but that was the last thing he felt.

It was bloody.

Two parts grief, several belts of rage and a hefty dose of shame proved a volatile concoction indeed.

Raul would kill him.

That was all he knew.

Yet Bastiano refused to go quietly and fought back.

There were shouts and the sounds of sirens in the distance as the two men battled it out. Raul felt nothing as he was slammed against a gravestone. The granite tore through the dark suit and white shirt on his back with the same ease that it gouged through muscle and flesh.

It didn’t matter.

His back was already a map of scars from his father’s beatings, and adrenaline was a great anaesthetic.

Only vaguely aware of the wound that ran from shoulder to flank, Raul hauled himself up to stand, took aim again and felled his rival.

Yet Bastiano refused to submit.

Raul pinned Bastiano and slammed his fist into his face, marring those perfect features with relish, and then he held him to the ground and told him he should have stayed the hell away from his mother.

‘Like you did!’

Those words were more painful than any physical blow, for Raul knew that he had done just that—stayed away.

CHAPTER ONE (#ufc5c9635-389f-522d-bb66-b6c8fd2a9a38)

ROME AGAIN... ROME AGAIN...

The City of Love.

Wrapped in a towel, and damp from the shower, Lydia Hayward lay on the bed in her hotel suite and considered the irony.

Yes, she might be in Rome, and meeting tonight with a very eligible man, but it had nothing to do with love.

There were more practical matters that needed to be addressed.

Oh, it hadn’t been said outright, of course.

Her mother hadn’t sat her down one evening and explained that, without the vast and practically bottomless pit of money that this man could provide, they would lose everything. Everything being the castle they lived in, which was the family business too.

And Valerie had never said that Lydia had to sleep with the man she and her stepfather were meeting tonight.

Of course she hadn’t.

Valerie had, however, enquired whether Lydia was on the Pill.

‘You don’t want to ruin your holiday.’

Since when had her mother taken an interest in such things? Lydia had been to Italy once before, on a school trip at the age of seventeen, and her mother hadn’t been concerned enough to ask then.

Anyway, why would she be on the Pill?

Lydia had been told to ‘save’ herself.

And she had.

Though not because of her mother’s instruction—more because she did not know how to let her guard down.

People thought her aloof and cold.

Better they think that than she reveal her heart.

And so, by default, she had saved herself.

Lydia had secretly hoped for love.

It would seem not in this lifetime.

Tonight she would be left alone with him.

The towel fell away and, though she was alone, Lydia pulled it back and covered herself.

She was on the edge of a panic attack, and she hadn’t had one since...

Rome.

Or was it Venice?

Venice.

Both.

That awful school trip.