Chapter 13

Layla

Just like that, this strange woman had read beneath my mask like she’d torn down his. In mere minutes, this woman—who I’d spent nearly eight years hating, blaming for my heartache—had seen through my lies to the real me.

You still love him.

Was I so obvious to everyone around me? Was it obvious to him, too?

I spun to face her. “You know nothing—”

She held up a hand to stop me—from speaking or from coming after her? “When someone’s broken your heart like that, how could you not?”

The gentleness in her voice, as much as the words, halted my argument in its tracks. Froze my feet before I could step towards her. My breath puffed from my nose like an angry bull.

She was right. For someone to have crushed a heart to oblivion, they must first have held it. Been given it to hold. Been trusted with such a fragile organ, such a critical part of existence.

I’d given him my whole heart.

And he’d pulverized it.

“I still love him,” I whispered, letting this strange, beautiful woman into my confidence. This woman who’d marched into my life and stolen away the man I’d once loved. Still loved.

I set my shoulders back against the door and let all the breath from my lungs in a long, slow stream through my nose. “I’ll always love him.”

“I know,” Aurora murmured. And then she slid a step closer, nearly eliminating the distance between us, so her next words whispered against my cheek. “But I’d recommend keeping the child hidden.”

The meaning behind those words slammed into me like a physical force. She knew! She knew the identity of Eli’s father. My pulse felt fluttery, panicked, my skin cold and warm all at once.

This woman, this stranger, this once-enemy, now owned such a critical secret. She held my whole world—everything I cared about—in the palm of her hand.

What could she do with such power?

What could she make me do? The answer was obvious: anything. She could make me do anything. With such a secret, she owned me.

Aurora smiled, but it wasn’t cruel or devious. Not like the smile she’d given me that day beside the mantle when Vasco had asked me for a divorce. No, this was a soft, almost kind smile. “I wasn’t sure. But you don’t have to worry about me. I’ll help you.”

“Help me?” My brows pulled low in confusion, and my heart still beat too fast. “Why would you do that?”

She winked. “You could say keeping your son a secret benefits me.”

“Benefit …?” My brain wasn’t working right, under all the panic. “How could that possibly benefit you?”

Aurora’s smile faded, and her beautiful face pulled into hard lines of seriousness. Of determination. “The family is in turmoil right now. Aldo’s place as Don isn’t secure.”

Oh. Oh.

Bile crawled up my throat at her meaning. He has no heir. “He needs a child. And you want to be the mother.”

She wanted to be the one to bear the child he so desperately needed to cement his place as Don.

“It’s always been my place, at his side.” A tendon flickered in her jaw, and the lines of her face hardened. “I don’t want your son to become an … obstacle.”

“I see.” I did. And in a way, it made me feel better, to know her motives. She wasn’t offering her help; she didn’t care about me.

But keeping Eli’s father a secret benefitted both of us. We had very different goals where Aldo was concerned, but in this, we shared a common interest.

That, at least, secured her silence.

I didn’t trust her, but I trusted her desire. This wasn’t something she’d woken up one morning and decided she wanted. She’d wanted this far longer than I’d known Aldo. Far longer that I could imagine.

“If Aldo realizes he’s the father …” Aurora let the words trail off. “I can only imagine what he’d do.”

My stomach churned sickeningly at the barely veiled suggestion. She’d keep my secrets—but she didn’t want me getting any ideas of my own.

“Don’t worry.” I turned back to the door, set my hand on the knob. I was done with this damned house. “You think I want my son caught up in this shit?”

But before I walked through that door, I threw her a parting glance over my shoulder. “Eli’s my only child, and I will never let anyone take him away. I’ll do whatever it takes to protect him.”

Aldo

I watched Layla’s car slide down the driveway from the window of my office. I hadn’t spoken to her this morning, but I knew she was on her way to another day at the hospital. The woman was nothing if not determined to be the good doctor she was meant to be.

God knew I couldn’t blame her.

Aurora had vanished from the house, too, though I couldn’t be sure where she’d gone. I trusted her enough that I didn't keep tabs on her whereabouts. Carlo, I was sure, did.

