Jennifer Hayward - Rumours - The Secret Billionaires

That gnawing hole had gone with him into his marriage and Antonio had been relaxed about his ex-wife’s refusal to sleep with him, glad he didn’t have to bring children into such a cold marriage when he doubted he could be the kind of father he wanted to be.

‘I agree,’ she said, sad resignation trembling in her voice as she turned to look back up at him, Leo happy to sit and go round and round. ‘His father, however, felt very differently about it.’

‘How old is Leo?’ The question had to be asked. He had to know.

Sadie frowned at him, but he couldn’t stand back and do nothing. If this was his child, his son and heir, then he wouldn’t be able to walk away from here without him. Challenge or no challenge.

Antonio looked again at the boy, who chose that precise moment to squeal and demand the roundabout be stopped. Instantly he leapt forward and grabbed the roundabout, stopping it dead, and found himself looking down into sad dark eyes. It was like looking in the mirror and seeing himself as a young boy.

He spoke in Italian, but the little boy’s lips trembled and he reached for his mother. Inwardly Antonio cursed his disguise, cursed the rough and ready appearance of Toni Adessi.

‘He’s not used to men,’ Sadie said, scooping him up and holding him tightly, giving Leo the opportunity to look accusingly at him.

Guilt raced through him. He didn’t need a paternity test to confirm this was his child. Just one look into the little boy’s eyes told him all he needed to know. Leo was most definitely a Di Marcello.

‘Do you choose to bring him up alone?’ Anger stabbed at him. This child was his and only now was he seeing him for the first time. Dio mio, he hadn’t even known of his existence. Who did Sadie think she was to keep something like this from him? And why?

‘His father walked out on me. That hardly fills me with any kind of wild desire to bring another man into our lives. Your charm would be better used elsewhere, Mr Adessi, because it’s wasted on me.’

* * *

Sadie stood her ground, holding Leo tightly and glaring at this man who’d opened the doors of the past she’d thought tightly sealed. All she could see was the reflection of herself in his sunglasses, which only heightened her irritation.

Why was Toni so interested in her and Leo? An uncomfortable sensation slithered down her spine.

‘That is sad—for the boy,’ he said, looking towards Leo once again, who promptly buried his face in her shoulder to avoid the unwelcome scrutiny. ‘If Leo were my child, I’d want to know all about him.’

Sadie sighed in exasperation. Why was she having this conversation with this man? Guilt. The word slithered like a serpent into her mind. Guilt because although she had tried hard to tell Antonio Di Marcello he was to be a father, it hadn’t been enough. She’d just meekly accepted his mother’s horrified denial as she’d slammed the door in her face. She should have done more, tried harder—for Leo’s sake, not hers or Antonio’s.

Pain from the day she’d gone to the grand house that was his family home still jarred her as she looked up at Toni and saw her anger bouncing back from his sunglasses, intensifying it further. ‘I was informed that a child, or I should say an illegitimate child, was not a welcome addition to the mighty family of...’

She cut the words short just in time but thought back to those early days of pregnancy, when she’d tried to get a message to Antonio through his parents, the only way of contacting him she had. They hadn’t wanted to listen to her, a woman who was intent on securing her financial future with such wild claims. They had taken great relish in informing her that their son was to be married and that they wouldn’t do anything to jeopardise such a sought-after union. The marriage of childhood sweethearts, they’d told her.

When she’d seen the photographs in the local papers, she’d known she could never try again, that she had to move forward with her life and bring up her child alone. Antonio Di Marcello had married his childhood sweetheart just weeks after their passionate weekend. It had been nothing more than a pre-marriage affair for him. A final fling. The scandal of a love child would be unwelcome and she hadn’t been able to put herself or the baby through that. Especially after the threats made to her family by his.

‘Are you sure?’ His accented voice growled with irritation and a dark thought clouded in on her, like an approaching storm.

‘Why are you here, Mr Adessi? At the garage, I mean.’ She plucked up the courage to ask the question which had been niggling at her conscience since he’d first looked at Leo. There had been shock on his face for the briefest of seconds that even his sunglasses had been unable to conceal.

Did Antonio Di Marcello have a brother or cousin? Had he sent someone to check out her claims and, if so, why now? Why wait this long?

Four years she’d wasted, hoping and dreaming, but she’d finally been persuaded by her mother that a life in Milan wasn’t what she or Leo needed. She’d given up on the notion that she had to remain close to Leo’s father and was preparing to return to England with her parents in just a few weeks’ time. Had that been what had prompted this? Was she even now being watched and information relayed back to Antonio of the child he so obviously didn’t want? Just what did he have to gain, though? Confusion muddled her thoughts.

‘I took this job to prove a point.’ Toni’s voice had a calm steadiness in each word and he sounded suddenly very different. He spoke in the same way Antonio had spoken to her when he’d told her it was over. He was using that same decisive and totally in control voice.

Antonio’s words surged from her memory, playing again in her mind as if he stood before her right now.

Our weekend, fun as it was, has finished and we must go back to our normal lives.

Except she hadn’t been able to. That luxury was taken from her before he’d even walked out of the door. The legacy of their affair had changed her life from that moment on.

‘And what point is that?’ Sadie asked as suspicion and unease battled for supremacy inside her.

Toni stepped back a pace and looked at her, then at Leo, which only added to the unease. ‘To prove that I can.’ He looked back at her and a sensation of outrage lingered in the air. ‘And I will do exactly that.’

CHAPTER THREE

AS THE FIRST week turned into the second, Antonio was forced to admit it was going to be even harder than the first and it had nothing to do with the tiny apartment or the work. It had everything to do with Sadie.

Last weekend in the park he’d almost come clean, almost blown his cover. The temptation had been huge. As soon as he’d realised that Sadie’s little boy was almost certainly his child, he’d wanted to insist they return to Rome with him right there and then. It was only his loyalty to Sebastien, as well as Stavros and Alejandro, which had halted that impulse. That loyalty had been far stronger than the need to prove Sebastien wrong. Now he knew for sure their challenges had nothing to do with surviving without their fortunes. Sebastien had more than done his homework setting this challenge for him and no doubt had something of a similar nature planned for Stavros and Alejandro.

Now, at the end of his last week, he wiped his hands on a cloth and tossed it impatiently aside, eager to leave Toni Adessi behind, eager to put into motion what he needed to do.

As he slipped on his sunglasses he didn’t have to turn around to know that Sadie was coming down the steps from the office to the workshop. Every nerve cell in his body alerted him to her presence.

‘I understand you are leaving today.’ Sadie’s silky-soft voice so close to him caught him unawares after she’d spent the last week avoiding him. ‘Is this not the job for you after all? Have you failed in your mission to prove you can?’