Page 27 of Pocketful of Us

Finally, he spoke. "I will let you live, Ramona Dillon." He slowly stood, drawing himself to his full height and towering over me. "For now, at least."

"I'll take for now." Sagging in relief, I quickly moved out of his way of the door. "Thank you."

"I will send for a doctor," he added. "To check on your baby."

Mentally reeling by the strange turn of events, I nodded in response and let my attention shift to the picture frame I was still holding.

"Raffaele?" I breathed, heart thumping wildly in my chest. "Can I ask you a question?"

"Yes?" he replied, pausing in the doorway to look back at me.

Holding up the picture so that he could see, I whispered, "Why do you have a picture of Sketch?"

10

Romi

Raffaele's attempt at taking my life in his bathtub felt like a distant memory, even though only a handful of minutes ago.

It didn’t matter anymore.

Not to him and not to me.

Too stunned to feel anything other than shock and surprise at the sight of seeing Sketch's picture, I let the feeling of resentment go.

"Giacobbe," Raffaele whispered over and over. Sinking to the bathroom floor, he snatched the picture out of my hand and clutched it to his chest. "My baby. This is my Giacobbe."

"No." I shook my head and snatched the picture right back from him and cuddled it close. "This ismySketch."

We both stared at each other, neither one of us daring to breathe too loudly, while awareness came crashing down on both of us.

"You say this boy is Sketch." A pained groan slipped from his lips. "But how can that be when this boy is myson?"

"I don’t know," I finally breathed, too scared to voice the unbelievable. "But I know that boy on your shoulders in that photograph is Sketch." A shiver rolled through me. "I would know that face anywhere, I could pick it out of a crowd of thousands in the pitch dark, and I'm telling you that boy in your picture is the boy I've spent my life adoring. That boy is my best friend." My hand slipped to my stomach. "He's the one whose baby is growing inside of me."

"It cannot be," Raffaele choked out, chest heaving. "He died… He was murdered, dammit! Killed for the sins of his father." His eyes flashed with fury. "For the greed ofyourfather."

"Sketch was raised with the Capaldis in the house right next door to mine," I declared, as a desperate urge to explain everything overtook me. "When I was little, I used to have these awful dreams, about a little boy trapped behind a locked door. It was always the same dream. The same boy. The same locked door." Shivering at the thought of those horrible nightmares, I forced myself to continue. "Sketch had thesamedreams. But his were about a little girl. Locked behind thesamelocked door. I never knew what any of it meant until recently. I never knew that the dreams we shared weren't dreams at all, butmemories." I blew out a shaky breath. "Right up until the night Sketch was shot and I was taken, we believed that he was Chris's twin brother, but it was a lie. It was all a cover up that Chris was killed to keep hidden. Sketch was never Mr. and Mrs. Capaldi's son, and his name has never been Holden Capaldi."

"Ramona –"

"My father admitted it before he took me away that night," I hurried to tell him. "He told me to wake up. He called me a little fool. He said that I needed to look around me. I told him that I knew the boy from my dreams was Sketch." I shook my head, thinking back to that night. "I told my father that I knew they weren't dreams, but he said that I was wrong." Trembling, I tucked my tangled hair behind my ears and whispered, "He told me that the boy was Jacob Toretto."

Raffaele's face had turned a deathly shade of white.

"And this woman," I added, pointing to the woman in the picture. "Your wife? I remember her." It was all coming back to me. Like a dam had been broken inside of my mind. I forced myself to feel everything, to remember everything I had so fought so hard to forget. "I was there the night she died… the night they burned her in the courtyard of this very estate."

Raffaele dropped his head in hands. "Giacobbe."

"Sketch was there, too," I strangled out, breathing hard and fast. "I remember. I remember!" Frantic, I tried to explain my tangled thoughts. "He was holding that shawl, wasn't he?" I didn’t need anyone to confirm what I knew to be true. "He was crying for his papa –" A sob escaped my trembling lips. "He was so scared. I tried to comfort him – tried to make it better, but she was screaming so loud and it made him worse –"

"Enough," Raffaele groaned, sounding like my words were physically wounding him. "I cannot hear this…"

"They took him away after that," I choked out, tangling my fingers in my knotted hair. "Put him on the ship. I was with him, but they wouldn't let me see him, so I would sneak out… bring him cookies. Try to make him feel better so he would stop crying, but then they burned him really badly and those men started coming into my room at night to scare me –" I stopped short and felt every ounce of air leave my lungs. "The men."

Catochi.

Pretty little princess.

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