“So what will you do?” I asked. He must have had a plan.
“I don’t know. I really don’t. An attorney with my experience at Legal Aid earns about half what I earned before. There’s not a snowball’s chance in hell I can get a position at one of the other New York DA offices, considering how they all know each other, but even if I did, it wouldn’t be the same. Ramirez is one of the good ones—the others are beyond corrupt. It’s why I thought your family could trust him to begin with.”
I didn’t say anything more. Matthew’s despair was palpable, his longing thick. Part of me wanted to march all the way to Brooklyn and demand a meeting with this Ramirez to tell him exactly what he was losing out on. That he had terminated the most honorable man in the city. What a loss for the people of New York.
“Sometimes I wonder if it would be better to leave,” he said, now leaning back on the couch and staring vacantly up at the crown molding on the ceiling. “Get the hell out of New York and start fresh.”
“Would—would you?”
I hadn’t honestly imagined it before now, with the exception of a few moments when we were at my house in Newton. Matthew was so, well, New York. Much more than me, despite the fact that we were both born and raised here.
To my disappointment, he only shrugged.
“I don’t want to leave Frankie in the lurch, but I also know she doesn’t want a roommate with Sofia living there. Even if I sold the house, there isn’t enough equity in it to split with Frankie so she could afford something for the two of them.” He shook his head. “It’s just a pipe dream, really. I’m just angry today.”
“You know, this wouldn’t be a problem if you had let me—” I started gently, but Matthew cut me off quickly.
“Nina, we’ve been over this about a thousand times. You don’t even like accepting your cousin’s guest room despite the fact that you have as much of a right to the family fortune as he does. Why would you think I would want to accept any handouts at all from a family I’m not even a part of?”
After several weeks and several fights, Matthew had decided to refuse all my attempts to pay off his debts out of my trust—or allow Eric to do so on my behalf. Upon our arrival home, he had called every loan officer to request the money’s return to Eric’s accounts. I didn’t really understand it. Perhaps I didn’t have any money to call my own, but Matthew had to know that the value of his home really was a paltry sum compared to my family’s total holdings. It wasn’t much more of a gift than paying a parking ticket. Or a few nice dinners.
But Matthew wouldn’t be Matthew without his pride, infuriating though it was.
“Yet,” I corrected him softly. “Not a part of…yet.”
He looked at me then with such utter longing I thought my heart might break in half.
“Yet,” he murmured as he took my left hand and stroked the finger where his ring should really be.
“Do we really have to keep a secret anymore, doll?”
I glanced in the direction Eric and Jane had gone. Part of me desperately wanted to tell them. And I did think I could trust them. But at the same time, I didn’t want to implicate them in anything to do with the divorce. They were trying to make a new life for themselves. I understood why they would want to escape the drama.
“There is another meeting with the lawyers next week, after the gala,” I said. “I think if we hold off until the papers are signed, it would be better.”
“Better for you or for him?”
I pulled my hand away and stroked his face, delighting in the rough stubble under my fingertips. “For me and for you.” I considered the look on Calvin’s face after he had seen me at the courthouse. Should I tell Matthew what he had said?
His expression told me I should not. Better to keep my head down, get these papers signed as soon as possible. Then we really would be free. After just a bit longer.
“Come on, my love.” I stood up and tugged on his arm to follow. “Let’s get us both a glass of wine and pretend we’re just two people over for luncheon. I think a little food will do us both some good.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Nina
We found Jane and Eric setting the table in their dining room for a lunch of roasted chicken and salad along with a bottle of Sancerre. Over the last several months, I’d only just gotten used to the fact that Jane and Eric preferred to take turns cooking rather than employ a chef. With only a housekeeper and their security, their staff was quite minimal compared to what I had grown up with. Not much of a cook myself, I had at least learned to do dishes particularly well.
“Eric always overcooks the chicken, so I’d recommend the dark meat,” Jane said as she set a serving dish of carved pieces on the large table that took up most of their dining room.
“I think you’ll find this is perfectly basted,” Eric countered as everyone took their seats. He poured out the wine as Matthew served me some salad, then took some for himself.
“You always say that too,” Jane said.
“Just try it, pretty girl.”
Jane blushed and looked down at her food without answering. Beside me, Matthew chuckled to himself. Though on the outside Jane and Eric appeared to bicker constantly, those who knew them well could see it for what it was: their remarkable chemistry that really never seemed to fade.
“This looks great,” Matthew said.
“It’s not much, but we’ve been missing meals a bit,” Jane said. “Nina’s only been home, what, twice this week?” She winked at me, then looked knowingly at Matthew. “My theory is that she’s seeing someone on the sly. She was gone with Olivia for ten days on Long Island, and then all this week, she kept sneaking out.”
“Is that so?” Matthew asked. “Who’s the lucky guy, huh?”
