Page 46 of A Son Hidden from the Sicilian

She loved him.

Lorenzo was holding a young girl who didn’t look any older than Gio and speaking to a man who could have been his twin. He had a broad smile on his face. This was the man she’d fallen in love with. This was the man she wanted.

But when he noticed her there, everything changed. Stiffened. But he acknowledged her, bidding her forward.

“Brianna, this is my brother Stefano.”

Stefano held out a hand and she shook it. His smile was wide and easy. “My wife had to take the baby up for a diaper change, but she’s eager to meet you and Gio.”

“We’re eager to meet you all as well,” Brianna managed with a smile. It wasn’t a lie. She wanted Gio to have all this. To look around and see people who looked like him, who shared his blood, who loved him because they were connected by bonds that could only be broken if you chose to break them. Aunts, uncles, cousins. She wanted itallfor her son.

“Well, I’ll apologize in advance. You get us all together and it can be overwhelming, but I can assure you my wife and I have done a lot of work to train everyone not to inundate the children with attention if they aren’t having it.” He took the girl from Lorenzo as if to demonstrate. “Which is why this one needs a little nap before the rest of the troops arrive. I’ll be back down for the eleven o’clock conference call, Lorenzo.”

Lorenzo nodded and said nothing as Stefano took the shy little girl out of the room. And closed the door behind him.

Which was for the best. This was a very private conversation and it looked like privacy might be on the premium once the rest of the family arrived. But Stefano had also mentioned a conference call. Itwasa workday, she supposed. She just wasn’t sure how much that mattered to a billionaire. “Do you have a few moments to talk?”

Lorenzo pointed to a chair in front of this desk. “Yes, I was actually going to request your presence once I was done with Stefano.”

He spoke very carefully, but he didn’t look like himself. He looked...tired. Like perhaps he too had struggled to sleep. Had he thought of what they’d said?

Or what they’d done?

Brianna tried to think of neither, but the dark room at the party loomed large in her head. She had begged him last night.Begged. Her cheeks had to be red as tomatoes at this point because it all replayed in her head like an erotic movie.

But he did not smile charmingly. He did not point it out. He stood there. Stiffly. Businessman Lorenzo Parisi, nothing else.

“I have come up with an alternative plan to you returning to New Jersey,” he said, clasping his hands behind his back and moving to stand behind his desk. Like they were in a business meeting. Or she was an employee and he was about to fire her.

She was here, trying to spell her feelings out for him—for the first time—and he was...planning. Plotting. Controlling. She wanted to roll her eyes, but she tried to hold on to some patience. He didn’t know what she wanted to say.

“I think we should talk before you offer any...plans.” Like he just got to make the plan and she’d jump to it.

He shook his head. “No. I’ve made the plans. This is what we’ll do.”

The man could be such a tyrant. “Lorenzo, my God.” She was about to get up, whirl away, march off, pack a bag andneverlook back.

Except he’s the father of your child and you don’t get to just run away like he did before.

She took a deep, settling breath and focused on what she’d come here to say. “I want to discuss—”

“We will marry.”

She thought maybe she blacked out for a minute and hallucinated those words. Just yesterday he had talked about marrying someone else. Just last night he’d been on the same page about her going home. “Excuse me?”

“As much as I would like to grant you your space, after calming down and giving it some thought, I realized I simply cannot live with Gio so far away. I have missed too much already. I know you won’t leave him, nor should you. He should have both mother and father within reach at all times.”

“What does this have to do with gettingmarried?” Brianna asked, pinching the inside of her arm to make certain she wasn’t having some kind of bizarre fever dream.

But he stood behind his desk, looking remote and determined, even with the exhaustion evident on his gorgeous face. “You did not care for the idea of me marrying someone else, sowewill marry. We will find a way to very carefully divide our lives, but we will both live on this property so we both might be in our son’s life.”

It was what she wanted. Sort of. But she thought of last night. Even if he didn’t marry someone else, they weren’t on the same page. The only thing they agreed on was Gio. And she could live like that, but not on his property. Notmarried.

“We will be married in name only,” he said, fully driving that point home. “We will live separate lives on the same piece of property. We will not engage in relationships with anyone else, so there will be no jealousy. We will not be alone with one another so there will be no...temptation. Your parents and my siblings will act as buffers.”

It wasn’t that it sounded so terrible, it was just that she didn’t understand where this was coming from. She didn’t understand how he thought he could just make pronouncements like that. “And we have to marry for this ridiculous plan?”

“I will need to be married at some point in the next few years for optics’ sake. If it bothers you that it might be someone else, it might as well be you.”

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