Page 18 of Banished and Pregnant by Her Sicilian Billionaire Husband

“Mm.” He works the screw. “I want to tell you something, and then I’ll never say it again, because you’ll cry, and I can’t stand it when women cry.”

“Vico—”

“Nobody in this house ever believed it.” He holds the glasses up to the light, squints, bends them a fraction more. “Whatever the paper said. Whatever he decided. There isn’t a person under this roof who looked at you and thought, yes, that’s a woman who’d sell men to die.”

My eyes fill so fast I have to look at the roses.

“There. Straight.” He hands them back and stands up, and he’s cheerful again, as if none of it happened. “Now go and eat something before my aunt starts on you.”

Marcello is still absent when we all come together for dinner. Rica asks where he is, and it’s Ana who says that her Papa is still at work. I nod and smile, just so my daughter has no reason to doubt her grandmother’s words. I mean...it’s possible, right?

That night, as Rica and I brush our teeth side by side, she looks at me and asks, “Is it okay if I sleep with you tonight, Mama?”

And it’s funny, really...

With everything that’s happened today...

Seeing Marcello...

Rica almost getting abducted...

Being back in this house...

None of those things managed to make me cry, but when I hear my daughter ask this...

My daughter who’s usually fiercely independent and does everything she can to prove she’s a big girl...

I find myself pulling her into my arms and hugging her so tightly to me that it makes Rica squeal and wriggle.

“Mama!”

But I don’t let her go because I don’t want her to see me crying.

I almost lost her.

My baby girl.

I almost lost her, and Rica...

She knows it, too, and that’s why she’s asking to sleep with me tonight.

Because as much as it kills me to admit this...

My baby girl now knows what it means to be scared, and while that thought makes me want to cuff my daughter to my side for eternity...

Please, God.

I find myself praying for the first time ever.

Please just keep her safe.

Please.

RICA AND I ARE ASLEEP in her bed, the one with a roof on it, when something wakes me up, and my eyes just fly open. My first instinct is to grab my daughter and make a run for it—

But then my eyes gradually adjust to the darkness, and that’s when I realize it’s my husband who’s woken me up.

Because Marcello...