I stared resolutely at my plate, knowing that if I looked at him, I’d lose my battle against the rising flush in my face. “No one,” I muttered and took a drink of wine.
Eric, who was a bigger fan of privacy than all of us, just shook his head at Jane.
“You should come for dinner this weekend, Zola,” he said instead. “We’re having a couple of investors over. One of them is Karl Kramer.”
“We’ve met before. In court.” Matthew didn’t look as if he had enjoyed the experience.
“Who is Karl Kramer?” Jane asked.
“He’s one of the top defense attorneys in the city,” Eric said before taking a bit of chicken breast. By the look on his face, it seemed Jane was correct—it was overcooked. He chewed it anyway.
“And one of the biggest scumbags too,” Matthew said.
“Yeah, well. Contacts are contacts, aren’t they?”
I nudged him on the shoulder. “Perhaps it might be good for you to meet him in this kind of setting.”
Matthew put his fork and knife down on his plate and turned. “Is that what you think I should do?”
I sighed. “Given the circumstances—”
“What circumstances?” asked Jane. “What’s going on?”
Matthew grimaced at me, then took a long drink of wine before speaking. “As I told Nina downstairs, I was fired today. The DA found out about my trip to Italy with Nina, and he viewed it as a pretty bad conflict of interest. They made my leave permanent. I am no longer an assistant district attorney for the Brooklyn DA, and probably won’t be for any other DA in New York.”
“Are you serious?” Eric demanded. “After the check I just wrote?”
Matthew frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Oh, nothing,” Jane said. “Just that he thought this might happen and tried to encourage the DA to keep you on with a fat campaign contribution.”
Matthew’s face turned white. “Oh, fuck. Eric, you didn’t.” He rubbed a heavy hand over his face. “Shit, no wonder he was suspicious. Ruggeri’s call was just the nail in the coffin.”
“Petri dish, you’re getting corrupt in your old age,” Jane said sadly. “Not everyone can be bought.” She turned to Matthew sympathetically. “That really, re
ally sucks, Zola. I’m so sorry.”
“Shit, man,” Eric said. “I’m sorry too.” He looked at him more carefully. “But look. Since we’re at least partly responsible here, the least we could do is hook you up with contacts for a new job. I heard Kramer’s firm bills a lot. Hell, I’m sure there’s a spot in the DVS legal team if you want to work for me.”
“Associates start at five hundred an hour at Kramer,” Matthew confirmed, not terribly enthusiastically. I noticed he didn’t even reply to the offer of working for DVS. “But I didn’t get into law to make money, per se. A little coin is nice, but I wanted to get these guys off the streets, not work for them. Like I told Nina, I wanted to do some good.” He shook his head. “After seven years with the DA, I can’t really see myself just switching sides like that, Eric.”
But it was me he looked to with regret. Like he thought he was disappointing me or something.
“Nor should you,” I said. “Ever.”
I was dying to touch his shoulder, his knee—anything to demonstrate that I cared. He didn’t actually need to work anywhere he didn’t want to. At some point, he and his family would want for nothing, once I was unraveled from this terrible mess. Didn’t he know that?
The sharp green look that flashed my way told me he did know that. Very well. And did not particularly appreciate the insinuation.
I kept my hand in my lap. Matthew sighed.
Eric cleared his throat as Jane raised her eyebrows at him over her wineglass.
“That reminds me, Nina,” Eric said. “With the trial and everything, I forgot to ask you how it went with Liv. How did she take the news?”
Every eye in the room turned on me. Beside me, Matthew’s entire body tensed. He already knew this story, of course, and had offered to be with me when I told her. He thought it might make things easier, given the fact that she liked him and that he could support my story as someone who had been in Italy with me.
But this was a matter between Olivia and me. Matthew couldn’t save me from that, no matter how much he would have liked.
I had chosen to wait until her April break to tell Olivia the news of her true parentage. February had been too soon—for one, her sisters in Florence were still reticent when it came to talking to me, and when Olivia begged to go with her friends on a ski trip to Vermont for the week, I had acceded. I wanted my darling girl to have as much happiness as she could these days. I didn’t like the shadows I had seen under her eyes too often when she was home.
The week before the trial, I had chosen to take Olivia to Southampton for a week of riding and vacation instead of staying with Eric and Jane in the city. By way of helicopter directly to and from Boston, we had managed to escape the local press entirely, and so it was in the warm, hay-filled barn, after a day of riding our horses on the beach, that I had told my daughter the truth of where she had come from.
Olivia sat down on one of the worn wooden stools in the tack room and pulled a felt rag tight between her hands.
“Does this mean Daddy isn’t actually…my daddy?” she asked finally.
