AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Dante sat at the head of the table, listening to the swirling of his family’s conversation, familiar with its turbulent back and forth, the loud, vivacious, good-humoured interactions only serving to anger him now. As many things did.
He was angry, almost all the time.
Losing Bianca and Livvie had damned near killed him. He’d thought that grief the worst thing he could know. But somehow, he felt as though he was losing his wife all over again. He’d been feeling it ever since that night. Every time he thought of Georgia, he felt that he was losing Bianca. Whenever he dreamed of her, he woke in a cold sweat, because it was Georgia he was craving, Georgia his body was aching for, Georgia who’s voice he heard. He was furious with himself, and furious with Georgia, for the way she seemed to have overtaken him. How dare she?
He couldn’t get the feeling of betrayal and failure from his mind, so it was impossible to engage with his family.
He went through the motions, as he felt like he’d been doing for years, but this was worse. Harder. He wondered if they looked at him and saw how much he’d let them down. Not them, the Santoros, but the small, perfect family, whom he’d promised to love for the rest of his life.
“Dante Santoro’s office,” a clipped, British accent greeted her.
Georgia sat on the edge of her bed, heart in her throat.
She knew she should be doing this face to face, but she couldn’t. She just couldn’t. It had been hard enough before she’d known who he was, but the name Santoro was synonymous with wealth and power. Everyone in the world knew about them.
That she’d been stupid enough not to know, to have slept with him, not used protection, fallen pregnant, was an overwhelming reality. But far greater was the fear that someone like Dante might do something she didn’t want. He was rich. Powerful. She couldn’t risk that he would call the shots. And so she’d tell him over the phone, and if he was unreasonable, she’d hang up, and disappear. He didn’t know who she was. She had that up her sleeve.
Yes, this was a far better option.
“Hello?” The voice again, so calm, and somehow likeable.
“Is Dante—may I speak to Dante?”
“May I say who’s calling?”
Her heart pounded against her ribs.
“I—,” her throat slicked with adrenalin and her palms felt sticky and wet. “Tell him it’s Georgia.” She cleared her throat. “From Como.”
“Oh.” A hint of surprise shifted in the woman’s voice and then she was calm and assured again. “Please hold the line; I’ll see if he’s available.”
Georgia crossed her fingers, hoping against hope that he wouldn’t be. Hoping he’d refused the call and she could abandon the idea of telling him with a clear conscience. And do what? Raise this baby alone? Of course. As if she was going to raise the baby with Dante! Like she’d want her child being influenced by such a rude, horrible person. She shuddered at the mere thought.
The silence of being on hold stretched and the longer she waited the more she hoped. He wasn’t going to take her call. Excellent.
She was just about to hang up—her finger was a few millimetres above the red button on screen—when a deep, dark voice rumbled down the phone line, a timbre that was straight out of her worst nightmares, and deepest, most secretly-held fantasies.
“Georgia.”
Her pulse thundered. She almost dropped the phone in shock. It was like being electrocuted.
“Are you there?” Terse, commanding, sharp.
“Yes,” she was galvanised into saying, but her voice was thick and groggy.
Silence fell. Silence that was laced with dark, angry emotions and accusations. She hated, absolutely hated, what she was about to do. But she’d had two months to grapple with this. Two months to slowly come to terms with the dissolution of all her dreams, to accept she would never become a surgeon, that she would be busy raising a child for a long time to come, and she knew that raising a child meant loving a child, and loving a child meant doing what was right for them. On no planet would she ever be able to justify making a choice to keep the baby a secret from its father.
“What do you want?”
She sucked in a sharp breath. His rejection had hurt her. The rudeness of it, the inference that what they’d shared had been transactional, it had all stung. This was almost as bad.
“Clearly not to indulge in a long, happy chat about our lives,” she muttered.
“I’m glad to hear it.”
She really hated him then. She gripped the phone more tightly.
“I’ll keep this brief, seeing as it’s clear that the last thing either of us wants is to waste time talking.”
