Page 198 of Mafia Billionaire's Surprise Baby

Twenty minutes later and we’re riding a horse down the trail toward the airstrip, where Elio and the jet are waiting. The threat of retaliation from Benicio Souza is very real. He’s luckily out of town right now, so the challenge is not the man itself, but the three hundred or so men in his private militia that he’s left behind.

And the fact that he appears to have some kind of burning grudge against Liam and the Irish that surpasses even my dislike of the Irish.

The urgency is there. But as long as there’s no one actively pursuing us, we can afford to be slow and steady and careful.

This all factors into the horse I chose, the pace we set, and how firmly I have my hand wrapped around Gia’s waist.

I went for a chestnut horse. I’m not sure why, exactly, but it seemed the calmest one of the bunch, which is pretty fucking important at the moment. I’m well aware that a fall for Gia could risk both of them, so I try not to push the horse past anything faster than a trot.

We also don’t have a saddle. And the sketchiest halter that I’ve ever seen.

But the horse can take a trail that the ATV couldn’t. The horse, also, is apparently a very intelligent creature, and seems to know the way east.

The way back to the airstrip.

“So how do you know how to ride a horse,” Gia asks.

“It’s the one thing Caterina and I wanted to learn how to do. That was different than Marco and Dino,” I clarify.

“The girl I was with is Dino’s baby mamma,” Gia murmurs.

“No shit?”

“No,” she whispers.

We lapse into silence. I can’t hear anything behind us, other than the jungle creaking and moving through its’ day. I assume that Liam and Elio can take care of the people coming from wherever they were keeping her.

But Gia is with me.

And even though this is very, very wrong, it’s hard for me to not feel like it’s very, very right.

“I know about the baby, Gia,” I finally say.

In front of me, she twitches. My arm tightens around her waist.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Don’t ask me that,” she whispers. “Please Sal. Don’t ask me…”

“Are you going to go back to him?”

“Who?”

“Liam.”

“I don’t… I don’t know,” Gia says.

I’ve never once in my life heard Gia sound so unsure.

“Do you care about him?”

“No,” she answers quickly.

“So then why did you do it?”

“Because, Sal, I had to,” Gia says.

The horse flicks its ears back, like it’s listening to our conversation.