Chapter 28

Layla

I stared at the man across the restaurant.

He was gorgeous—dark curls slicked back, dark eyes fringed in dark lashes, dark skin glowing gold in the soft light. His suit perfectly framed the breadth of his shoulders and accented his narrow waist. Like a fallen angel landed on Earth.

Too bad beauty was only skin deep.

The nerve of that man! How could he do this? I was finally, finally trying to put our tumultuous past behind us … and he’d followed me. To this beautiful restaurant that I was trying to enjoy—free of all his drama.

Like he just couldn’t stand the thought of me being clear of his life for a single moment.

“Mommy.” Eli’s warm fingers curled over the top of my wrist, jerking my attention away from Aldo. My hand was clenched into a tight fist around my fork, my fingers white with tension.

“Sorry, baby.” I forced a long, slow breath through my nose, forced my fingers to loosen on the utensil. “I just didn’t expect to see him here.”

“Aldo.” Marco’s voice was tight, and his hands had disappeared below the table. Like he, too, had clenched them into fists. I could have cut the tension at our table with a knife.

“The man doesn’t know how to take a hint,” I agreed with a grimace. “He thinks that having history means you have some kind of future.”

“You know a man like him is used to getting what he wants.” Marco’s words were a low murmur, barely audible over the hum of background conversation. “Tell him no, it only makes him want it more.”

My fingers curled into fists again. Is that what this was? Aldo was so used to having women throw themselves at him, he wanted to chase the challenge?

Was every ‘no’ just more encouragement?

But somehow, I knew that wasn’t it. “He’s not like that.”

“You don’t know him.” Marco shook his head, drawing my gaze to the tightness in the corners of his mouth. It bothered him, Aldo being here. Aldo’s insistence on being involved in my life.

“Do you?” I asked.

“I’ve met enough men like him.” His words made me think of the dark bruising around Marco’s eye and across his cheek—faded to nothing now, but they’d been there. So bold and prominent, the product of Aldo’s fists.

“One is enough for me,” I agreed.

“Should we leave?”

“I’m not letting him scare me away from a nice dinner.” I turned my hand to curl my fingers through Eli’s. “We were having a great time, right baby?”

But he wasn’t looking at me. He was looking at Aldo, who now stared at the gorgeous Italian woman across from him.

“Eli?”

“Maybe you should talk to him.” Eli tilted his face up towards me, so his bright blue eyes locked onto mine. “He is a nice man, Mommy.”

Nice man. I wanted to scoff at that. The last word I’d use to describe Aldo Marcello was nice. He didn’t deserve anywhere near the attention and energy I was giving him.

But the way Eli looked up at me, those eyes so earnest … who was I to deny him?

“All right,” I sighed. I swept my napkin from my lap, tossed it into the table, and stood. Aldo didn’t turn as I strode across the room towards his table, but his shoulders stiffened as I approached, like he felt me coming. Like he’d never stopped watching.

It was only as I stopped beside him that he turned towards me. “Layla.”

“We need to talk.” I kept my eyes on him, though I could feel Aurora’s dark gaze burning a hole in my cheek. I couldn’t imagine what she was thinking—and I didn’t care.

I half expected one of them to protest. To ask if it had to happen now, if it could wait until after dinner—

Aldo stood. “All right.”

I led the way through the restaurant lobby and out into the parking lot. The cool night air whispered across my cheeks and my short heels clicked against the pavement of the parking lot.

I stopped around the side of the building, where I thought we might have the best chance at privacy, but Aldo was the first to speak. “I swear I had no idea you’d be here.”

“No?” I crossed my arms. “So, why are you here then?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” His hand swept over his soft black hair, dislodging a curl that dropped across his brow. “I’m on a date.”

The words hit harder than they should have. Why did I care what he did, who he was with? I already knew—everyone knew—he and Aurora were perfect together.

So why did having the evidence shoved in my face hurt so much?

“A date.” My voice sounded strangled, rough. “With Aurora.”

“Is there any reason I shouldn’t be?” he asked, but softly. Almost … hopefully?

But I didn’t care. He could date whoever he wanted. It wasn’t my business anymore than my romantic life was his business.

The one thing I did care about—“Why did you shoot? When those men had my son, you shot at him. Why?”

He turned away, his gaze cast unseeingly across the half-full parking lot. What was he thinking? What was going through his mind? Was he weaving another pretty lie to feed me?

“Do you care so little about his life?” I pressed. “What if you’d missed? What if you’d hit him? Could you have lived with—”

“Yes.” He turned back, his voice tight and his face hard but earnest—just like little Eli’s had been. “I could have lived with myself. I did it because I know this world, Layla. I know what men like that do to their captives.”

The words churned my gut sickeningly.

“The world I live in is brutal,” Aldo continued in that same tight but somehow gentle voice. “I shot because even if I’d missed, even if I’d hit Eli, it would have been better than if those men had taken him alive.”

Bile burned my throat as the meaning sunk in. How could he stand in front of me and deliver such vile news, like he was telling me what was on the dinner menu?

“I shot to save him.” Aldo’s voice went soft. “And I’d make the same choice again.”

The words washed over me like cold waves on a sandy shore. I’d never stopped to think about what might have happened if he hadn’t fired that shot—if he’d let those men get away.

What would have happened, if those men had put Eli in a boat and taken him away? Would Aldo have been able to track them, find them? Or would that have been the last I’d ever seen of my son?

Would I have wondered until the end of my days what had happened to him?

“Death is a mercy in this world,” Aldo murmured, and when I focused on his beautiful face, he was looking away again. Eyes out of focus, like he was staring into something much further away than the high-end cars in the parking lot. “I’d hoped you’d never have to know that.”

The question sat on my tongue, unspoken. Heavy. Too heavy to place into the space between us. Is that why you left me, eight years ago?

I couldn’t ask. Instead, I whispered. “What if you’d hit him?”

“I’d have regretted it until the end of my life,” said Aldo, stepping slowly back from me. “But I’d still have taken that shot. For him. For you.”

He walked away, leaving me alone on the edge of that building.