Chapter 39

Layla

I’d always prided myself on my independence. Before Vasco, I’d crafted myself from a country girl into a big-city med student. And after he dumped me on my wedding day … Well, I picked myself up by my bootstraps and rebuilt my life—my self—brick by brick then, too.

And Aldo, this new version of him, anyway, seemed determined to bring it all crashing down once again. Like the wolf outside that third little pig’s damned house.

After eight years of silence, after months of keeping me at arms’ length, after flaunting Aurora around me … After I’d hardened my heart to him, it seemed he was determined to win me back.

When I first walked into the hospital the next morning, the entire place was aflutter. Murmured voices, whispers, smiles. Disbelieving laughs. It was like a wildfire of rumor had swept through the place—but nobody was looking at me.

“What’s going on?” I asked one of the nurses at the station. She looked, for lack of a better word, shell-shocked.

A wide smile spread over her face as she turned to me. “The hospital has a new buyer, I guess?”

Her friend leaned over the counter towards me. “Some rich guy. Says he’s gonna get us new equipment, up the staffing, paid training … all kinds of shit.”

“We’ll see if it actually happens,” said the first nurse, but she hadn’t stopped smiling. “Imagine having a full staff!”

Imagine. It was like something from a dream—so why had my stomach clenched into a cold, hard knot?

Was it because I knew who this mysterious rich guy buyer was?

I shouldered my purse and headed for the break room. This had Aldo Marcello written all over it. Somehow, he’d known all my complaints about the hospital—and now he was fixing them.

Was that supposed to impress me? Is that what this was about? I shouldered my way into the break room—and nearly crashed headlong into a solid body positioned just inside the door.

“Hi, Layla.”

My head snapped up to meet the dark gaze smoldering down at me. “Aldo.”

Because of course it was. He owned this hospital now—did that make him technically my boss? I wasn’t sure, but I surely didn’t like it.

I shouldered my way past him towards the coffee pot on the counter. “Is this supposed to impress me?”

I didn’t turn, so I wasn’t sure if he winced at the bite of accusation in my voice. I didn't care.

“This hospital has served many of my men,” he replied in the cool, casual tones of the Mafia don. “I needed it to be upgraded.”

“Right.” I wrenched the coffee pot out and poured myself a mug. “And I’m sure it has nothing to do with the fact that I work here.”

“It did not.”

I spun, mug in hand, to face him. “Throwing your family’s money around is not the way to my heart.”

And it truly wasn’t. All it did was add more complications to my life. Work was my escape—my sub-reality away from the dark bitterness of my new reality.

“I’m not—”

“Why couldn’t you just leave me alone?” The coffee in my hand rippled as my hand shook with fury. “You meddled in my life, meddled with my son, and now you’re going to insert yourself in my work, too?”

Aldo merely shrugged. “I can help.”

And help, it seemed, he could.

The new equipment arrived first: state-of-the-art machines we’d only dreamed of having. Then new staff appeared: nurses and doctors, interns, cleaning staff. We even gained access to things we hadn’t known we’d needed, like translators—so a distraught mother didn’t have to struggle to understand her child’s diagnosis.

People worked less, smiled more, and the whole place felt … brighter.

I spent more than one night a week home with my son, and that was something I couldn’t put a price tag on.

I hated that he was the one who’d given me such a gift. But every time I saw something new appear, every time I saw Eli smile over the table, I couldn’t help the way the icy walls around my heart softened just a touch.

He was trying to buy my love, and I was afraid it was working.

One evening, I sat in my office filling out charts—I was actually able to take time to do this, since Marco’s absence had been filled by not one but two doctors—when a low male voice spoke from the door of my office.

“Hey, Layla.”

I snapped my chair around to face him. Aldo stood framed in the doorway, two paper cups of coffee in hand.

“What are you doing here?” I asked, cautiously folding my charts closed.

“Bringing you coffee,” he said simply, and he crossed the room to set one down beside me. “All the improvements I can make to this place, I can’t teach anybody how to make good coffee.”

I huffed out half a laugh in spite of myself. “It is pretty terrible. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” He hovered awkwardly beside me, like he was waiting for an invitation to sit—or maybe an order to leave.

I sighed, even as my fingers curled around the paper cup. “You can’t keep doing this, Aldo. I appreciate everything you’ve done for the hospital. For me. But … It’s over. You can’t buy your way back into my life.”

He propped a hip against the edge of my desk, sipped at his coffee. His dark eyes met mine with an almost unsettling earnesty. “I’m not trying to buy you, Layla.”

“No? Then what is this?” I asked, but my voice was as soft as his gaze.

“I’m trying to show you that I’m here. For you. That I’m willing to work for you, fight for you. Help you.”

The laugh that escaped my lips was cold and bitter. “You think buying a hospital shows that? You think some coffee and equipment will erase everything that happened?”

“No,” he said softly. “I don’t. But it’s a start. And I’m not giving up on you, or on us.”

The sincerity in his voice, in those soft brown eyes, was like a lance to my chest. Why did it hurt so much, to hear him talk like that? Why did I believe him?

I wrenched my gaze away, down to the stack of papers in front of me. “You should go.”

He didn’t leave. “Do you remember when we first met?”

I squeezed my eyes shut against that memory. The beautiful man standing in the rain, tracks like velvet tears down his bronzed cheeks. That soft, lilted voice asking for my number.

The way our first date had been filled with laughter, with stories, with shared interests and divulged truths—or so I’d thought.

I stood abruptly, forcing myself back a step. “That was a long time ago, Aldo. We’re different people now.”

“Maybe,” he murmured, and his eyes drifted down to the coffee in his hand. “But I think under all the masks and walls, under the truths and lies, we’re both the same people. Don’t you think?”

“No, Aldo.” I shook my head. “I don’t. And I know I can’t do this. Not after everything that’s happened—because of you.”

He flinched, but when he spoke, his voice was firm, strong. Determined. “Everything I’m doing is for you and Eli. I know I’ve made mistakes, Layla. But I’m trying to be the man you deserve. The father Eli deserves.”

Another lance to my heart—another mortal wound, bringing Eli into the discussion. How long had I yearned to give him a father, a true father?

How many nights had I imagined my Vasco might walk back into my life, beg to fill exactly that role?

Why was it so much different when Aldo was the one asking?

I blinked away a sudden wetness at my lids. “It’s not enough.”

“No, but it’s a start,” he murmured. “And I’m not giving up on us.”

He left me alone in my office with those words. Those words, with all the memories, with a storm in my heart and in my head.

I still loved him. But was that enough?