The Italian's proposal

Chapter 8

Timothy Giannatto

Timothy looked at the woman lying across from him. She was beautiful in a different way. She had a sparkle in her gaze that had coaxed him ever since he saw her in the coffee shop that morning, her hair such a dark shade just made him conjure up a thousand sexual positions where her black hair fell over them, surrounded, sweaty, wet, it was so exciting to think about, he didn’t want to think about what it would be like to make it happen. The girl was practically a mystery to him, he didn’t know her at all, and his bruised male ego screamed at him that he didn’t want to know her either.

That happened when someone broke our personal and sentimental barriers. There was no longer a single moment in his life where he did not think about the mess he had gotten into with Gia, he had trusted her blindly, for him she was a woman who represented him, who could share his problems and dreams. He had fallen into the net of a crone, one who did not even regret what she had done.

He looked back at Melody, the most innocent and spontaneous young woman he had ever met in his life. He was used to people around him doing and saying what he wanted, but that woman, with her gray eyes and murderous mouth, had shown him that not everyone was a sheep in his world. There were people like her who wouldn’t stop at what he wanted, strong people who wouldn’t let themselves get wrapped up in his world of money and falsehood.

When she passed out a few hours ago his first instinct was to hold her immediately, the girl was absolutely nothing compared to what she lifted at the gym, or the other women he had been intimate with.

She was different in every way.

But that particularly bothered him. She had to be healthy if she wanted to give birth to a healthy child. It was obvious that Melody had no idea how to be a mother, and this gave Timothy a twinge.

At first when they were in the coffee shop and she called Doyle to report that she had to go check on the baby, Timothy thought it was all a sham, because he couldn’t see anything, not an ounce extra, not a shadow on her belly, she was as flat as an ironing board.

His sensor immediately went on and he considered that she was just one of those women who looked for pity in the eyes of others, and that she only wanted, in some way that he did not understand, to get money out of him.

But he had been incredibly surprised by this explosive little woman.

She was self-sufficient and didn’t care about his money, at least that he had noticed. She hadn’t asked for his help at any time since they had left the coffee shop, instead, she had preferred to stay alone with Troy.

His phone rang at that moment and he left the room and took the call in the hallway.

“Timothy, where are you?” it was his mother.

“Hi mom” he greeted her startled by the call. His mother didn’t usually call him unless it was an emergency. He went every Sunday to lunch with them at their mansion away from the noise of the city.

“Son, why didn’t you go to the meeting today? You know it was of extreme importance. You kept everyone waiting.”

“Who... How...?” Timothy couldn’t believe his mother already knew about it.

Contrary to what he had led Melody to believe about the meeting, it was quite important that he attend that meeting, he had even had specific guidelines for over a week not to miss it.

There was a lot at stake in his family, his father had told him so. That morning was the prelude to a million-dollar deal.

And there was the embezzlement.

When his mother found out she was going to have a heart attack. She didn’t know how that damn man had gotten into her company and stolen three million dollars!!!!

Not that his finances were severely affected by this, the magnitude of money his parents had collected over the years was quite large, but that didn’t mean that three million wasn’t a pretty hefty amount, more so when he had worked so hard to be a worthy son to his parents, and a businessman capable of detecting any embezzlement or illicit transactions.

He clenched his fists tightly, almost forgetting he had his cell phone in his hand.

“Just because your father and I aren’t there, doesn’t mean we don’t know how our company is doing. Our company Timothy, do you understand well? It’s ours. What your father and I have fought for over two decades. You must put your life in order and repair whatever is damaged right now.”

Timothy knew that was true, but he also had his pride in having been an important piece in the development over the past few years of each of the companies his family and his cousin Hamlet’s family ran.

He wasn’t going to let anyone, including his mother, minimize his sleepless nights and his devotion to the Giannato family’s well-being.

“Don’t let it slip your mind that I have also been part of that progress and development mom,” he told her annoyed. “Ci sacrifichiamo tutti per avere la compagnia dove si trova attualmente.” They had all sacrificed to place the company where they had it.

“Non stai aiutando Timothy. Non hai aiutato da quando quella ragazza ha concluso la sua relazione con te,” his mother replied, speaking in Italian as well, that his view had changed since he had ended his relationship with Gia.

“Don’t bring my relationship into this mother,” he growled, “you have no idea how things went. Don’t talk without knowing.”

“You don’t talk to me in that tone,” his mother didn’t raise her voice, she was always calm, but even in that tone, she could prove to him that she was capable of hiding his body in case she murdered him. “I don’t know anything because you haven’t come home for months, you haven’t talked to me and told me what’s going on. If you don’t tell me what happened, how do you expect me to know. You’ve made sure that the press doesn’t talk about your breakup, only that beautiful young woman has come out to give her opinion.”

