Buch lesen: «The Sicilian’s Stolen Son»

CHAPTER ONE

LUCIANO VITALE’S LONDON LAWYER, Charles Bennett, greeted him the moment he stepped off his private jet. The Sicilian billionaire and the professional exchanged polite small talk. Luciano stalked like a lion that had already picked up the scent of prey in the air, impatience and innate aggression girding every step.

He had tracked her down...at last. The thieving child stealer, Jemima Barber. There were no adequate words to convey his loathing for the woman who had stolen his son and then tried to sell the baby back to him like a product. It galled him even more that he would not be able to bring the full force of the law down on Jemima. Not only did he not want his private life laid open to the world’s media again, but he was also all too aware of the likely long-term repercussions of such a vengeful act. Hadn’t he suffered enough at the hands of the press while his wife was alive? These days Luciano very much preferred the shadows to the full glare of daylight and the endless libellous headlines that had followed his every move throughout his marriage.

Even so, Luciano still walked tall and every female head in his vicinity turned to appreciate his passing. He stood six feet four inches tall, with the build of a natural athlete, not to mention the stunning good looks he had been born with. Not a single flaw marred his golden skin, straight nose or the high cheekbones and hollows that combined to lend him the haunting beauty of a fallen angel. He cared not at all for his beautiful face, though, indeed had learned to see it as a flaw that attracted unwelcome attention.

As it was, it was intolerable to him that in spite of taking every precaution he had almost lost a second child. Instantly he reprimanded himself for making that assumption. He could not know for certain that the boy was his until the DNA testing had been done. It was perfectly possible that the surrogate mother he had chosen for the role had slept with other men at the time of the artificial insemination. She had broken every other clause of the agreement they had signed, so why not that one as well?

But, if the baby was his as he hoped, would it take after its lying, cheating mother? Was there such a thing as bad genes? He refused to accept that. His own life stood testament to that belief because he was the last in a long ruthless line of men, famed for their contempt for the law and their cruelty. There could be no taint in an innocent child, merely inclinations that could be encouraged or discouraged. He reminded himself that on paper his son’s mother had appeared eminently respectable. The only child of elderly, financially indebted parents, she had presented herself as a trained infant teacher with a love of growing vegetables and cookery. Unfortunately her true interests, which he had only discovered after she had run from the hospital with the child, had proved to be a good deal less respectable. She was a sociopathic promiscuous thrill-seeker who overspent, gambled and stole without conscience when she ran out of money.

Time and time again he had blamed himself for his decision not to physically meet with the mother of his child, not to personalise in any way what was essentially a business arrangement. Would he have recognised her true nature if he had? He had not expected her to want to see him either, when he came to collect the child from the hospital after the birth, but in the event he had arrived there to learn that she had already vanished, leaving behind only a note that spelt out her financial demands. By then she had found out how rich he was and only greed had motivated her.

‘I must ask,’ Charles murmured in the tense silence within the limousine. ‘Do you intend to tip off the police about the lady’s whereabouts?’

Luciano tensed, his wide sensual mouth compressing. ‘No, I do not.’

‘May I ask...’ Choosing tact over frank frustration, Charles left the question hanging, wishing that his wealthiest client would be a little more forthcoming. But Luciano Vitale, the only child of Sicily’s once most petrifying Mafia don, had always been a male of forbidding reserve. A billionaire at the age of thirty, he was a hugely successful businessman and, to the best of Charles’s knowledge, resolutely legitimate in all his dealings. And yet his very name still struck fear into those who surrounded him and they paled and trembled in the face of his displeasure. His loathing for the paparazzi, and the ever lingering danger of his criminal ancestry making him the target of a hit, ensured that he was encircled by bodyguards, who kept the rest of the world at bay. In so many ways, Luciano Vitale remained a complete mystery. Charles would have given much to know why a man with so many more appealing options had chosen to pick a surrogate mother to bring a child into the world.

‘I will not be responsible for sending the apparent mother of my son to prison,’ Luciano said without any expression at all. ‘There is no doubt in my mind that Jemima deserves to go to prison but I do not wish to be the instrument that puts her there.’

‘Quite understandable,’ Charles chimed in, although it was a polite lie because he did not understand at all. ‘However, the police are already looking for her and notifying them of her location could be done most discreetly.’

‘And then what?’ Luciano prompted. ‘The elderly grandparents receive custody of my son? And the authorities are forced to enter the picture to consider his welfare? You have already warned me that surrogacy arrangements receive a divergent and uncertain reception within the UK court system. I will not take any risk that could entail losing all rights to my son.’

