A Shameful Consequence - By Carol Marinelli Page 0,52

from this?

‘There’s something else …’

Now, please now, silently he pleaded to a mind that was racing. Tell me I have a son, that I do have a family, a real one. Adrenaline coursed and he begged for reprieve, his head felt as if it were splintering. He could see her on the bed and he wanted to go back in there; he did not want it to be true. He wanted her and he wanted Leo, he wanted the family he had never been allowed to have.

‘You have a brother.’ Her words came like aftershocks, each one more violent than the last. He was pulling on his clothes and still the earth was moving. ‘A twin.’

And he wanted it to stop, his anger taking aim, loss sweeping in, because always you lost, in love you lost.

‘I should have told you!’ she attempted. ‘I wanted to.’

‘There are so many things you haven’t told me,’ Nico shouted. ‘So many things that I had every right to know.’ He stood there, her accuser, and she sat guilty with shame but confused by his next question. ‘Say it.’

‘Say what?’

‘Oh, please …’ He could not believe that she didn’t know what he was referring to. ‘When are you going to tell me? Through a lawyer? Perhaps your father could draft the letter and tell me what I have to pay, in cash this time, because he’s already taken everything else.’

She knew then he was talking about Leo as he raged on. ‘When I came to your door, when I brought you here.’ Nico’s anger was growing now. ‘Still you said nothing and now, even now, you sit there are refuse to tell me the truth!’

‘Tell you!’ It was Connie who was shouting now, Connie sitting there with anger growing inside her. ‘We both know that it’s eight o’clock.’

‘What are you talking about?

‘There’s a clock by this bed and we can both see it, so why would you ask me the time? Do you want to split hairs? Do you want to say if it’s a.m. or p.m.—when we both know?’

‘I’m talking about Leo,’ Nico roared. ‘I’m talking about my son!’

‘Your son,’ Connie said. ‘I am supposed to formally say it? What, will you demand DNA?’ She could not match his anger but still hers was growing. Indignantly she ripped the sheet around her and stood, looked into his eyes and wanted to slap him. ‘How dare you doubt me in this,’ Connie sneered. She the injured party now. ‘How dare you stand there and demand that I say that Leo is your son? I was a virgin, Nico, I had slept only with you and I have loved only you …’ She stopped then because love did not count with him, love was the thing he did not want. Clearly did not want it, for he was walking out the door. ‘Where are you going?’ She had thought he’d want more answers, that he’d demand every detail, but realisation dawned and she ran at him and tried to halt him.

‘Where do you think?’

She grabbed at his arm, but he flicked her off, and there was nothing, nothing that would stop him.

She watched as he charged from the house, heard a car screech from the driveway and gun down the hill, and he left her in chaos behind.

She wanted to ring her father, to warn him, to hate him.

To stop Nico, not just for her father’s sake but to prevent what Nico would surely do.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

HE WOULD kill him.

He would find where he lived and would go there.

Nico sped the car through the quiet morning, chewing up the miles with rage. He screeched to a halt at the toll barrier, blasting his horn impatiently for the watchman to lift it, ready to spring out and raise the thing himself. There was nothing on his mind but revenge, certainly no thought of consequences.

And the consequences for Connie were more than she could idly wait to unfold.

She rang her parents, desperate when they wouldn’t answer, knowing they would now be on their morning walk, appalled at what they would come home to.

‘He’s fine!’ Despina saw her anguish when, having quickly dressed, she fled to the old woman’s door.

But it wasn’t Leo she feared for.

She held him close, inhaled his delicious scent, and she was scared for her father and scared for Leo’s father, too.

‘Can you take me to my parents’?’ Paulo came out from a room at the sound of her anguish. ‘Please …’ she sobbed. ‘Nico is