‘I don’t want your money.’ Vito’s son proudly refused the offer.
‘Breakfast, then,’ Catherine suggested, coming to squat down beside Vito, her eyes the compassionate eyes of a mother who understood exactly what a small boy’s priorities would be. ‘No one should run away without eating a good breakfast first,’ she told him. ‘Come and sit down at the table,’ she urged, holding out an inviting hand to him, ‘and I’ll get you some juice and a bowl of that new cereal you like.’
He ignored the hand. Instead his fiercely guarded brown eyes began flicking from one adult face to the other, and a confused frown began to pucker at his brow. Vito uttered a soft curse beneath his breath as understanding hit him. Catherine was a second behind him before she realised what it was that was holding Santo’s attention so.
And now the tears really did flood her eyes, because it wasn’t Santo’s fault that this had to be the first time in his young memory that his parents’ two faces had appeared in the same living frame in front of him!
An arm suddenly arrived around her shoulders. Warm and strong, the attached hand gave her arm a warning squeeze. As a razor-sharp tactician, famed for thinking on his feet, Vito had few rivals; she knew that. But the way he had quickly assessed the situation and decided on expanding on the little boy’s absorption in their novel togetherness was impressive even to her.
‘We don’t want you to leave us, son …’ As slick as that Vito compounded on the ‘togetherness’.
Santos’s eyes fixed on Catherine. ‘Do you want me to stay?’ he asked, so pathetically in need of reassurance that she had to clench her fists to stop herself from reaching out for him.
‘Of course I do. I love you.’ She stated it simply. She then extended that claim to include Vito. ‘We both love you.’
But Santo was having none of it. ‘Marietta says you don’t,’ he told his father accusingly. ‘Marietta said I was a mistake that just gets in the way.’
‘You must have misunderstood her,’ Vito said grimly.
The son’s eyes flicked into insolence. ‘Marietta said that you hate my mummy because she made you have me,’ he said. ‘She said that’s why you live in Naples and I live here in London, out of your way.’
Vito’s fingers began to dig into Catherine’s shoulder. Did he honestly believe that she would feed her own son this kind of poison when anyone with eyes could see that Santo was tearing himself up with it all?
‘What Marietta says is not important, Santo,’ she inserted firmly. ‘It’s what Papà says and I say that really matters to you. And we both love you very much,’ she repeated forcefully. ‘Would Papà have gone without his sleep to fly himself here through the night just to come and see you if he didn’t love you?’
The remark hit a nerve. Catherine saw the tiny flicker of doubt enter her son’s eyes as he turned them on his father. ‘Why did you come?’ he demanded of Vito outright.
‘Because you would not come to me,’ Vito answered simply. ‘And I miss you when you are not there …’
I miss you when you are not there … For Catherine those few words held such a wealth of love in them that she wanted to weep all over again. Not for Santo this time, but for another little person, one who would always be missed even though he could never be here.
Maybe Vito realised what kind of memory his words had evoked, maybe he was merely responding to the tiny quiver she gave as she tried to contain what was suddenly hurting inside her. But his arm grew heavier across her shoulders and gently he drew her closer to his side.
With no idea what was passing through his mother’s heart, Santo too was responding to all of that love placed into his father’s statement. The small boy let out a sigh that shook mournfully as it left him, but at last some of the stiffness left his body—though he still wasn’t ready to drop his guard. Marietta had hurt him much too deeply for her wicked words to be wiped out by a couple of quick reassurances.
‘Where’s Nonna?’ he asked, clearly deciding it was time to change the subject.
His father refused to let him. ‘I promised her I would bring you back to Naples with me, if I could convince you to come,’ Vito said.
‘I don’t like Naples any more,’ Santo responded instantly. ‘I don’t ever—ever—want to go there again.’
‘I am very sorry to hear that, Santo,’ Vito responded very gently. ‘For your sudden dislike of Naples rather spoils the surprise your mamma and I had planned for you.’
‘What surprise?’ the boy quizzed warily.
Surprise? Catherine was repeating to herself, her head twisting to look at Vito with a question in her eyes, wondering just where he was attempting to lead Santo with this.
‘I’m not going to live with you in Naples!’ Santo suddenly shouted as his busy mind drew its own conclusions. ‘I won’t live anywhere where Marietta is going to live!’ he stated forcefully.
Vito frowned. ‘Marietta does not live in my house,’ he pointed out.
‘But she will when you marry her! I hate Marietta!’
In response, Vito turned to Catherine with a look meant to turn her to stone. He still thought it was she who had been feeding his son all this poison against his precious Marietta!
I’ll make you pay for this! those eyes were promising. And as Catherine’s emotions began the see-sawing tilt from pain to bitterness, her green eyes fired back a spitting volley of challenges, all of which were telling him to go ahead and try it—then go to hell for all she cared!
He even understood that. ‘Then hell it is,’ he hissed in a soft undertone that stopped the threat from reaching their son’s ears.
Then he was turning back to Santo, all smooth-faced and impressive puzzlement. ‘But how can I marry Marietta when I am married to your mamma?’ he posed, and watched the small boy’s scowl alter to an uncertain frown—then delivered with a silken accuracy the dart aimed to pierce dead centre of his son’s vulnerability. ‘And your mamma and I want to stay married, Santino. We love each other just as much as we love you. We are even going to live in the same house together.’
It was the ultimate coup de grâce, delivered with the perfect timing of a master of the art.
And through the burning red mists that flooded her brain cells Catherine watched Vito’s head turn so he could send her the kind of smile that turned men into devils. Deny it, if you dare, that smile challenged.
She couldn’t. And he knew she couldn’t, because already their son’s face was lighting up as if someone had just switched his life back on. So she had to squat there, seething but silent, as Vito then pressed a clinging kiss to her frozen lips as still he continued to build relentlessly on the little boy’s new store of ‘togetherness’ images.
Then all she could do was watch, rendered surplus to requirements by his machiavellian intellect, as he turned his attention back to their little witness and proceeded to add the finishing touches with an expertise that was positively lethal.
‘Will you come too, Santo?’ he murmured invitingly. ‘Help us to be a proper family?’
A proper family, Catherine repeated silently. The magic words to any child from a broken home.
‘You mean live in the same house—you, me and mummy?’ Already Santo’s voice was shaky with enchantment.
Vito nodded. ‘And Nonna,’ he added. ‘Because it has to be Naples,’