“What do you mean?”
“You’re… saying you’re just going to send us back?”
His eyes narrowed. “What were you expecting?”
She opened her mouth then clamped it shut again. That was an excellent question. “Finding out about Jack was…a surprise?”
Darkness churned deep in his eyes. “Yes.”
She dropped her gaze to the floor, the truth so hard to swallow. “I imagine your wife is furious.”
“My wife?”
She nodded, levelling her eyes on him, the hurt of discovering he’d been married the night they slept together one that would never alleviate. “Alison.”
Silence throbbed between them. His wife’s name lay between them like a stone. Elodie stared at the space it occupied in her mind, a frown on her face, the same sense of shock she’d felt at his betrayal filling her heart anew.
Finally, though, Fiero spoke, and his words were clipped, without emotion. “Alison and I divorced some time ago.”
Shock burst through her. “What?”
He didn’t answer. He was watching her like a hawk, so heat burned her flesh in place of the ice that was filling her veins.
Elodie lifted out of the chair, pacing across the room, shaking her head in disbelief. This made no sense. “When?”
“Over a year ago.”
Her eyes swept shut. It wasn’t because of her. She’d seen him six months after that night, and he’d been with his wife: a happy couple, connected, together.
“I can’t say I’m surprised, given your predilection for one night stands,” she murmured. “But if I’d known, I would have told you about Jack sooner.”
His eyes narrowed. “I doubt that.”
She swallowed. Her throat was dry, her tongue thick and uncooperative. “Why?”
“Our son is over two years old. There have been ample opportunities to inform me of his existence.”
Her eyes clouded over as she remembered the day she’d flown to Rome to do exactly that, the hurt she’d felt anew at seeing him – Fiero – with another woman. She hated that the memory could still wound her, that she couldn’t recall it without a cloying sense of panic and a sharp ache beneath her ribs.
“Just as there were ample opportunities for you to tell me were married,” she pointed out, her chin tilting defiantly as she glared at him. “You lied to me that night, Fiero.” She drew a breath, allowing her accusation to hit its mark. “I would never,” she slashed her hand through the air, “ever have slept with you if I’d known you were someone’s husband.”
His eyes glowed with emotions she couldn’t comprehend. “You’ll forgive me if I find it hard to believe your moralistic outcry, given the depth of your deception.” His words held a darkness that caused her to shiver. “Did you lose my number, Elodie?”
The question stopped her in her tracks. She shook her head.
“You knew who I was. How to contact me. You chose to do neither –,”
“How do you know?”
“I know because I discovered six weeks ago that I am the father to a two year old boy.”
“I tried to tell you.”
“Oh, yes, how clearly I recall this. The conversations, the meetings, the lengthy discussions about custody –,”
“Don’t be glib.” She was shaking. She dug her hands into the pockets of her jeans, her stomach looping like an out-of-control figure of eight.
“Don’t lie to me then.”
“I’m not lying!” The words came out louder than she’d intended but she didn’t apologise, nor did she make any effort to soften her voice. She had the feeling that she’d been pushed from the safety and sanctuary of the hospital into a wild and untamed jungle, and that Fiero was a lion hunting her track, toying with her for a reason she couldn’t make sense of.
“Then tell me of your attempts to contact me,” he encouraged sarcastically. “Was there perhaps a dead battery on your mobile phone? A poor connection? Did the dog eat your homework?”
“Wow,” she shook her head angrily. “Fine. Have it your way. And you’re right. Kind of. I didn’t want to tell you. Not at first. Not when I saw who you were and I googled you and learned that you were married.” Her eyes flashed with silent rage. “Can you blame me, Fiero? I was furious. I hated you that morning, I hated you so much. To have woken up and found you gone after what we’d shared,” her voice wobbled and she shook her head to break the threads of those memories, memories that warmed her even when the aftermath was chilling. “That was bad enough, but to see photos of you and your wife all over the internet?”
His chest moved with the rapid rise and fall of his breath, but his face maintained a terse mask of disgust. “So you thought you’d keep him from me as what? A punishment?”
“NO!” She roared the response. “When I found out, my first instinct was to not tell you. It was a one-night stand and you’d disappeared into thin air, forgetting all about me. Why bother involving you? You were married, for God’s sake.”
“As you’ve said.”
“But then I had his twenty week scan,” she spun away from Fiero, focussing her gaze on the view of the roses growing beneath her window. “And I saw his little face and his nose and heard his heart so loud and strong, and I knew that you had a right to know. I could hate you for what you did to me, but that didn’t change the fact that you were his father.” She swallowed, that day burned into her memory. “I flew to Rome, and came to your house. I waited there, screwing up my courage to tell you about Jack.”
“So? Then what? Go on, I’m intrigued.”
His scepticism was obvious.
“Right as I was preparing to cross the road and knock on the door, it opened. You walked out. With her. Alison.” She felt that it was a betrayal to the sisterhood that she spoke the other woman’s name with disdain. The other woman had, after all, done nothing immoral. It was she, Elodie, who’d been in the wrong.
His features briefly shifted to show a greater level of cynicism. “I see.”
