The Sicilian's Mistress Read Free

began with wary quietness.
    Gianni stilled. ‘What do you mean if ?’ he countered with raw incredulity.
    Dawson grimaced. ‘Gianni…if it is her, she’s living under another name, and she’s been doing it successfully for a very long time.’
    â€˜That’s insane, and utterly impossible!’ Gianni asserted in instant dismissal.
    â€˜Three years ago, Faith Jennings was found by the side of a country road in Cornwall. She had been seriously injured and she had no identification. She was the victim of a hit and run. The police think she was robbed after the accident—’
    â€˜Dio!’ Gianni exclaimed in shaken interruption.
    â€˜But she was pregnant at the time of the accident,’ Dawson confirmed. ‘And she does have a child.’
    Gianni drew in a stark breath, incisive dark eyes flaming to bright gold in anticipation. ‘So the child must be two and a half…right? A girl or a boy?’ he prompted with fierce impatience.
    â€˜A little boy. She calls him Connor. He’ll be three in May. He was born before his mother came out of the coma she was in.’
    Gianni screened his unusually revealing eyes as he mulled over those bald facts. ‘So…’ he murmured then, without any expression at all. ‘Explain to me how Milly Henner could possibly be living under another woman’s name.’
    â€˜It was a long time before she was able to speak for herself, but she was apparently wearing a rather unusual bracelet. Her face had been pretty badly knocked about and she needed surgery.’ For the first time in his life Dawson saw his employer wince, and was sincerely shaken by the evidence of this previously unsuspected vein of sensitivity. ‘Soas a first move the police gave a picture of the bracelet to the press. She was swiftly identified as a teenager who had run away from home when she was sixteen. Her parents came forward and identified her—’
    â€˜But Milly doesn’t have parents alive!’ Gianni cut in abrasively.
    â€˜This woman never recovered her memory after the hit and run, Gianni. She’s a total amnesiac—’
    â€˜A total amnesiac?’ Gianni broke in, with raised brows of dubious enquiry.
    â€˜It’s rare, but it does happen,’ Dawson assured him ruefully. ‘I spoke to a nurse at the hospital where she was treated. They still remember her. When she finally recovered consciousness her mind was a blank, and when her parents took her home she still knew nothing but what they had told her about her past. I gather they also discouraged her from seeking further treatment. The medics were infuriated by their interference but powerless to act.’
    â€˜Normal people do not take complete strangers home and keep them as their daughters for three years,’ Gianni informed him with excessive dryness.
    â€˜I should add that the parents hadn’t seen or heard from their missing daughter in seven years, but were still unshakeable in their conviction that the young woman with the bracelet was their child—’
    â€˜Seven years?’ Gianni broke in.
    â€˜The police did try to run a check on dental records, but the surgery which the daughter attended before she disappeared had burnt down, and the most her retired dentist could recall was that she had had excellent teeth, just like the lady in the hospital bed. This is a very well-known story in the town where Faith Jennings lives—her miraculous return home in spite of all the odds.’
    â€˜There was no return, miraculous or otherwise…that was Milly at the airport! Seven years…’ Gianni mused with incredulous bite. ‘And Milly was in a coma, at the mercy of people no better than kidnappers!’
    Dawson cleared his throat. ‘The parents are respectable, comfortably off—the father owns a small engineering plant. If there’s been a mistake, it can only have been a genuine one, and most