by Bethany-Kris
Blood meant nothing.
She understood that now.
There was also something else that kept prickling at the back of Penny’s mind every time she held the baby. This would never be her—a woman holding her own child; one she birthed. She was too young for kids, anyway, but it wouldn’t happen for her in the future, either.
Not that she had dared to tell anyone else because the heavy sadness wasn’t really something she could explain without also needing to say why. She didn’t want to get into all that.
“Roz said you were up here. How’s he doing?”
Penny’s head snapped up, and her gaze found Luca leaning in the doorway. “I didn’t know you were—”
“Came with Ma and Dad.”
Oh.
Penny smiled down at the baby. “He’s great.”
“I bet. You look happy.”
Did she?
Penny nodded. “I am. But also a little sad.”
Of course, Luca would ask, “Why?”
He always asked questions. Even when she didn’t want to answer.
“It doesn’t matter,” Penny said.
She hoped he leave it alone.
He didn’t.
Surprise.
Luca’s footsteps approached until he was standing beside the rocking chair and looking down on the two. Reaching over, he pulled back the blanket a little more from baby Cross’s cheek to expose the hand he was sucking on.
“I think everything matters,” Luca replied quietly. “But especially the things you think don’t.”
Well ...
What would it hurt to tell one person? Another secret clawed at Penny.
It wanted out.
“Friends keep secrets, right?” she asked.
Luca chuckled under his breath. “They do.”
“I can’t have my own kids. I never really thought that I wanted them anyway, but I guess when you hold a baby ... you think about it more. What it might be like, you know?”
“What?”
Penny refused to look up at Luca, instead keeping her attention focused on the bundle in her arms. “It’s not a big deal—”
“It’s a huge deal.”
Maybe to him.
She had always known.
Or at least since ...
“I was given a tubal ligation when I was ten—before my period even started. In my records, and what I was told at the time, was that I was having surgery for appendicitis. Except I heard my parents talking. And the doctor they paid off to do it. So, I’ll ... never have my own. And maybe I just realized that I might want to.”
Penny hadn’t expected a response.
How did one respond to that?
Luca still surprised her.
He always did.
A tight hug that felt like safety found her as his warmth and scent wrapped all around her. One traitorous tear slipped out of the corner of her eye when she heard him murmur against the top of her head, “I’m sorry, Penny.”
Who knew?
Who knew an apology—even if this man had nothing to apologize to her for—could feel like healing? Sometimes, it was all she needed, though.
For someone ...
Anyone to say sorry.
And fucking mean it.
She just wanted people to mean it.
16.
Penny
FOR once, when the months passed without Penny really noticing, it wasn’t because she was depressed. The months leading up to her eighteenth birthday saw her graduate high school—a feat in itself. She never expected to walk across that stage and feel a sense of accomplishment simply for doing it.
But she did.
On the way to turning eighteen, she also got to watch baby Cross go from a sleepy newborn to a constantly babbling, sweet six-month-old. Maybe that was what made the months go by so fast. Before she had even blinked, really. She heard everyone tell Roz—over and over—to enjoy the time she had with her son as a baby because soon, it would change. Babies don’t stay babies for long.
Those people were right.
Mostly.
Penny wanted to see little Cross grow. She looked forward to getting up every day just to see what the baby was going to do that day. It seemed like he did something new every time. She was lucky enough to watch him do it, too.
Turning eighteen meant a lot of things to Penny. It always had even long before she came to stay with Naz and Roz. Eighteen felt like freedom. Of sorts. Freedom over herself, if she wanted, when she finally became an actual legal adult under the law. An adult capable of making her own decisions, living where—and as—she wanted, and even ... leaving.
Because a long time ago, all she thought about was leaving. Back when she was being abused and trafficked by her father, or even after when she was shuffled from one private school to another to keep her issues a secret from anyone that cared enough to try to help, leaving was the one thing she held onto. Or rather, turning eighteen so she could leave.
But then it happened.
Eighteen came and went.
What did Penny do?
She stayed. Right where she was, actually. Roz asked once if Penny wanted to look at apartments in the city—as she had been offered a spot as the lead pianist in a famous Manhattan company when someone pulled a few strings—but she said no. How was she going to still manage to see her godson every day being there?
At least now, she got to wake up to him. And if she did take the spot in the company, she would still wake up to the boy and then head back to home at night where he was waiting for her.
“Are you okay?”
Penny had been so lost in her thoughts that she didn’t even realize the elevator they were riding to a higher floor of an attorney’s office had come to a stop. While Roz stood beside her holding baby Cross against her hip, Luca was at the elevator doors holding it open and looking their way. He had come along for the day trip to the office in place of Naz, who was busy.
What was today?
Oh, just another great part of turning eighteen.
Great, right.