“I’m telling the truth. I saw the two of you together and I realised that you were happy. No, it was more than that.” Tears cloyed at her throat. “You were a family, and I had no right to come into your life and destroy that. I wanted our baby to bring happiness and love, and if I told you, it would likely have destroyed your marriage and I couldn’t do that. I didn’t want that to be Jack’s legacy.”
He was quiet for a moment, his eyes scanning her face. “That’s a very convenient story, except for one salient detail.”
“Oh?”
“My wife and I had separated six months before I met you. She moved out of my home; we stopped living together. We were as good as divorced the night I met you.”
Elodie had suffered a traumatic accident a month and a half ago, but the pain in her head now was blinding. It was like being slammed with a mallet. “I don’t believe you.”
“So here we are, man and woman, both determined not to believe the other. Unfortunately for you, only one of us has to bear the proof of a lie.”
Elodie frowned.
“Whatever you thought, whatever you felt, you chose to keep my son from me. There is no excuse – none – niente – that you can offer to make that okay.”
“You were married,” she responded softly, the words swallowed up by her confusion. He had been. There were thousands of photographs on the web, Alison and Fiero at charity balls, concerts, dinner, walking hand in hand in Cannes. Bile rose through her. She ground her teeth and tried to grab onto her anger again.
“I’m sorry I didn’t magically intuit the situation, that I didn’t somehow know you were separated. If I had, believe me, Fiero I would have told you about Jack sooner.”
“You should have told me anyway.” The words, though spoken quietly enough, slammed into her as though he’d shouted them through the room.
She spun around to face him, and whatever she’d been about to say slipped from her mind. The look on his features stilled her.
He was devastated. Her heart kerthunked.
“I have missed two years of his life.” The observation was heavy with accusation. “And these past six weeks, I have got to know our son. I have seen him laugh and cry and talk and eat, run and walk. I have kicked a ball with him and for every moment that is so perfect, I feel an equal sense of disbelief and anger, because I should have known him from infancy. I should have held him as a newborn in my arms, I should have wiped his brow if he were fevered, held his hand as he took his first steps. I should have been there.” His eyes glittered when they locked to hers. “You kept him from me, and there is no excuse for that.”
She felt wobbly on her feet. She reached behind her for the wall, pressing her palm to it as an aid to balance. Was he right?
She blinked, slowly, and then closed her eyes, needing to shut him out for a second. She tried to put herself back in her shoes as they’d been then. The sting of his betrayal, the man she’d believed him to be. He hadn’t made her any promises during their night together, not with words at least, but his body had been devoted to hers, his kisses had seared her soul. And then he’d disappeared into thin air, back to his marriage. At least, that’s what she’d believed.
Unable to find the words to defend herself, she shook her head. “Do you think I wanted to do this alone? Do you have any idea how hard it’s been?”
“No. I have no idea what it’s been like because you didn’t involve me.” She opened her eyes to find him looking at her as though she were a piece of metal, one he was keen to send to the scrap heap. “You didn’t have to do this alone…”
“So what? I should have told you, even believing it would destroy your marriage?”
“My marriage was my business, not yours.”
“Yes, but I’d seen the respect you held for it – or lack of respect, I should say.” She lifted a hand up to forestall him. “I thought I’m seen that. And you can’t blame me for believing what was right in front of me. The photographs, the articles, everywhere I looked there was incontrovertible proof that you were another woman’s husband.” She swallowed; her throat felt coarse. “And when I came here to Italy and saw you together – God, Fiero, my stomach was round with your baby and I stood on the opposite side of the street, and watched you walk out of your house, hand in hand with your wife, and I felt like the worst kind of person in the world. You were married. And she didn’t deserve this. You made a decision that night. You lied to me –,”
“I told you. My marriage was over.”
“Not so over that I didn’t deserve to know about it,” she snapped, and had the satisfaction of seeing his face flash with something like acceptance. “None of this was her fault. None of it was my fault. You were the only one who knew the situation. It was hard enough for me to accept and I’d known you for one night; I wasn’t going to ruin her life because of your mistake.”
“We were separated. As a point of fact, we’d signed the divorce papers. It was almost official. I had every right to do as I wished. Meeting you, going home with you…I didn’t plan that, but nor did I break my vows, Elodie.”
“Except it wasn’t really that simple, was it? You might have known it was just a one night stand but I didn’t.” Damn it, her words shook with the shock she’d felt that morning. “I woke up so happy because for me, that night had been…I was stupid enough to think it meant something.” She glared at him to erase the impression of sadness; she was stronger than that, better than that. It had been three years ago.
“It did mean something.” His expression was like stone but his words robbed her of breath. “It was a one night stand but you were…” he paused, searching for words. “I cannot reconcile the woman I met that night to this woman, to someone who would actively hide a child from his father.”
“I did no such thing!” She swore, shaking her head.
“Did you mean to punish me, Elodie? Was that it? I hurt your feelings because I didn’t stay to make you breakfast…”
“No!” She shook her head vehemently, interrupting him. “If I wanted to punish you, don’t you think I would have delighted in storming into your life and breaking up your perfect marriage? Don’t you think I would have relished making things difficult for you?”
