A/N I decided to go with that she knew his real first name. I know it's established in the novels that in his childhood they would sometimes go by fake names but didn't know what else for him to go by and wasn't sure if they would have had faked names in formal education because then he wouldn't have qualifications etc.

"Love is quick. Forgetting is long."

I don't remember what I was more heartbroken about at the time. That he'd left me, that he'd taken my son, that he'd wanted him but not me. Was I just an incubator? Was it all just a mistake? Would we never have been had it not been for my miracle that was my Nicholas?

I say it was my age, my naivety, that I just let it go that he was gone. I just let it go that my child was gone. Missing. Taken. These days I'm horrified. This would not be a crime left overlooked because of age, gender or marital status. But those are these days, back then all that mattered was I could start new and not be a single mother burdened with a child of another man. Who would of wanted me? I look at my children now, value them more than life itself. But i was allowed to have them. They were allowed to be seen with me. They were not viewed as less based on was on or absent from my left hand, ring finger.

My father probably would of killed me had he known. When I first discovered my pregnancy I had been terrified to tell my parents. So conservative, so righteous. What scandal! What would of the neighbours thought? My mother probably would of raised him as her own or worse adopted him out to a more religious family. So either way I would of ended up childless. If only Antonio had loved me. I had been working up the nerve to tell them on the night he begged me to run away and for a while we lived in a blissful wonderland of just us, our family, our dreams, our freedom, our ignorance, our bliss. Then he started disappearing. Leaving for hours on end, night after night for days and days on end. Had he found someone more worthy? Is that why he decided to go? But why, why take him? My baby. My Nicholas.

I had considered leaving him, well leaving our cabin to be more precise. He hadn't been back and the week was dragging into two. I was low on food and wondering where I would draw the line of abandonment. But he came back, he always did. Except the last time, when he didn't. And neither did my Nicholas.

I went dark for a long time after that.

I didn't want to just be a footnote in my sons history. I'm more than just the woman who carried him for nine months. That's when I decided to find him. It was hard to do, almost impossible. How could I find a child that there was no record of existing? That had never been reported missing? I considered doing one of those online posts or writing to one of those shows but still the whispers from my high school about Antonio's mafia connections made me fear the safety of my other children if I went public.

Oh how desperately did I want to know him. What was his first word? What foods did he hate growing up? Was he like my Leslie with Lima beans? Or more like Chester with sprouts? Did he have a girlfriend? Children? Did I have more grandchildren?

Was he happy?

That last one plagued me like no thought ever did. What life had I let him lead? Who had raised him? Had they treated him well? I always wondered what Antonio had done with him. Raised him himself or through nannies? Found a more worthy woman of caliber that would raise him as her own? I wouldn't have minded, as much as it hurt for him to replace me, knowing he had a mother, a comforter, that he wasn't alone would of sated me.

Then by chance it caught my attention. An article in a magazine I'd never read about a subject I'd never be well versed on. Wealth. Business. Success. All intertwined, all related. All unattainable. That wasn't what caught my attention though. It was the eyes. Nicholas's eyes but they weren't his. They were of his fathers. My Antonio's. Formerly mine that is. How often had I gazed into them, solemn promises that turned into pretty lies whispered as he rubbed the growing bump of my stomach, that held my gaze as I birthed our child with just him. It was just him that my heart belonged. Always had, probably always will.

My Walter was a magnificent husband, a loving father, but he was just a placeholder. My heart had always belonged to him and looking into those eyes again I was back at sixteen, awaking to a cold bed and an empty cradle. Nothing left but a note and a packet of money. Out of anger at the time I threw it into the wall and sat in the puddle of money waiting for him to come back. I left eventually but later went back to recollect it still strewn across the room, the empty room. Without my Nicholas. Going back there to retrieve it, I'd nearly killed myself looking at the empty room, hanging open like a wound.

My parents had been angry that I'd ran. They thought that it was because of a boy but never suspected that I bore a child. They still thought I was a good girl, and since I ate their punishments in silence a one who had been lead. They sent me to an all girls private boarding school after that and on my first holiday home I returned for the money to fund my escape. I hadn't thought it would be there but it was. Nothing else was. No one else was. It was abandoned, just like me.

It sounds so pathetic, feeling so sorry for myself. Why hadn't I done something earlier? Hunted for him? Fought for him? Surely despite my societal stigma another mother would of understood my plight, I didn't have to be alone. But I was, I never told. Not anyone, not a soul. I never could tell Walter, I had to be his ideal. That's all I could be since I couldn't really offer him my true, undevoted love. I suffered from depression when I first bore his children. I swear I didn't sleep the first month, watching, waiting, praying he wouldn't take them. One night I'd succumbed to the sleep deprivation and woke with a start to an empty bed and empty bassinet.

Not again! My shattered heart clenched as an unbelievable pain swirled around my gut. He's taken her. My mind screeched. Oh my god he's taken her.

I tore from room to room, in desperate hope, in despair. I couldn't live through it again, I couldn't. And I wouldn't. Because Walter was an ordinary man and this was an ordinary life. I wasn't a dumb kid running away with the heir to a Italian mafia family. Antonio had never confirmed it, he'd never denied it either, but when we were running, when he spoke of home he gave me the impression that others would be hunting us. That they would look down on our union. They would try to separate us. We had to hide for our safety. I'd believed him, now and then, why else would we run. Why else would he take our son but to take him into the shelter of his families protection and if losing me meant Nicholas had shelter from those that would hunt us, then that was better than a life on the run.