Penny was finally getting her trust fund signed over. Along with the restitution payments from her deceased father’s estate. She didn’t actually want any of it, but that wasn’t her choice. As she had been told many times over, what she did with the money after the accounts were in her name wasn’t their business, but it did have to be hers.
For a time, anyway.
“Penny?” Roz asked.
Penny looked Roz’s way, seeing the worry staring back at her. Shit, even she was worried. She hadn’t been this quiet in months. She had, after all, learned how to have conversations with other people and enjoy it. She didn’t need to be lost inside her head all the time now.
“I don’t want to be here,” Penny admitted.
“I know,” Roz replied, “but it won’t be for long. You’ll sign some papers, get the information you need, and once everything is good, we’re gone.”
“Just like that,” Luca added, drawing Penny’s attention his way, too. “No worries.”
Easy for them to say.
They weren’t facing a meeting with their horrible, manipulative mot—
“Ah, there you are!” A familiar man in a suit—one of the lawyers on Penny’s side of things, stepped out of a room down the hallway from the elevator and headed their way. “We were waiting for you before starting. The other beneficiary to the estate asked for us to do so. Are you about ready?”
All eyes turned on Penny.
That other beneficiary to her father’s estate?
It was Penny’s mother.
And no.
She was nowhere near ready.
NEARLY TWO YEARS HAD passed since Penny laid eyes on Allegra Dunsworth. Even before she became a ward of the state and her mother signed away any legal right to her own child, there had been entire seas and continents between them for ... a long time.
The last thing her mother said to her?
Penny could still remember
it like it was yesterday.
“It’s not okay,” she told her mother. “It’s not.”
Allegra only shook her head. “You don’t even understand what I’ve given you—you’re not worthy.”
For most of her youth, Penny had been far too young to understand that the sexual abuse she suffered under her father—but with her mother’s permission, encouragement, and even control—was bigger than just what it appeared to be on the surface. The blackened veins of abuse had begun long before Penny was even a thought in her parents’ marriage. Before her mother was even married to begin with, honestly.
It started with Allegra and her own father, but even that wasn’t the first in their family’s legacy. It was simply something her mother continued on, while her father pulled the strings from the shadows, growing their disgusting inclinations and dark family secrets into a terrifyingly successful organization where cash was king. And the young princes and princesses were broken on the piles of dirty money.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Wasn’t that how the saying went?
Allegra and her father weren’t the only people with attractions that society said wasn’t acceptable. But money could do anything—it made everyone talk and walk.
Penny learned too young—but also too late—what it meant to be a Dunsworth girl. A pretty, compliant, good Dunsworth girl.
And when she finally gained the courage to tell her mother as a broken teenage girl, that what they did to her wasn’t okay ... Allegra replied that she wasn’t worthy.
Worthy of what?
Clawing depression?
The constant shame?
Knowing what they were doing to others even if she was no longer useable?
That was the last time she spoke or saw her mother in almost two years. Now, sitting on the other side of a long table with lawyers all around them, Penny and Luca on either side of her, and even baby Cross in his mother’s lap babbling on with preciousness like he always did ... the only thing she could see was Allegra.
At the other side.
Staring her down.
Smiling so sweetly.
She heard them talking.
Lawyers doing their ... thing.
Roz telling her, “Nearly done, Penny.”
Even Luca telling his godson, “Nah, buddy—we don’t eat the paper. That shit’s trash.”
She looked just like her mother.
They were also totally different.
Allegra in her white dress, a capped sleeve number that plunged in the front while her white-blonde hair had been let down in soft curves over her shoulders. Penny had opted for skinny jeans and a loose blouse that she let Roz convince her to at least try the last time they went shopping.
During their final conversation, and even before that, Allegra had never seen Penny in anything but clothes she could practically swim in. Her naked body hadn’t been displayed in front of her mother—in the flesh—since she was twelve. Yet, with a table between them, and clothes she knew covered her body, though not comfortable enough to hide her shape—she could feel Allegra’s gaze appraising her.
That was what her mother had meant.
Her worth was always one thing.
“Okay, I’m just gonna run down the hall to the quiet room and feed him really quickly,” Roz said, finally dragging Penny’s stunned attention away from her mother. “And I think someone needs a diaper—fuck.”
All the lawyers quieted at the cuss.
Roz’s cheeks pinked when she muttered to Luca, “I forgot the diaper bag in the car. Naz always grabs it, I wasn’t even thinking and didn’t mention to you to grab it.”
“I can get it.”
“But Penny—”
Their gazes darted to her instantly.
Penny wanted to ask them not to go. Her heart screamed it. Yet, the fear was so overwhelming; the absolute terror of being this close to her mother had been enough of a shock to her system that she had shut down a while ago.
Back when they first entered the room.
“You okay for us to go?” Luca asked. “I’ll be back in a few minutes. The lawyers are all here. Right?”
Her shoulders lifted—something akin to a shrug—but it was all she could manage. Luca and Roz took that as an okay.