“So you hid my son from me as, what? A favour?”
“Don’t be so facile. I didn’t hide him from you.” She jutted her chin out defiantly, even when her ribs felt as though they were cracking all over again from the sheer strength of her heart’s beating. “It was always my intention that he would know the truth about you one day, and yes, later, when the sting of your betrayal was watered down by time, I thought you and your wife could learn about our son, and that it might not destroy her in the way it otherwise might have.” As it had destroyed Elodie, for a long time.
His eyes narrowed. “How compassionate you are. To raise a child on your own merely to spare another woman’s feelings? A woman you didn’t know, and didn’t owe anything to?”
She gasped. “Only a cold-hearted bitch wouldn’t feel some kind of responsibility to her. I slept with her husband! True, I had no way of knowing that at the time, but are you kidding me? Never in my life would I have chosen to be ‘the other woman’.”
“You weren’t.” He compressed his lips, his features like stone. “As you would have discovered at the time, if you’d given me even a hint of the consideration you gave Alison, I was all but divorced.”
“So why not tell me that? Why put it off?” She demanded, crossing her arms over her chest, goading him. “Why sign the papers and not file them?”
His skin paled momentarily and she thought, for a second, she’d caught him out in a lie. “My grandfather was diagnosed with terminal cancer, a week after we agreed to split. He was very old-fashioned – mired in a bygone era. Neither Alison nor I wanted to put him through the additional pain of our divorce. Not when we knew he didn’t have long. Not when he’d already endured so much.” He swallowed, angling his face away and sucking in a deep breath of air so his broad chest shifted and her eyes dropped of their own accord to the action. “Yaya was another consideration.”
“Yaya?”
“Grandma. She’s Greek.” His expression tightened. “She’s good and kind and she was facing the imminent death of the man she married when she was fifteen years old. The last thing I wanted was to add to her worries with a divorce.”
Her heart, soft to a fault, ached for him and his loss, but she was defensive too. Hurting for herself and for the years she’d spent blaming herself for that night, wondering if she missed some clue as to his state of matrimony.
“I thought you were married.” She bit down on her lower lip. “In hindsight, I wish now – obviously – that I’d found a way to talk to you. But I didn’t know then what I do now. I’m sorry.”
His eyes whipped to hers. “You’re sorry?”
His fury was unexpected. She bristled.
“You think you can say ‘sorry’ and I will just smile and accept it?”
“What else can I do?” She whispered, tears forming in her eyes. “I wanted Jack to know both of his parents. Believe me, I have wanted that all along.”
“How can I believe that, when the evidence is completely to the contrary?”
She opened her mouth to plead her case again but he slashed his hand through the air, silencing her with the emphatic gesture. “Basta. Enough. No more excuses. I will accept that you thought you were doing the right thing, that there was perhaps even a hint of nobility in your decisions, even when you knew you were keeping him from me. You were wrong, completely wrong, but I will give you the benefit of the doubt, as to your motivations.”
She felt her eyes itching to roll, but she held his gaze through his tirade.
“It does not change the fact that I have missed two years of his life. It doesn’t change the fact that I am his father and that I deserve everything you have had these past two years.”
His words did something funny to her insides. “You’re saying you wa
nt to be involved in his life?”
His laugh was completely devoid of humour. “I’m saying I’m going to be his life.” He paced across the room, moving away from her but his words seemed to bring him closer somehow. “I have had custody papers drawn up while you’ve been in hospital. Jack will remain here in Italy, with me. I will be solely responsible for his health and well-being, his upbringing. You will get the same courtesy from me now as I have received from you. In two years, we can talk and see if you still feel so righteous in the choices you made.”
Nausea crushed her from the inside out. She shook her head and tears filled her eyes. “No, Fiero. No. That’s not fair.”
“Fair? You want to speak to me of ‘fair’?”
“I’ve told you I’m sorry. Surely you can see why –,”
“I see a boy who calls me Fiero,” he growled. “Who knows nothing about me or my family, knows nothing of Italy. I see a boy who is my spitting image and yet I am a stranger to him.”
Her gut twisted painfully. She sobbed. “I know that. But please, listen to what you’re saying. You’re hurt and you’re angry but taking him from me isn’t the answer.”
“It feels like it is,” he snapped.
“That’s because you’re angry,” she whispered, the words strangled by her tears. “You’re acting out of that emotion, rather than in our son’s best interests. You’re his father and that means putting aside whatever the hell you feel and using your head to choose what’s right for him.”
“Oh, as you did, when you chose to raise him away from me?”
She swallowed. “Yes. Damn it. I didn’t want him growing up believing himself to be the cause of your marriage breakdown. And I definitely didn’t want him being raised by you and Alison, a woman who may very well have hated him – given that he’s proof of your infidelity.”
A muscle jerked in his jaw. Elodie felt as though she was drowning and yet she knew she had to stay calm. To engage her brain and think logically, even as her world was catching fire.
“We’ve both made mistakes,” she warned him carefully. “But this would be the biggest of all. My mistake was one of ignorance. This would be a mistake you wilfully choose, and he will grow to hate you for it.”
Billionaire Baby Daddies: A five-book anthology Page 21