If her mother knew that woman, the one she called a beautiful, the one she had opened the doors of her home to, that she had had lunch with her and tea, that woman had been unfaithful to him, if her mother knew the truth, Gia would have her life and career ruined at that moment. The vindictive and calculating aspect he had taken from his mother and only from her.

Carlota Giannato had married his father when they were in their early twenties and full of dreams, soon after they had him, but this was not a stop for his parents, together they did their best and created an empire, both in cars and marketing. Timothy admired them, because despite coming from a prominent family, they had both sacrificed a lot to get where they were, and he didn’t want to be the one to ruin it.

He heard a noise and turned for the door he had left open on his way out of the room where Melody was lying.

“Mother,” he told her watching as the woman got up disoriented in bed, she was so thin she almost disappeared into the white canopy sheets of his bed. “I have to go.”

“Don’t hang up on me Timothy Alexander.”

“I have something important to sort out. I’ll call you back.”

“Half an hour and you call me. There’s a lot to talk about,” she was quiet for a while and then said, “your father has made a particularly important decision regarding...”

“To what mother?” something gave him a bad feeling.

“Call me in half an hour and we’ll arrange a lunch this week.”

“Addio mamma, ti amo.”

He walked over to the bed and tucked his cell phone into his right pants pocket. A few minutes ago, he had changed his coffee-stained shirt, he threw it immediately into the trash, he had no need to try to get the stains out of a random piece.

“You woke up.”

“Where am I?” she asked immediately.

“In my apartment.”

Timothy watched as she opened her eyes and mouth simultaneously. She looked like a cartoon.

“What...?” she started the sentence, but didn’t finish it, and Timothy could appreciate how she was remembering. Her eyes, other than the gray ones they were, looked like a well of answers.

“After you passed out, I called Troy, he said it was normal in your condition to occasionally pass out, since you’re not feeding well.”

“I eat” she defended herself getting out of bed.

The instant she put her first foot on the floor, Timothy watched in slow motion as she lost control of her body, so he rushed over and stopped a horrible fall to the floor.

“Pretty good you feed,” he sneered.

“You don’t know me,” she accused him. “Let go of me. I must go, you shouldn’t have brought me here.”

“I’m not going to let you go, just like that. You’re sick, you apparently have no one to force you to eat, so, first, have some breakfast with me, then if you still wish to leave, well, you leave.”

“You don’t know anything about me Timothy. Thank you for the offer, but I must decline. It won’t be a then I’m leaving, it will be a I’m leaving now,” she pulled away from his arms and his grip, and for a few seconds they stood staring at each other, him feeling the chill she had left in his body as she walked away.

“Oh god!” she shrieked.

Timothy nearly jumped in fright at the raised tone of her words.

“What? What’s wrong with you? Is the baby okay?” he reached out again with his arms outstretched to grab her in case she was going to fall again.

She took a step back looking up at him with tears in her eyes, she looked so tiny and helpless to him and he felt that woman was going to stay engraved in his memory as long as he had life.

“Melody tell me what’s wrong,” he almost begged her, “Don’t go crying. I’m not going to kidnap or anything. I brought you here because I don’t know where you live, and it didn’t seem fair to just leave you in a hospital bed and walk away, just like that.”

Timothy spoke quickly, he needed to apologize, for her to understand that he had had no occult, macabre intentions for her.

He had never acted more selfless in his life.

His bodyguard went cold when they saw him arrive at his penthouse with a fainting woman in his arms. Clark helped him get her out of the car without hitting her in the head.

Troy recommended rest and hydration, for him, who had seen and heard her say she had no money, it was only fair that he provide as much as possible. It didn’t seem right to leave her in the lurch when he could do something.

Much less when the young woman had asked him for nothing.

She didn’t even want his help.

“I’m sorry,” she muttered without looking at him.

She ducked her head and hurriedly walked past him.

“I need to get out of here,” she said as she walked out of the room. Timothy watched her looking both ways down the hallway and eventually turned right, where the kitchen was located.

He followed her silently, four steps from her, it was a stride from him. He nervously ran his hand through his hair and scratched his beard, he wondered what the hell had happened that she had become so sad from one moment to the next.

There were many things he didn’t understand about Melody, for example, her mysterious pregnancy and the absence of a man in her life, at least that’s what he had understood at the clinic. That led him to wonder how someone had let such a beautiful, selfless, independent, and sincere woman pass him by, a woman who could not hide her feelings, even if she wanted to, at least that’s what he had seen up to that moment. The girl had no health insurance, being three months pregnant, had no family to turn to and worked in a coffee shop, even though she said she knew about animals because she was studying to be a veterinarian.

She was like an unassembled puzzle.

“I’m sorry,” she muttered again as she found herself facing the granite table in the center of the kitchen.

“I don’t understand anything, Melody. I don’t understand why you should apologize. You haven’t done anything wrong, you apologize to me, for bringing you to my house, I didn’t think it would look so bad to you.”