‘But the Barber woman has already made it clear that she will only surrender the boy for a substantial sum of money...and you must not, you cannot offer her cash because that would put you on the wrong side of British law.’

‘I will find some acceptable and legal way to bring this matter to a satisfactory conclusion,’ Luciano breathed softly, lean brown fingers flexing impatiently on his thighs. ‘Without damaging publicity or a court case or sending her to prison.’

Warily encountering his client’s cold dark eyes, Charles suppressed a shiver and tried not to think about how Luciano’s forebears had preferred to clear their paths of human obstacles: with cold-blooded murder and mayhem. He told himself off for that imaginative flight of fancy but he could not forget that chilling look in Luciano’s gaze or his notorious ruthlessness in business. He might not kill his competitors but he had never been a man to cross and was known to exact harsh retribution from those who offended him. He doubted very much that Jemima Barber had the slightest comprehension of the very dangerous consequences she had invited when she had reneged on her legal agreement with Luciano Vitale.

Sì, Luciano brooded, he would achieve his goal because he always got what he wanted and anything less was unthinkable, particularly when it came to his son’s well-being. If the little boy proved to be his, he would take him whatever the cost because he could not possibly leave an innocent child in the care of such a mother.

* * *

Jemima tidied the flowers on her sister’s grave. Her crystalline blue eyes were stinging like mad, her heart squeezing tight with misery inside her.

She had loved Julie and hated the reality that she had never got the chance to get closer to her natural sibling and help her. Born to an unknown father and a drug-addicted mother, the twin girls had ended up in separate adoptive homes. Julie had briefly been deprived of oxygen at birth and had required major surgery soon afterwards. Her sister had not been available for adoption until her treatment was complete a full two years later. Jemima, however, had been much more fortunate in every way, she thought guiltily. Her middle-aged adoptive parents had adored her on sight, adopted her at birth and given her a wonderfully happy and secure childhood. Julie had been adopted by a much wealthier couple but her developmental delays and problems had disappointed and embarrassed her parents. Ultimately the adoption had broken down when her sister was a wayward teenager and Julie had ended up back in care, rejected by the parents she’d loved. It was no surprise to Jemima that from that point everything in her twin’s life had gone even more badly wrong.

The twins had not met again until they were adults and Julie had tracked Jemima down. Right from the outset Jemima and her parents had been captivated by her lively charming twin. Of course that had gone wrong as well for all of them, Jemima acknowledged reluctantly. But perhaps it had gone worst of all for little Nicky, who would now never know his birth mother. Her misty eyes rested on the eight-month-old baby in the buggy on the path and predictably brightened because Nicky was the sun, the moon and the stars in Jemima’s world. He studied her with his big liquid dark eyes and smiled from below the mop of his black curly hair. He was the most utterly adorable baby and he owned his auntie’s heart and soul and had done so since the moment she’d first met him when he was only a week old.

‘I saw you from the street. Why are you here again?’ a worried female voice pressed. ‘I don’t understand why you’re torturing yourself this way, Jem. She’s gone and I say good riddance!’

‘Please don’t say that,’ Jemima urged her best friend, Ellie, whom she had first met in nursery school. She turned to face the taller, thinner redhead with determination.

‘But it’s the truth and you have to face it. Julie almost destroyed your family,’ Ellie said bluntly. ‘I know it hurts you to hear me say it but your twin was rotten to the core.’

Jemima compressed her lips, determined not to get into another argument with her outspoken friend. After all, when times had been tough during the Julie debacle Ellie had regularly offered Jemima and her parents a sympathetic shoulder as well as advice and support. Ellie had proved her loyalty and the depth of her friendship many times over. In any case, it would be pointless to argue now that Jemima’s twin was dead. Even so, the pain of that loss still made such judgements wounding. Only a few months had passed since Julie had carelessly stepped out in front of a car and died instantly. Julie’s adoptive family had refused even to attend the funeral and the cost had been borne by Jemima’s parents, although they could ill afford the expense.

‘If we’d had more time together, things would have turned out very differently,’ Jemima declared with a bitterness that she struggled to hide.

‘She ripped off your parents, stole your identity and your boyfriend and landed you with a baby,’ Ellie reminded her drily. ‘What could she have done as an encore? Murdered you all in your beds?’

‘Julie never showed any tendency towards violence,’ Jemima argued back through gritted teeth. ‘Let’s not talk about this any more.’

‘Let’s not,’ Ellie agreed wryly. ‘It would make more sense to discuss what you’re planning to do with Nicky now. You’ve got quite enough on your plate with a full-time job and helping out your parents.’