“Vas?”

Speak of the devil. My aforementioned second in command poked his head through my opened door as I drained my second mug of coffee.

“Come in.” I slid the mug to the corner of the desk and reclined in my too-large desk chair. My father’s, technically, and I’d never bothered to replace it. Replace any of it. None of it was me, but I’d never bothered to make any of it … mine.

Like somehow, even after all these years, I still hoped this was temporary.

“We’ve got more on the man you wanted investigated.” Carlo slipped into the chair in front of my desk. He set a slim file on the vast wooden space between us.

“Oh?” My fingers slid the file across the desk towards me. “There’s more?”

“Well …” Carlo grimaced. “You’re not gonna like it.”

I opened the file anyway. Expecting dark secrets. Skeletons tucked into closets. Robbery, betrayal, murder, mayhem—

The first photo froze my fingers.

It was Marco … and a woman who was not Layla. He leaned in, lips against her cheek. Intimate. Flirtatious. And the way her eyes had fluttered closed—that wasn’t the end of their interactions.

The next photo was much of the same, this at a bar.

The third was another woman, at the hospital again. “Is this a patient?”

“Yes.” Carlo grimaced. “And she’s not the first. Or the last.”

“Disgusting.” I shoved the photo aside, only to find a stack more beneath. Marco was a complete playboy, it seemed. Certainly, he had a reputation as a brilliant doctor—among the best, if his records were anything to go by.

But in reality, he was a man with no morals.

“These are from the same night!” I protested, shoving two photos in front of Carlo, each stamped with the date and time. Hours apart.

My second merely nodded. No words, I supposed, were needed, when the evidence was laid out in front of me. And this was the man Layla had chosen to father her child?

No, he could never be what she wanted. What she deserved.

“Thank you, Carlo,” I murmured, closing the file. I couldn’t look at those pictures anymore.

“Course. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.”

I shrugged. “It doesn’t matter.”

But it did. And after Carlo took his leave of my office, I sat in my chair for far too long, staring at that closed file.

Even when I tucked it away, moved on to work and business—family matters—those photos haunted me. For the rest of the day, the truth haunted me.

Eight years ago, I’d left Layla because I wanted her to have a good life. I’d given up everything to give her a chance. And somehow, she’d wound up in the clutches of another man who’d only find new ways to tear her apart.

No, she needed to know about this.

So that evening, after I’d finished with work for the day, after I’d watched her Mercedes pull back into the driveway, I unearthed the file from my desk and strode from the office. Determined. I couldn’t control what she did, but at the very least, I could present her with the truth.

From there, she could make a clear-headed decision. I hoped.

Layla typically passed her evenings before dinner in my courtyard garden. But when I slipped through the side door into the small green space, it wasn’t Layla I found but Eli.

The little boy sat cross-legged in the center of the courtyard, his back to me. I almost turned away, left him, but the book in his lap caught my eye. Pulled me forward rather than back.

It was a sketchbook.

I inched forward on silent feet, intrigued. The scene that had unfolded from the young boy’s hands was impressively detailed; he’d captured the lighting, the shadows, the nuances of the flowers with breathtaking precision.

“That’s quite good,” I found myself saying before realizing I’d planned to speak.

Eli’s shoulders stiffened, and his pencil ceased on the page, but he didn’t turn.

“You must like to draw,” I said, softening my voice as I sidled up beside him. “Could I see more?”

The boy didn’t turn, didn’t speak, didn’t so much as budge. Like he was refusing to engage.

“Do you take classes?” I pressed. “Would you like to?”

Still, nothing. Like he was trying to ignore my presence—my existence. My chest clenched painfully. Because I’d hurt his mother.

I crouched down beside him, but still he didn’t turn. Refused to acknowledge me. Maybe that’s why my next words escaped—harsh and a little bitter. “Do you know your father is a bastard?”

Eli finally, finally, turned to look up at me, and I nearly recoiled from the scorn in his gaze. “Of course I know.”