Read When Falcone's World Stops Turning for Free Online Page B

the shadows under her eyes making her look fragile and vulnerable.
    He’d witnessed his mother for years, using her wiles to fool men into thinking she was vulnerable, fragile. Only to see how her expression would harden again once they were no longer looking and she’d got what she wanted. She’d been so cold the day she’d left his father, showing not an ounce of remorse.
    Once, he mightn’t have believed Sam was like that, but that was before she’d kept his son from him, demonstrating equal, if not worse, callousness.
    Rafaele took another step back and hated that he felt the need to do so. That volcanic anger was well and truly erupting now. He gritted out, ‘If you were a man...’
    Sam tensed and her chin lifted. Gone was the soft look of before, the husky entreaty.
    ‘If I were a man...what? You’d thrash me? Well, what’s stopping you?’
    Rafaele could see where her hands had clenched to fists by her side. He looked at her disgustedly. ‘Because I don’t raise my hands to women—or anyone, for that matter. But I felt like it for the first time when I realised that boy was my son.’
    He couldn’t stop the words spilling out. That initial shock was infusing him all over again.
    ‘My son , Sam, my flesh and blood. He’s a Falcone. Dio . How could you have played God like that? What gave you the right to believe you had the answer? That you alone could decide to just cut me out of his life?’
    Sam seemed to tense even more, her chin going higher. Those spots of red deepened, highlighting her delicate bone structure. ‘Do I need to remind you again that you practically tripped over your feet in your hurry to get out of the clinic that day? You could barely disguise your relief when you thought there was nothing to worry about. You just assumed the worst. It didn’t even occur to you to question whether or not I’d actually had a miscarriage, because you didn’t want a baby.’
    Rafaele coloured, his conscience pricked by the reminder of how eager he’d been to get away from those huge bruised eyes, the raw emotion. The shock. The awareness that Sam had strayed too far under his skin.
    Tightly he admitted, ‘I never had any intention of having children. But you gave me no reason to doubt the inevitable conclusion of what we’d both believed to be a miscarriage.’
    Sam choked out, ‘You were quite happy to wash your hands of me, so don’t blame me now if I felt the best course was to leave you out of my decision-making process.’
    Rafaele looked at Sam across the few feet that separated them and all he could see was her eyes. Huge, and as grey as the rolling English clouds. She was sucking him in again but he wouldn’t let her. She’d wilfully misdirected him into believing she’d miscarried when all the while she’d held the knowledge of their baby, living , in her belly.
    He shook his head. ‘That’s just not good enough.’
    Sam’s voice took on a defensive edge. ‘I was hardly encouraged to get in touch and tell you the truth when I saw you with another woman only a week after that day.’
    She was breathing heavily under her shirt and he could see her breasts rise and fall. A flash of heat went straight to his groin and Rafaele crushed it ruthlessly. He focused on her face and tried to forget that he actually hadn’t slept with another woman for about a year after Sam had left, despite appearances and despite his best efforts. Every time he’d come close something inside him had shut down. And since then...? His experiences with women had been anything but satisfactory. To be reminded of this now was galling.
    He narrowed his eyes. ‘Don’t you dare try to put this on me now, just to deflect your own guilt.’
    But the guilt that had struck Rafaele wouldn’t be banished, much as he wanted it to be. Damn her! He wouldn’t let her do this to him now. She’d borne his child. His son. And said nothing.
    Sam’s voice was bitter. ‘God forbid that I would forget what our