‘But I’m more than happy to look after Nicky as well. I love him. He is my only living relative,’ Jemima pointed out with quiet fortitude as the two women walked out of the graveyard and down the road. ‘Obviously I’m not planning to give him up. We’ll manage somehow.’

‘But what about his father? Surely you have to consider his rights?’ Ellie countered impatiently and, seeing her companion stiffen and pale, she groaned. ‘My shift starts in an hour—I have to go. I’ll see you tomorrow.’

Parting from her friend, who lived in an apartment on the same street, Jemima walked away at the slow pace of someone exhausted—Nicky still only slept a few hours at a time. She had expended a great deal of thought on the worrying topic of Nicky’s paternal ancestry. Other than the fact that Nicky’s father was supposedly a very wealthy man, she knew nothing about him or, more importantly, why he had chosen to father a child through a surrogacy agreement. Was he a gay man in a relationship? Or were he or his partner unable to have a child? Julie had not cared about such details but Jemima cared about them very much indeed.

There was no way she could ignore the reality that Nicky had a living father somewhere in the world, a parent who had paid for and planned his very conception. But she didn’t know his identity because Julie had flatly refused to divulge it and there was therefore nothing that anyone could expect Jemima to do about tracing the man, she reflected with guilty relief. Her sole concern was, and always had been, Nicky’s well-being. She wasn’t prepared to hand the little boy over to anyone without first seeing the proof that that person would love and nurture her nephew. That was her true role now, she conceded unhappily: to step into the untenable situation Julie had created and try to ensure that Julie’s son was not damaged by his mother’s rash choices.

Jemima still marvelled that her twin had not even recognised that she was literally agreeing to bring a child into the world for a price. Incredibly at the time she had signed up, Julie had only viewed the surrogacy agreement as a job that paid living expenses at a time when she was short of cash and needed somewhere to live. She had admitted to loathing what pregnancy did to her body and she had not changed her mind about handing Nicky over after the birth. No, Julie had simply decided that she had not been well enough rewarded for suffering the tribulations of nine months of pregnancy followed by a birth, particularly once she had learned that Nicky’s father was rich.

And what were the chances that the man would prove to be a caring, compassionate father? The sort of man who would love and cherish Nicky to the very best of his ability? Jemima believed that there was little chance of that being the case when the man concerned had not even wanted to meet the mother of his future child. From what little she had read most surrogacy agreements encouraged some kind of contact between the various parties involved, at least initially. After all, Nicky was half Julie’s flesh and blood as well. He had not been conceived from a donated egg but from her sister’s body, which meant he was very much Jemima’s nephew and a part of Jemima’s small family, a little connected person whom Jemima felt it was her duty to love and protect.

Jemima let herself into the small retirement bungalow that was her parents’ current home. It had two bedrooms and a small garden and she was very grateful that there was enough space for her and Nicky to stay there. Her father was a retired clergyman and her mother had only ever been a clergyman’s wife. Sadly, the careful savings her parents had made over the years had gone into Julie’s pocket when she had pretended that she’d wanted to rent a local shop and start up her own business. Or maybe that hadn’t been a pretence, Jemima conceded, striving not to be judgemental.

Quite possibly, Julie had genuinely intended to set up a business when she’d first floated the idea to Jemima’s parents but Julie had been tremendously impulsive and her plans had often leapt enthusiastically from one money-making scheme to the next within days. Her sister might have seemed to have good intentions and might have uttered very convincing sentiments but she had told lies. There was no denying that, Jemima reflected unhappily.

Regardless, the Barbers’ financial safety net was now gone and her parents’ lifelong dream of buying their own home was no longer possible. In fact the only reason her parents still had a roof over their heads was Jemima’s decision to come back home to live and help to pay the rent and the household expenses, which were exceeding her father’s small pension. Faced with bills they couldn’t afford to pay, the older couple had begun to fret and their health had suffered.

With quiet efficiency, Jemima changed Nicky and settled him down for a morning nap. Screening a yawn of her own, she decided to lie down too, having learned that napping when Nicky did was the only sure way to get her own rest. She peeled off her tunic top and winced when she caught an accidental glimpse of her liberally curved bottom in the wardrobe mirror.

‘Your backside’s far too big for leggings! Always wear a long top to cover your behind,’ Julie had urged her.

But then Julie had been thin as a willow wand and tormented by bulimia, Jemima reminded herself ruefully. Her twin had had serious issues with food and self-image. On that unhappy reflection, Jemima fell straight to sleep, still clad in her leggings and vest top.

