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I shrug. “I’d like to know as well because this is awkward as hell.”
Francesca grins and blurts out. “You’re going to be a dad!”
Her statement catches me off guard. I drop my fork with a loud clang and growl out, “How the hell do you know about that?”
She waves me off. “I was with Alexandra when she bought you the present.”
Dad grins with a bite of cake a mere inch from his mouth. “Alexandra is pregnant with my first grandchild? I’m going to be a Nonno?”
I glare at Francesca before turning my attention to Dad. “No, you’re not.”
He places his bite of cake back on his plate and scratches his head. “What do you mean? If she’s pregnant with your child, why won’t I be a Nonno? Or is the baby not yours?”
“All you have to know is that I took care of it, and I’d like to stop talking about it now.” I stab another bite of the cake with my fork and shove it in my mouth. I should have known Francesca had ulterior motives for baking the coffee cakes. She’s never baked before.
Dad places his hands in his lap and speaks slowly, like he’s trying hard not to show his anger. “What do you mean you took care of it? Where is Alexandra? Are you the reason I no longer have an executive assistant working for me?”
I turn to face him. “Alexandra lied to me. She lied to all three of us. Hell, she even lied about her name. She’s been working with Giuseppe Rossi for God knows how long. There are pages upon pages of text messages and calls between the two of them.”
Francesca huffs and drops her fork on her plate. “What did you do?”
“I fired her and then gave her a bag of cash to make her disappear. I told her I didn’t want anything to do with her or the baby. I can’t be with someone like her. Someone who can betray me like that without a second thought.”
Dad clenches his jaw and Francesca glares at me. They are pissed. Francesca jumps out of her seat and yanks her purse off the counter.
“I’ve got to go check on her. I’ll call you later, Dad.” She slams the door behind her.
Dad sighs. “Joey, I wish you came to me sooner. Actually, I wish I put two and two together because all of this could have been avoided.”
“What’s going on?”
“I need to tell you the truth about what’s been going on. Alexandra came to me a while ago and told me Giuseppe Rossi had kidnapped her and her father. He gave her no choice but to spy on us and leak information to him.”
Anger and guilt build inside me. What did I do? “You knew?”
“It was my idea to leak fake information to Giuseppe Rossi every few days. It was his idea for the two of them to meet in person.”
“The furniture shipment was your idea too, wasn’t it?”
“It was. She didn’t want you to get hurt and now I know why, but I told her to leave you and Francesca in the dark about our plan. The fewer people that knew, the more convincing it would be to Rossi and his men.”
I stare down at the cake on my plate, feeling like the worst person in the world. “I really fucked up, didn’t I?”
Dad lets out a deep breath. “That depends on what happened to Alexandra and how you plan on making it up to her and your child.”
His phone goes off with a text message. He opens the message and stares at his screen with a frown. I watch, frozen in my spot, as his frown turns to pure, unadulterated anger.
“What is it? What’s wrong?” I finally ask.
He spins his phone around, showing me his screen. I take the phone to get a closer look at the picture he was just sent. My heart drops into my stomach.
It’s a picture of Alexandra sitting on a thin as shit mattress on the floor. She has tucked herself into the corner of the room with her knees pressed as close to her chest as she can get them. Her eyes are red and puffy, like she’s been crying for days.
“You need to fix this, and you need to fix this now.” Dad takes his phone back as it chimes with another message.
“I will figure out a way to get her out of there and to make things right.”
I have to. This is all my fault. I’m responsible for the tears in her eyes and the ache in her chest.