Chapter 27 - Explanation Time
1650 Words
“Care to explain this?”
Roberto’s voice revealed a rather unusually fearful tone as he suddenly emerged from the bathroom holding onto something in his right hand.
Something long and white.
Willow frowned in confusion as she finished pulling her dress down neatly and turned to see what on Earth he was talking about.
What had him so worried?
As soon as her eyes caught sight of the test that he held in his hand she gasped, her mouth falling open as she tried her hardest to come up with something believable enough to convince him.
Any story that she may get away with telling him… for now at least.
But of course, nothing immediately came to mind, and she drew a blank.
“Willow!”
Roberto’s voice pulled her back to the here and now and she blinked.
“W…where did you get that?” was the first thing to escape her trembling lips.
Both his thick brows quickly lifted as he spoke.
“I found it in the trash. Do you wanna tell me what the hell’s going on here?” he challenged, still holding the test in his large hand.
“It’s… it’s not what you think.” she tried to assure him, blatantly dismissing the entire issue as she then proceeded to turn and walk past him into the bathroom.
As she did, Roberto was baffled by how calm she was right now.
Was she really pregnant?
And more importantly… was he the father?
He couldn’t be, they’d used protection each time. At least he thought he had…
The tallest Romano brother began to consider the thought of becoming a father so unexpectedly and his heart began to pulse rapidly in an anxious rush of fear.
Grabbing her hairbrush from the correct draw, Willow came back out of the bathroom and made her way across to stand in front of the full-length mirror to begin brushing through her long, damp hair.
She seemed to be totally ignoring the fact that he held a positive pregnancy test in his hands, and for the life of him, he couldn’t understand why.
“Willow, this is serious. We need to talk about this.” he tried to convince her as he came to stand behind her, meeting her eyes in the reflection of the mirror.
Rolling her eyes, Willow shook her head as she replied.
“What are you even worried about anyway, it’s negative.”
Roberto’s frown deepened, his eyes narrowing into slits.
“Have you even looked at this?” he queried.
She lifted her left brow while meeting his eyes in the reflection as she replied.
“Yeah, why?”
“This test is positive, Willow.”
Her green eyes widened in the reflection of the mirror, and she froze in place with the brush halfway combing through her hair.
It was as if she had been hit by a freeze-ray gun on the spot.
Swallowing and lowering the brush down to the closest surface very slowly, she turned herself around to face him with eyes the size of saucers.
There was no possible way that she could hide her worry right now, so she wouldn’t even attempt to.
“I’m sorry, what did you say?” she asked, to double-check that she hadn’t mistaken what he had said.
“It’s positive. There are two lines on this test.” Roberto repeated sternly, still holding it out in front of him.
“Let me see that.”
She moved in and grasped the test right out of his hand, holding it up to get a good enough view of the display window.
Her stomach did somersaults at what she saw.
There, just as Roberto had said, were the two solid lines.
“Oh my god… it is positive!” she whispered to herself with concern, glancing towards the doorway as her mind wandered to thoughts of her best friend.
Alexa didn’t know about this!
She was pregnant and she had no idea.
Roberto, who had been assessing the entire situation up until now, recognised her concerned expression and decided to question it further.
He wanted to know what was going on here and, given the circumstances, felt he had a right to know.
“Willow, we really need to talk about this.” he reminded her calmly.
But Willow was currently far too deep in her thoughts to hear him.
At that moment she was busy recalling the discussion she and Alexa had in the bathroom of the nightclub.
When she had shown Alexa the photo on her phone...
A sudden idea emerged.
“The photo…” she paused, moving across the room and grasping her phone from the desk where it had been charging.
She unlocked it and began searching for the photo she had taken of the pregnancy test when they first did it.
After eventually locating it, she zoomed into the display window and squinted her eyes to try and see if there were in fact two lines as there were now.
“What are you doing?” Roberto asked as he came to stand behind her, glancing over her shoulder at the photo now displayed on the phone she held in her hand.
Willow strained her eyes to see the result, but due to the blurred nature of the photo and the angle it had been taken on, it was near impossible for her to see a clear result.
“Holy s**t… we were wrong this whole time.” she spoke softly to herself, not realising that Roberto was putting the puzzle pieces together, one at a time while he stood by watching her.
“Who’s ‘we’?” he asked.
“Willow, I need you to tell me if the test is yours or not.”
Her disgusted expression gave him the answer he was after almost immediately as she turned to face him.
“What, ew! Hell no!”
But as soon as she had given her answer, she had damned herself by divulging much more than she had anticipated to him.
Roberto Romano was a very smart man and he put the pieces together in a matter of seconds.
“If it’s not yours, then…”
His voice slowly trailed off as his expression suddenly changed at the exact moment he had realised who the test belonged to.
There was only one other woman staying in Castello Romano right now.
One woman who would have had access to Willow’s bathroom to leave the test there in the first place.
His wide eyes flicked to meet Willow’s, who instead furrowed her brows with concern.
It was obvious that he knew the truth now. She couldn’t hide it from him any longer.
“This is... Alexa’s?”
Roberto asked his question in a soft whisper and Willow lowered her eyes to the floor in defeat, nodding her head in response.
He couldn’t believe it.
Roberto was gobsmacked by news of this sudden and unexpected pregnancy. Granted, it wasn’t anything to do with him personally, but if his suspicions were indeed correct, he may soon become an uncle.
“But she thought it was negative?” he continued to interrogate her, trying to understand the full picture.
“I don’t understand. Why would she think that?”
Letting out a long sigh, Willow led him across to sit beside her on the bed, in order to get more comfortable.
Feeling she had no other choice than to fill in the gaps for the middle Romano brother, she explained everything about what had happened up until now, while Roberto sat in silence listening to her every word.
-
Alexa was excited to be going out to dinner with Dante this evening.
It felt like it had been ages since the two of them had a night out, just the two of them, where they could spend time alone and uninterrupted.
Deciding on a sexy little black lace dress, Alexa found some killer black stiletto heels with diamantes around the outside.
The heels sparkled with each movement she made and made her legs look incredible.
Wearing her long blonde hair down in loose curls, she applied a dark, smoky look to her eyes using eyeshadow and then some clear gloss on her already ruby red lips to help them shine.
When finished, Alexa gathered her things together and headed for the door.
She was meant to be meeting Dante downstairs in the lobby in five minutes and didn’t want to be late.
-
Dante in the meantime was now dressed and ready as he stood waiting for Alexa down in the large open lobby connected to the main entrance.
His smelled of a musky cologne that came across as enticing and masculine.
The Mafia Boss was sporting a fabulous black Dolce & Gabbana suit with a black and gold patterned tie around his neck.
His cleanly polished black Italian loafers gleamed in the dim lobby lighting as Nicola assisted his capo by putting his long black button up coat on from behind.
Nicola too was also dressed in a fresh suit as he stood behind his Don, freshly groomed and prepared for the night ahead.
His task would be to keep the couple protected from any possible threat.
“Is everything ready?” Dante asked him softly, making sure that his voice hadn’t carried across the large lobby.
“Relax boss. You have nothing to worry about.” Nicola assured him with a smile, patting his shoulder gently.
“Just try and enjoy tonight, hmm?”
Dante appeared unusually tense as he put on his black leather gloves, one by one.
He wanted tonight to go as smoothly as possible.
This was his chance to make things up to Alexa for his recent behaviour and he didn’t intend on messing a single thing up.
It was vital that tonight went perfectly…
- Writer