When the shrilling doorbell wakened her, Jemima scrambled up in surprise because most visitors were family friends and aware that her mum and dad were currently staying in Devon with a former parishioner. That was the closest her parents could get to a holiday on their restricted income. She peered into the cot, relieved to see that her nephew was still peacefully asleep, his little face flushed, his rosebud mouth relaxed.

From the hall she could see two male figures through the glass.

‘Yes?’ she asked enquiringly, opening the door only a fraction.

An older man with greying hair dealt her a serious appraisal. ‘May we come in and speak to you, Miss Barber? My card...’ A business card was extended through the narrow gap and she glanced down at it.

Charles Bennett, it read. Bennett & Bennett, Solicitors.

Instantly fearing yet another problem linked to her twin’s premature death, Jemima lost colour and opened the door. Julie had left a lot of debts in her wake and Jemima just didn’t know how to deal with them. She shrank from the prospect of telling the police that her sister had stolen her identity to the extent of contracting debts in her name, travelling on her passport and even giving birth in Sicily as Jemima Barber. She was very much afraid that revealing that information would make her current custody of Nicky illegal and she was frightened that the minute she admitted that he was not her child he would be taken from her and placed in a foster home with strangers.

‘Luciano Vitale...’ the older man introduced as his companion stepped forward and Jemima took yet another step back from her visitors, all her senses now on full apprehensive alert.

And when she focused on the taller, younger man by his side she froze, for he was a man like no other. His movements were fast, smooth and incredibly quiet as if he were a combat soldier slinking through the jungle. He was poetry in motion and pure fantasy in the flesh. Indeed he was very probably the most breathtakingly beautiful man Jemima had ever seen in her life. The shock of his sudden magnetic appearance was hard to withstand. Her chest tightened as she struggled to catch her breath and not stare as the compellingly handsome lineaments of his lean bronzed features urged her to do. It made her feel frighteningly schoolgirlish and she hurriedly turned her head away to invite them into the living room.

Luciano couldn’t take his eyes off Jemima Barber because she was so very different from what he had expected. His very first sight of her had been her passport photo application in which she had looked blonde, blue-eyed and a little plump, indeed so ordinary he had rolled his eyes at the idea that such a commonplace woman could give him a child. His second view of her two months earlier on security-camera footage from a London hotel had been far more indicative of her true nature. Blonde hair cut short and choppy, she had sported a very low-necked top, a tiny silver skirt and sky-high hooker heels that had showed off her slim figure and the rounded curve of her breast implants. She had been acting like the slut she was, giggling and fondling the two men she was taking back to her hotel room that night.

Now that image was being replaced by another, even more challenging one for evidently Jemima Barber had reinvented herself yet again. Possibly that big change in appearance was a deliberate element of her con tricks, he conceded. The short hair was gone, exchanged for hip-length extensions, which provided her with a glorious mane the colour of ripe wheat in sunlight. Her heart-shaped face seemed bare of make-up, his keen gaze resting suspiciously on the succulent pout of her pink mouth, the faint colour blossoming in her cheeks and the pale ice-blue eyes, an unusual shade that he had initially assumed was a mere accident of the photographic lighting. She wore a drab pair of black leggings and a tight vest top, which accentuated the sumptuous swell of her breasts.

With difficulty he dragged his attention from that surprisingly luscious display, acknowledging that the camera shots of her chest must have been unflattering, because in the flesh she looked much more natural. Even so, she was distinctly curvier. Had she simply put on weight? The plain clothing was a surprise as well but, of course, she hadn’t been expecting visitors and it was possible that she dressed more circumspectly in her elderly parents’ radius. In fact at this moment she looked ridiculously wholesome and young. It made him wonder who Jemima Barber really was below the surface. And then he questioned why he was wondering about her at all when he already knew all that he needed to know. She was a liar, a cheat, a thief and a whore without boundaries. She sold her own body as easily as she planned to sell her son.

Hugely self-conscious below the intensity of Luciano’s appraisal, Jemima could feel her face getting hotter and hotter but, because he unnerved her, she kept her attention on the older man and said, ‘How can I help you?’

‘We’re here to discuss the child’s future,’ Charles Bennett informed her.

At that news her heart dropped to the soles of her canvas-clad feet and her head swivelled, eyes flying wide as she involuntarily looked back at Luciano. Looked and instantly saw what she had refused to recognise seconds earlier, finally making the terrifying connection that set a large question mark over her hopes and dreams for Nicky. Nicky was like a miniature carbon copy of Luciano Vitale. Luciano wore his hair a little longer than was conventional. It fell below his collar in glossy blue-black curls that flared luxuriantly across his skull. He had a straight nose, spectacular high cheekbones, winged brows and deep-set eyes the colour of tawny tiger’s eye stones—eyes as hard and unyielding as any crystal.