She blushed and looked everywhere but at him, which struck him as odd, as all day she had been looking straight at him.

She was hiding something from him.

The alarms went off again and this time he listened to her. It pained him a little to have felt somehow committed to Melody, a nice, fresh young woman but one he knew nothing about.

“I must go,” she said again.

But this time Timothy did not stop her. The door was always available for whoever decided to leave.

“I’ll point you to the door,” he turned and walked toward the exit. He never looked over his shoulder to see if she was following him. But he knew she was walking fast behind him. “Clark will take you wherever you wish. You’ll find him in the garage.”

She stopped in front of him on her way out and looked up at him with her huge gray eyes still with unshed tears, those eyes led him to the door of her soul, he wanted to hug her instinctively, but stopped short. He didn’t know her, and he wouldn’t. She had only been a pregnant woman he had helped. Nothing more.

“Thank you, Timothy, for everything,” she blushed from head to toe and stepped into the elevator.

Although he felt bad about her indifference, something told him he would see her again.

And his instinct never failed.

Except when he’d trusted Gia and she’d cheated on him.

That’s why he couldn’t fall for a woman’s tricks again, especially not those who were painted as saints, those were the ones to be afraid of.

Two hours later he was having lunch with his mother in a restaurant in downtown Manhattan. Carlota was dressed as always elegant and sophisticated, wearing an olive-green dress and beige heels, pearls adorned her neck and ears. Her platinum blonde hair was always combed up and tucked behind her ears. Timothy couldn’t remember a time when his mother didn’t wear her hair short over her shoulders.

“How did you lose so much money?” she immediately confronted him as soon as the coffee was on the table.

She never beat around the bush, and his brain recreated an image for him of a white-skinned, gray- eyed woman who was similar to his mother in that aspect.

He tried to remain calm and tell his mother the truth.

“An employee did it.”

“Obviously, an employee did it, Timothy. What I want to know is how you let something like that happen? Where were you?” she asked again. Maybe she didn’t realize her accusation, or maybe she did realize it and that was the main goal.

“I have his name and I’m going to bring him down. He’ll pay with years in jail.”

“Jail? You think prison is going to pay you back three million dollars? There must be more people involved and I highly doubt he’d spend the money that fast. You’re lucky I haven’t told your father about this yet. He left three days ago for Austria to look at some properties. He’ll be back in a week and I need you to tell me, what do you intend to do?” she spoke to him as if he were five years old again and Timothy listened to her as such.

“What do you want me to do mother? Do I do a witch hunt? Do I set him on fire in a stake?” she looked at him scandalized and took a sip of her coffee.

“You’re overreacting and playing this up,” Carlota scolded him annoyed. “You don’t know what plans your father has for you, and now I’ll end up agreeing with him.”

“What plans mother? Have you forgotten that I am twenty-nine years old? I’ll be thirty soon, I’ll receive my grandfather’s inheritance in a few months, I’m not telling you this...”

“What, Timi? What are you telling me? You’re just going to take off with your grandfather’s inheritance and that’ s it? You’re going to sink your father who suffers from diabetes? You’re going to destroy him if you leave the company!” for the first time he heard how his mother raised her voice and he almost got scared.

“I’m not saying I’m going to leave; I’m saying...”

“I understood you perfectly, son,” she interrupted him finishing the double espresso and asking for the bill. “I understood you and I hope now you understand why your father does what he does. Don’t hate him.”

“What did he do?” he asked, squinting. If his mother was interceding it was because what his father had done was something big. Alonzo Giannato didn’t do anything without calculating it first. He was a man who analyzed pros and cons and was never affected by sentimentality.

“You must marry. It is the condition for you to remain in charge of Giannatto Enterprise. Within six months. Otherwise, you’re out and without your grandfather’s inheritance,” his mother spoke rapidly, and he could watch her twist the wedding ring she wore on her ring finger.

She, too, was uncomfortable about the situation.

But never as outraged as Timothy felt at that moment.

“This is crazy! We’re in 2020, Mother! Father can’t force me to get married! It’s stupid,” he shouted at her, rising from his chair.

“Timi, sit down. You’re making a scene,” his mother, ever proper, placed the cloth napkin on the table and extended her hand toward him. “Please, Timothy, sit down, dear.”

“I’m sorry mother,” he placed the chair behind the table as he had found it when he arrived, adjusted the suit he had put on to see his mother, and buttoned the center button. “I have more important things to do than plan a marriage to please my father. Tell him thank you for sending you, but he can shove his proposal where the sun can’t reach.”

And so, he walked away, leaving his mother with her mouth open and her eyes full of tears. It pained him to offend and hurt her, but he was beyond himself.

“Sir,” Clark said as he saw him approaching the car. “Where are we headed?”

“Just drive.”