See, she’d never been honest.
Not completely.
Penny’s biggest demon wasn’t a man long dead. The monster hiding in the depths of her soul wasn’t every man who had ever used her body as a child for their sexual pleasure. The truth was far more frightening than that. Who haunted her was more real than all of that combined.
She had the chance to take them down.
And currently ... Allegra was still smiling at her.
Like Penny should already know what would happen next.
Maybe she did.
PENNY’S FEAR GOT AHEAD of itself ... thankfully. She hadn’t even needed to speak to her mother—or barely look at the woman—once the lawyers really got down to business. Allegra had her side of things, the estate had its own lawyers, and then Penny had hers as well. Signing her signature on all the many dotted lines ended up taking the bulk of the time. Luca ended up being back in lots of time while Roz remained in the quiet room feeding the baby.
Once it was all said and done, Penny was shuffled out of the room by her lawyers, given a folder and told, “That’s it. And when—or if—you want access to the money, you walk into the bank and tell them what to do with it.”
That was it.
“Everything good?” Roz asked when Penny came to stand in the doorway of the quiet room. “I’m almost done.”
The shawl Roz had thrown around her son while he drank his bottle did little to hide his wiggling feet. It was cute. Something he had always done, even when he was brand new, while someone fed the boy.
“Yeah, it looks like we’re finished with our side of things,” Luca said for Penny. “The estate lawyer is in there with the other one, but that doesn’t involve us. So, whenever you’re done we can leave. I’m gonna go use the bathroom before we go.”
“All right,” Roz replied to her brother.
Luca headed down the hallway near the bank of elevators where a sign pointed around a corner for the bathrooms.
Penny let out a little sigh. “That went easier than I thought it would.”
“Of course, it did. Just some paperwork.”
Right.
Well, that’s what she wanted Roz to think. There was no reason to worry her with things that hadn’t even happened—like a confrontation with her mother.
While Roz went back to feeding the baby, Penny lingered out in the hallway just beyond the visibility of the doorway to the quiet room. She wanted a minute alone—even if it was only a sense of privacy in some way—to hold the weight of the folder in her hands that now said she was the recipient of several of her father’s millions.
She still hadn’t figured out what to do with it or—
“Will you look at me now?”
Penny’s head snapped up at the quiet question. Somehow, in her distraction, she had missed Allegra leaving the conference room to come and stand in the hallway. Just ten feet away from Penny. Ten short steps separated her from the person who had caused her the most pain.
And probably wasn’t done, she knew. Because that was the thing about her mother ... it never really felt over.
“I—”
“You do know why I allowed you to leave the country the first time, don’t you? Why I kept you in private schools?” her mother asked.
Penny swallowed hard. “It fixed a problem.”
“In a sense. I gave you what you wanted—to be away from it all—and it corrected the issue of having you near. Coming back wasn’t any different, was it?”
What?
“Penny,” Allegra said, her voice still soft and musical, enough to draw even the most guarded souls close, “you didn’t talk—so I signed you away. You got something you wanted, and so did I. Fixing another problem.
”
Right, right.
“Except it isn’t enough,” her mother said, drawing Penny’s gaze upward until the two were staring at one another. The memories of a time long gone rushed past Penny’s eyes, moments that had never truly left her mind despite hiding as well as they had for all this time. Cement might as well have been poured into her feet as Allegra took those ten steps between them and turned it into only a foot. She could smell the peony perfume her mother had always worn. “I know who they are, Penny.”
“Who—”
“The people you’re with now. I know who they are, what they do, and even what they can do. And if they try to come after me, or anyone near me, for you ... if I even feel a little bit threatened by any Donati, I’ll burn them to the ground. And you know I won’t care if you burn with them.”
Panic swelled in her heart.
It hurt.
She didn’t want Allegra anywhere near Roz, Naz, the baby ... anyone she loved. None of them.
“They don’t know any—”
“Yet, but,” Allegra replied, “I’ll be watching you. All of you.”
Penny took a step back from her mother at the same time a new voice from behind her said, “Everything okay out here?”
Roz.
Penny turned to tell Roz to back into the quiet room, but Allegra’s smile was all she could see as the woman passed her by to come closer. She reached out a single hand, each finger adorned by a thin golden ring, for the baby. Like she was going to touch baby Cross’s hand.
The baby pulled away, dark eyes narrowed and brow furrowed on the stranger in front of him. Except he looked at her like ... he recognized her. Or something about her.
Something bad.
Except that was impossible.
He was just a baby.
“He’s adorable,” Allegra told Roz. “He must be what, six months? I always wanted a boy ... and thank you for taking care of Penny. I was never a very good mother. I hoped she found someone who could give her what I couldn’t. Seems that was you, hmm?”
That was it.
Allegra offered one more smile and then turned on her heel and past Penny. The two shared a look—nothing that visually threatening, but it didn’t have to be, either.