CHAPTER 4

          A big man in a grey suit and a tough-looking face stood guard just outside the door. A stranger to keeping her away… But away from what? From finding the truth? From finding out that the man that took her little girl away from her was Alessandro’s father?

“I want to see Alessandro. Where is he?” Hailee asked shakily. “Where…Uh… Where is my… husband?”

          His gaze drifted towards the closed study door.

“Signor Baroni wished not to be disturbed.”

          The man’s accent disturbed her profoundly. She had heard it so many times… It was Sicilian as the voice that had spoken to her on the phone. Hailee shuddered and stepped past him, ignoring the obvious hint in his reply. She hurried across the hallway and pushed open the study door.

          Alessandro was half sitting on the edge of the big solid oak desk but he wasn't alone. In the room with him were the two policemen she saw earlier, and Giovanni Masini, Alessandro's PA and best friend.

          All of them were in a huddle around something on the desk with their heads tilted down. But they shot upright in surprise at her abrupt entrance. Hailee ignored them all, her anxious eyes stopping on the only man she wanted to talk to.

“Alessandro...”

          Hailee took a couple of urgent steps towards him.

“I…”

          His hand snaked out, not towards her but to something on the desk. And it was only as she heard an electronic click followed by a sudden deathly silence that it hit her just what had been going on here, and what her ears had picked up but her mind had refused to recognize until Alessandro had rendered the room silent.

“Oh, God… Ari…” Hailee whispered then covered her mouth.

          She stopped, went white as a sheet, and closed her eyes for a few seconds. The entire room started to sway. It had been her little angel's voice murmuring ‘Mummy? Mummy?’ before it had been so severely cut off.

“Don't touch her!”

          The command was barked from a raspingly threatening throat. She didn't know who had tried to touch her, who had reached her first as she began to sink, abandoning herself to gravity.

          In doing so, she recognized Alessandro's arms as they came around her, breaking her fall, catching her to his chest, and holding her there as something solid hit the back of her knees, forcing her to sit down.

          He didn't let go, lowering his body with hers as he guided her into the chair so that she could still lean weakly against him. Her heart had accelerated out of control. Her breathing was fast and shallow, her mind was blanked out by a horror that was more than she could bear.

          Alessandro was cursing softly in Italian, and English, cursing over her head at someone, cursing at her. Hailee’s fingers came up, ice-cold and numb, scrambling over his shirtfront and up to his taut throat until they found his mouth, tight-lipped with fury.

          She could’ve slapped him full in the face for the reaction she got. Alessandro froze, right there in front of all those watching faces. He froze into a statue of stunned silence with her trembling fingers pressed against his mouth. A gesture he’d never expected from her, Hailee was sure.

“Alex,” she whispered frailly, not even knowing that she had shortened his name to that more intimate version she'd used to call him when she'd been utterly lost in him. “My angel… My sweet, innocent baby... My Ari…”

          Bent there with her wonderful hair splayed across his big shoulders so that the sweet jasmine scent of it completely surrounded him, Alessandro closed his hard eyes on a moment of stark, muscle-locking pain.

          Then he murmured a soft ‘ssh’, and reached up to grasp the fingers covering his mouth, touching them briefly to his lips before clasping them gently in his hand.

“Hailee, she’s fine. She’s asking for you but she’s not distressed. You understand me, piccola (Italian for ‘baby’)? She is…”

          She nodded slowly, closed her eyes again, and simply passed out. At last, and perhaps it seemed fortunate to all those who had worriedly observed her all day, Hailee finally caved under the pressure of it all and went limp against the man holding her. 

          When she finally opened her eyes, Hailee found herself in her own room, lying on her own bed, with the doctor leaning over her, checking her pulse. He smiled warmly but briefly.

“I’m glad to see you’re awake, Mrs. Baroni. Still, you’re still too agitated. So, I think it would be best if you’d take these,” the doctor murmured, handing two small white pills and a glass of water out to her.

          Still going on with this? Hailee shook her head, closing her eyes again while trying to recall what had happened earlier. She remembered running across the hall, opening the door to the study, and racing inside, but what she couldn’t remember was why she'd felt the terrible need to go there.

          Hailee recalled seeing Alessandro in the room… the two policemen. She remembered them all rising quickly their heads at her unannounced entry and her taking several steps towards Alessandro. Then… Oh, God…. Full recall shuddered through her on a nauseous wave.

“No! I won’t… I’m not staying here… Where's Alessandro?” Hailee gasped.

“I’m here,” his grim voice replied.

          Her eyes flickered open to find him looking down at her from the other side of the bed. He looked different somehow as if some of his usual arrogance had been erased from his DNA.

“You heard from those men, didn't you?” she whispered faintly. “They called before the deadline…”

          Tears blurred her eyes.

