The Don's Wife Died With His Secret Heir novel · Chapter 19 of 24
Chapter 19: The Boy
In the morning Nadia stood in the front hall of the villa with a suitcase at her feet.
The boy sat on the bottom stair beside her, swinging his legs, with the stuffed rabbit in his lap.
She had not slept either.
"I won't stay," she said, before I could speak. "I know I can't."
"Nobody has asked you to go."
"You will. I would." She straightened the boy's collar. "I'd like to be gone before Santo gets down."
"Where?"
"My sister has a place in Florida. She doesn't know about any of it." Her mouth twisted. "She thinks I was Santo's mistress for three years. That's the part she can forgive."
The boy looked up at me.
"Where's Zio Otto?" he asked.
Nadia went white.
I crouched down on the marble in front of him, so that my face was level with his.
He had the notch in his ear, and a smear of jam at the corner of his mouth, and Ottavio's long, serious forehead.
I had spent two years hating the idea of this child.
He was three, and he wanted the man who had spoiled him.
"He had to go away," I said.
"Is he coming back?"
"No, sweetheart."
"Why?"
I looked at Nadia.
She shook her head very slightly, begging.
"Because he did some things that were wrong," I said, "and grown-ups don't let people do that. It isn't because of anything you did."
He thought this over.
"Can I take Rabbit?"
"Rabbit is yours."
Luca came down the stairs in his socks, rubbing his eye.
He stopped beside the boy and held out half of a buttered roll without a word.
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