Walter had been in the kitchen, cooking my breakfast and feeding our daughter. A normal husband and a normal morning. He'd been doing it as a surprise, to give me a morning off after weeks and weeks of stress and tiredness. Walter was a good man. I started sleeping normally after that.

I'd first looked into my Nicholas when his siblings started primary school. I had so much more free time and with Walter's income there was no need for me to work. I hadn't finished my education so there wasn't a lot of work worth its weight anyhow. I stopped looking for him a month later. Stopped trying. I left. I hid. I took my girls and moved. Got them in a new school, changed all our names to my maiden and got a job to support them. Walter didn't come with us. After I started looking into Nicholas's disappearance Walter died. Died suddenly and unexpectedly. They claimed it was a car accident. That the driver hadn't seen him but I knew the truth. A mafia hit from the man who took my son. I wouldn't let him take the rest of them from me.

I had thought I was being careful. I had barely begun my research. Just looking up contacts from the old days but obviously someone was watching. Did Antonio order the hit out of jealousy or spite? Regardless of what we'd been through I still thought of him as a good man, who loved me, truly loved me. Sometimes even now I can almost feel as if somehow, somewhere, he's watching me. The amount of times my fuddled old brain has sign a turning face and mistaken a stranger for him is truly a mark of lunacy. Oddly it's not the teenage version I see, but the man I envisioned growing old with. Though he's never as old as I in my mind, my wild feminine fantasies of a hunky young lover. Oh if only it were true. I'd forgive him instantly and we could all be together. My Nicholas and I. I could forgive him for everything if only to get my Nicholas back.

I really had thought I was starting to go insane when the same face I thought I saw reflected in my car window as I bundled my grandchildren inside was printed perfectly on the front of some rich nonsense or other. It had a name, first name at least, the same as I had known as a girl. It had a business location, a place I could go and see if I could my son. It had hope.

I could find my son, see my son, know my son was okay. That's all I was after I tell myself. Just to see him, once to know that he was happy. I wasn't actively looking so they would never know, it wouldn't be like before. My children would be safe. I could die happy. I could die seeing my Nicholas, even if they killed me I could see him; just once.

Approaching the building with reflective glass windows I couldn't help but shrink back and feel as if there were a thousand eyes on me. It had taken me over a week to get here. I was too intimidated to fly with my passport, lest they have a trace on that should I enter their territory again, and I didn't know how to fake one. I did however know how to maneuver through buses and motels, it made me reminiscent of the early days when we fled and I dreaded every moment of my transit. Oh how I wanted it all over, to know he's safe and to be safe at home. But how I lived for the moment, the savory moment, when I'd first gaze at him. To see him in oh so long. My son, my Nick. I'd never get to have that first moment again but I'd relive it forever fondly.

I go to reception, Antonio's name a stillborn whisper on my lips. I'm so nervous, my throat is dry; I can barely croak the words out and she can't understand me. I start coughing for my effort and she scurries down her desk to retrieve me a glass of water. I gulp it down noisily turning away from her to calm my nerves when I see him.

I knew I'd know the first time I saw him. Recognise him instantly from the tiny face I rocked in my arms. He's so handsome, so big and strong. So tall and confident and the way he's addressing some business matter to the employees around him! He's so accomplished and refined. I squeak inhaling in exuberance and almost choke inhaling water. Nicholas turned to the commotion and I'm quick to look away. I don't want him to see me. I have to keep him safe. If he tried to find me, if he knew of his siblings they'd all be in danger; the world knowing he came from lower class scum. I wouldn't want him burdened being a child of illegitimacy, not if it would compromise his position.

Peeking over my shoulder I notice his attention is diverted again. The lift doors open and I see Antonio, broad shouldered man that he is bound out of the lift to greet the people my son is interacting. His grin is almost as wide as his frame. He must love it here. Sated I thank the girl for the water and shuffle slowly out, trying not to draw attention. He cannot look at me, he must not know I'm here. Though I'm careful I am no longer scared. I've seen my Nicholas. My son is okay, this I know.

A glimpse, forty years apart, that's all I asked for and took nothing more. I wouldn't let my greed or selfishness penalize him again.

I leave this building now and begin my journey home.

End.

Nick

It was too early to be having a business dinner, though maybe that was more due to just leaving Vanessa's on my way here. Sex replacing sleep never use to be a problem but I guess it was never so continuous. Turning to introduce my father I catch a glimpse of a huddled worker learning around someone but am distracted with an anecdote I'm forced to laugh at. I think nothing of it until the scent hits me. It happened so quickly, fleeting and was gone in an instant. I see my father briefly tense but he gives nothing away; his smile broadening so maybe I'm reading something into it that's not there. He doesn't look at me and it's gone. It seemed so familiar, almost as if it was a scent I breathed in every day but never knew. I shake my head and let it go as it slowly fades away on the breeze, the figures behind me moving until they become shadows I can't see.

Fin.

A/N : And no, Antonio did not order a hit on LKB's fictional husband. But I figure after what she's been through and what rumors they left behind she's entitled to a little paranoia and unfortunately has the worst luck ever. Walter's death truly was an accident. So, so what do you think? I hope K Strong really does some LKB work someday. I've devour it in one sitting! I think their families story is very important to explore!