Stray recollections of her late sister’s remarks on the topic of Nicky’s father echoed in the back of her head.

‘If he met me, he would want me... Men always do,’ Julie had trilled excitedly. ‘He’s exactly the sort of man I want to marry—rich and good-looking and madly successful. I’d make the perfect wife for a man like him.’

And, of course, Luciano Vitale wouldn’t be too impressed right now when, instead of the slim, fashionable Julie, he got the fatter, plainer twin, a little voice whispered in Jemima’s shaken head. Was that why he was staring? But he didn’t know that she was Julie’s sister and he had never even met her sister. As far as she was aware he did not even know that Julie had an identical twin nor was he likely to know that Julie had stolen Jemima’s identity. Did he even know that her sister was dead?

Jemima assumed not. Had he known, surely that would have fuelled the lawyer’s first words because Julie’s death now changed everything. A cold little shiver shimmied down Jemima’s spine at that awareness. As Nicky’s mother, Julie had had rights to her son even if those rights could be disputed in court. As Nicky’s aunt, Jemima had virtually no rights at all. The only thing that blurred those boundaries was the fact that Julie had given birth in her twin’s name and it was Jemima’s name on Nicky’s birth certificate and not his real birth mother’s. It was a legal tangle that would have to be sorted out some day.

But not on this particular day, Jemima decided abruptly as she collided with Luciano’s chilling dark eyes, which were regarding her with as much emotion and empathy as a lab specimen might have inspired. Nicky’s father was angry, distrustful and ready to make snap judgements and decisions, she reckoned fearfully. He was not visiting in a spirit of goodwill and why indeed would he? Julie had given birth to his child and had then run away with that child, leaving behind an unabashed demand for more money.

Jemima tilted her chin up as if she were neither aware of nor bothered by Luciano’s scrutiny and concentrated on the lawyer instead. The tension in the atmosphere was making her tummy perform nauseous somersaults and suffocating her vocal cords. She knew that she needed to get a grip on herself and do it fast because she had no idea of what was about to happen and for Nicky’s sake she had to be able to react fast and appropriately. It disturbed her, though, that one major decision had somehow already been made and that was her willingness to pretend to be Julie for as long as she could pretend while she assessed Nicky’s father as a potential parent. If she admitted who she really was, her nephew could be immediately removed from her care and her heart almost stopped at the mere thought of that happening. For that reason alone she would lie...she would pretend...even if it went against all her principles.

Luciano was very still, his entire attention engaged by the strange behaviour of the woman in front of him. Women did not stick out their chins and ignore Luciano when they were lucky enough to gain his attention. They smiled at him, flirted, treated him to little upward glances calculated to appeal. They never ever blanked him. Yet Jemima Barber was blanking him.

‘I want DNA testing carried out on the child so that I know whether or not he is mine.’ Luciano spoke up for the first time, startling her. His dark, deep accented drawl trailed along her skin like a fur caress and awakened goosebumps.

As the ramifications of what he had said sank in Jemima went rigid at the insult to her sister’s memory. ‘How dare you?’ she shot back at him angrily, her temper rising and spilling out without warning and shaking her with its intensity.

His perfectly modelled mouth took on a derisive slant. ‘I dare,’ he said levelly. ‘There must be no doubt that he is mine—’

‘In any case, mandatory DNA testing after the birth was a clause in the contract you signed,’ the lawyer chipped in. ‘Unfortunately you left the hospital before the test could be completed.’

The reminder of the contract that Julie had signed in Jemima’s name doused Jemima’s anger and covered her with a sudden surge of shame instead. She was about to lie. She was about to pretend that she was her sister when she was not and the knowledge cut her deep because, in the normal way of things, Jemima was an honest and straightforward person who detested lies and deception. Her desire to look out for Nicky’s needs, she registered unhappily, had put her on a slippery slope at odds with her conscience. She should be telling the truth, no matter how unpleasant or dangerous it was, she thought wretchedly. Two wrongs did not make a right. This man was Nicky’s father. But could she simply stand back and watch Luciano Vitale take her baby nephew away from her?

She knew she could not. There had to be safeguards. Nicky was defenceless. It was Jemima’s job to carefully consider his future and ensure that his needs were met. But she had to be unselfish about that process too, she reminded herself doggedly, even if the final result hurt, even if it meant standing back and losing the child she loved.