Hold My Love

Chapter 60: On the Run

It has been a month after Alessandro and Sienna told us they were together. Sienna has officially moved into Alessandro's house and Giovanni and I were close to moving out because our house was going be finished in 2 weeks.

This whole week had been terrible, I would wake up feel neauses and could barely keep food down. Sienna had got me pregnancy tests for my bridal shower gift as a joke but I took all three of them this morning and they all came out positive.

I was tempted to call Giovanni and share the exciting news but I decided against it. News like this called for a face to face reveal so I would wait till he came home. I haven't told anyone yet because I decided that Gio should be with me to announce it.

I spend the rest of the morning making baby registries and adding baby clothing into my shopping carts. I even go through the baby names that had been saved on a google docs since 9th grade. Just to make sure I still liked them although I go through them every month.

It was now midday and I have been going through one of Giovanni's family albulms when I stumble over a picture of Alessandro and him. They were so small their school uniforms seemed to swallow them. Both boys have wide smiles as they held ice cream cones. Alessandro's hair was so blonde it looked white but what surprised me was Giovanni's dirty blonde hair.

I guess he wasn't lying when he said he was born a blonde

The more I keep flipping the older the boys' get and the smaller their smiles became. I flip to the last page and a photo negative slips out falling onto the floor. I get up to pick it up and out of curiosity I walk to the window and lift it up to the sunlight.

At first I think I was seeing wrong but then I take a closer look and realize I hadn't been imagening. It was a picture of Giovanni-no older then 10-with a gun in his hand standing over a man dead man. There was a bullet hole in the center of the man's head and his blood had soaked through the carpet he layed under.

I drop the photo as if my hands had been burned and run straight out of the room. When I reach Gio and I's room, I grab my phone from the charger and called a Uber. I don't trust Alessandro's drivers not to tell where I'm going.

My head was racing and a million thoughts were colliding with each other.

Giovanni killed a man when he was a child? How could his parents allow that? Expose their child to that? No wonder he was a bit...strange.

Was this what my son would have to endure?

I bite my nuckels to keep from crying out loud. Grabbing my suit case I stuff as much clothes and shoes as I can. I wasn't planning on returing for a while, I needed to clear my head, understand what had just happened.

My phone lights up notifying my that my Uber had arrived. I grab my suit case and flee to the car past the guards that stand watching unsure of what was happening.

I'm the person that gets angry at female characters for hiding pregnancies from the fathers but here I am doing the same.

I convince myself that my situation is different. I'm not doing it in spite of Giovanni, I'm doing it to protect my baby.

So with fear of what the future holds for my child, I run. And I don't look back.

***

A/N: I HATE having two different POV in one chapter but this couldn't have been helped

GIOVANNI POV.

I get home at midnight to a dark house. Walking inside and call out Sophia's name but only silence greets me. I reach the library and find one of my family albulms left open on the love coach. After returning the albulm to the book shelf I move to the window to close the blinds but my foot steps on something.

I tilt it up to the moonlight, It was a photo negative. The one I had burned because It brought back bad memories. It was taken on my 10th birthday when my father had forced me to shoot a man for the first time. His name was Tibo Landsel, a drunk, pedophile, and gambler. I was supposed to shoot him in the head but my mother came in screaming and instead I pointed the gun to his stomache. I couldn't have Mother see me kill a man but I knew father would hurt me really bad if I didn't shoot.

My mother had filed for divorce that night only to have my father rip the papers infront of him. He told her if she left she couldn't take 'his' children with her. Mom cried everynight for a month straight. She was diagnosed with depression but my father didn't take it seriously. It wasn't until she began refusing to eat anything. She lost 40 pounds in 2 months and it was so bad you could see each one of her ribs. Father had ignored her during those two months until the doctor told him she was anorexic and suicidal.

Although he had a hard time showing it I everyone could tell he was scared shitless of losing his wife. He was messed up beyond explaination but he loved my mom like crazy. My father forced feeding tubes down nose, forced her out of her room and outside to get sunshine and he got her a bunch therapist for her depression.

Those were hard months for our family. Mostly Lucia and I suffered during those months. Lucia was only a toddler and so she couldn't understand why she wasn't allowed to see her mom. She would cry in my arms everynight until she would exhuast herself and finally fall asleep. She stopped eating aswell, stopped smiling, laughing and playing. It hurt me seeing my baby sister like that, I was supposed to protect her from anytype of pain this world had to offer.

I took that anger and confrunted my father, mother was getting better little by little so I couldn't see why we couldn't see her for a few minutes. I got a slap from my father for asking him and if it wasn't for Lucia who came running in looking for me I know he would have done worse.

Father had been refusing to see Lucia because he knew she was crying for her mother and it was his fault her mother was in the condition she was in. He felt guilty and more guilt pilled on when he saw the dark circles under his 3 year olds eyes and how thin and pale she had gotten.

We thought Lucia seeing mom would help her but what we didn't expect was that it helped our mother to see her children after 2 months of being kept from them.

The therapist were sent away and the feeding tubes were removed because mother began having every meal with us and she didn't want us worried about her not eating so everyday she would force herself to eat more and more.

She got better for her kids not her husband or the therapist and doctors whose lives had been threatened by my father. I guess her almost dying scared my father pretty bad becuse he never forced me to shoot anyone again-well until I turned 18 that is.

But something in my gut was telling me something was off. I don't remember there being another copy of this photo so I am confused as to why it is here. And how it got here because Lucia and I had gone through it two nights ago. We couldn't have missed it.

I slip the photo negative into my pocket and run upstairs to our room. Sophia's clothes and shoes where everywhere and her suitcase was gone aswell.

Our bathroom lights were on and the trash can was on the floor. I stand it back up and as I'm about to put the lid back on something pink rapped up in tissue catches my eye.

I lift it up and unravel it from the tissue. It was a pregancy test, a positive one too.

It was one thing for her to run away. But to run away with my baby that she hadn't told me about?

I shake my head, "That crosses the line for me, Sophia".

YAY! This is the last chapter that happened in the past (prequel is over). Starting next chapter we are in the present. It'll help to go back and reread chapters 1&2.