“And they let my baby talk to you…”

          The corner of his tensely held mouth ticked and she knew she was right…

“We’ll talk about this later, Hailee. Right now, take the pills the doctor is offering you,” was all Alessandro said to her.

          Hailee shook her head, refusing vehemently to numb her mind when her baby was out there, alone and frightened.  

“Alessandro, I want to know what they said,” she insisted.

“Once you’ll take the pills and calm down, I will tell you what they said.”

          But she refused again.

“What is it with you and these damned pills? Stop trying to put me to sleep. I won't be put to sleep, do you understand? I need to stay alert… My baby needs me awake…” 

“They are not sleeping pills, Mrs. Baroni,” the doctor reassured her. “You won't sleep if you don't want to, but they will help you relax a little bit. I'm telling you the truth, I promise,” he added as her skeptical gaze drifted his way. “Look, I can understand your need to remain alert throughout this ordeal, but I doubt you’d be able to do so if you don't accept some help. Shock and stress shouldn’t be treated lightly. You're near a complete collapse,” the doctor diagnosed. “Another shock like the one you received downstairs may just have the effect you've been fighting so hard against and shut you down completely. So, take the pills… Please…”

          The doctor offered them to her again.

“Trust me.”

          ‘Trust him…’ she thought.

          Hailee looked into his gravely sympathetic eyes and wondered if she could trust the man. She hadn’t allowed herself to trust any man in almost three years. Not one single man. Not after what happened to her…

“Take the pills, Hailee.”

          Alessandro got near her and supported the doctor’s advice. His voice was grim, utterly unmoving.

“Take them or watch me hold you down myself while the doctor sticks a hypodermic syringe in your arm.”

          Reluctantly, Hailee took the pills. Alessandro hadn’t and never would make idle threats. And she wasn't a fool. She knew that if they did resort to a needle, it wouldn’t be to inject a relaxing aid into her system.

          Nobody spoke for several minutes after that. Hailee was lying there with her eyes closed, the doctor was standing by the bed with her wrist gently clasped between his finger and thumb, and the silence was so profound that Hailee could swear she actually hear the light tick of someone's watch as it counted out the seconds.

          She knew even before the doctor dropped her wrist and patted the back of her hand that her pulse had lost that hectic flurry it had had for the last several hours and returned to a more normal rate.

          Hailee sensed the two men exchanging glances then heard the soft tread of feet moving across the room. The bedroom door opened and closed, then once again she was alone with Alessandro.

“I’m alright now, so you can tell me what happened,” she murmured, not bothering to open her eyes. “I promise I won't be getting hysterical again.”

“You never were… Not even earlier,” Alessandro pointed out. “You just dropped like a stone to the floor.”

“It feels like a dejà-vu, isn’t it, Alessandro?” Hailee taunted weakly.

          To her surprise, he admitted it.

“Yes,” he said.

          This reply made her open her eyes.

“The only difference is the last time you left me there, on the ground...”

          Alessandro turned away, apparently to look for a chair, which he drew up beside the bed, then sat down. But really, Hailee knew that he was turning away from the memory she had just evoked of him looking murderous, fit to actually reach out and hit her, and her responding to the threat of it by passing out. 

          Only that particular incident had taken place in another house, in another country, in a world so different and so far away. And that time he had walked out and left her lying helpless on the floor. Like she was nothing to him. Hailee didn’t want to hear or see him ever again after that day… until today.

“When did they call?” she asked plainly.

“Just after I left you.”

“And what did they say?”

          His mouth flexed slightly.

“You really don't need to know what they said,” Alessandro advised her. “Let’s say that they… wanted me to be aware that they mean business.”

“Alright… What kind of business?”

          It was amazing how two small pills could take all the emotion out of her. Hailee thought she should’ve taken them before.

“Are they talking about… money business?”

          This time, his mouth took on a cynical tilt.

“I would’ve thought it’s obvious that they want money, since they know I’m a very rich man.” 

          She nodded in agreement, then totally threw him by talking calmly.

“You must think of me that I’m quite stupid… Well, Alessandro, I’m not. I know for a fact this is all a lie. These men don't want your money. Not one single cent.”

          Alessandro frowned.

“And how did you come to this conclusion?”

“Simply because they are Sicilian, like you,” she said plainly as if that made everything clear.

          But just in case it didn't, she spelled it out for him.

“If you'd said they'd taken her as part of a… vendetta because you'd spoiled some big business deal of theirs or something, I might’ve believed you. But not simply for money.”

“Are you by any chance, still suspecting me of this crime?” Alessandro enquired very coolly.

          If she would’ve had the strength to do it, Hailee would’ve smiled at his upset expression. But, having gone from rigid-tight to liquid-slack, her muscles were allowing her to do nothing other than lie there heavily on the bed.

“No, you’re off my list, Alessandro,” she replied flatly. “Your place has been taken by… your father.”