For a moment, I wondered if I should say no. Children love their parents no matter what. Thinking of my own absent father, I knew that as well as any. I could, in fact, tell her the same thing other adopted children heard: that while they had one parent by birth, they had another by love. That her father was her father no matter what. I could allow her to have a relationship with him even when I could not and allow her to negotiate it on her own terms as she got older.
But I was done lying. She deserved the truth, and the truth was that Calvin had never loved her or shown any interest whatsoever in being her father. The sooner she stopped clinging to that as a possibility, the better. For her own safety, if nothing else.
“No, darling. He is not.”
Olivia was quiet for a bit more, the only evidence of her internal strife being the way she continued to wring the tack cloth beyond an inch of its life.
“Good,” she said finally, then looked up with an expression more tired than any ten-year-old girl ought to be.
“Good?” I repeated.
“Yes. He doesn’t act like a father. He’s never given me hugs or said he loved me or done anything with me at all. Not like my friends’ fathers do when they get them from school sometimes. Or your friends. Like Mr. Sterling, remember?”
Ah. So that weekend in Boston had made quite the impression on her. My heart warmed at the clear memory of one afternoon when Skylar, Jane, and I had entered the house to find Matthew and Brandon, Skylar’s husband, asleep on a sofa, each with a small girl curled up on their chests—Brandon nestled with his daughter, Jenny. And Matthew’s arm wrapped securely around Olivia.
“Yes,” I agreed softly. “I do remember.”
“And, Mama…you were scared of him. Weren’t you? I saw you. That one time.”
I almost told her everything right then. It would have been so easy to make the man she had grown up with into a villain for her as well as me. And maybe one day I would divulge everything that had gone on in our lives. But for now, this one trauma seemed enough.
“It doesn’t matter now,” I said. “But yes, I was sometimes. And that’s why I’m doing everything I can to keep him out of our lives. I’m so sorry I lied to you, my love. I should never have done it. But from now on, it’s you and me in this world. And I promise, I’ll never keep secrets from you again.”
She quieted once more, digesting each word like a separate bite. But she didn’t wring the tack cloth quite so tightly.
When she spoken again, it wasn’t with the questions I expected. She didn’t wonder where we would live or what would happen to Calvin or any of those basic questions I would have expected.
Instead, she asked, “Do you have pictures of the farm? And of Lucrezia and…Rose…Rosi…”
“Rosina?” I completed for her as surprised relief flooded through me. “Yes, I do.”
I gave her my phone, and she didn’t ask me anything more, just wandered outside to a bench near the paddocks. And there she sat, looking at all the pictures Giuseppe’s daughters had sent over the past few months after I had helped them pay their farm’s taxes, and then with some help from Eric, invested a bit in the replanting of olive trees. Olivia kept looking at one in particular—the two older girls in front of a row of saplings. Their arms were draped over each other’s shoulders, and they were toppling over, open-mouthed and bent forward mid-laugh. Their joy sprang off the screen, and Olivia whispered their names to herself again and again. Sometime later, I heard “my sisters” float on the wind out to sea, like she was sending a message to them herself.
“It went as well as it could have,” I said after describing the basic events. “It was never going to be easy, breaking my own daughter’s heart.”
The table was silent as I finished the story. Jane sighed and looked at Eric, who was tight-lipped, brow furrowed. They all cared about Olivia, and I was glad for it. But it would be a long time before my sweet girl learned to trust me or anyone else again. I was under no illusions otherwise.
This time, Matthew didn’t hold back. He reached into my lap and took my hand purposefully, daring me to pull away. I did not. And when Jane and Eric changed the subject to something more neutral, I let him keep it there until we were finished eating and both of us stood to clear the dishes.
“Walk me out?” he asked after we had finished, and Jane and Eric were making their excuses to go upstairs for a “nap.” In her defense, Jane did look particularly tired.
I followed Matthew out to the street, but when he leaned in for a kiss, I stepped back as I caught a ruffle in the curtains by the door.
“I adore Jane,” I said, nodding at the house. “But remember, she’s not particularly discreet.”
Matthew snorted as he looked back at the window himself. “That she is not. Somehow Jane missed the stage of life where everyone else got a filter.” He sighed heavily and rubbed a rough hand over his face. “I hate this.”
�
�I know,” I said, dying to reach out and brush a stray lock of hair from his forehead. “But we have to wait.”
“Sure, duchess. We have to wait.” He exhaled heavily. “I’ll call you when I’m home, all right? I love you.”
Before I could answer, he turned in the direction of the subway, where a train would whisk him downtown to work, and then on home to Brooklyn in the wee hours of the morning. But suddenly, he turned back.
“I don’t want to wait with everyone,” he said suddenly.
I frowned. “Matthew, I thought we talked about this.”
“We did. I understand why we can’t tell your family yet. But I want to tell mine.” He rubbed the back of his neck, a sign of frustration I was beginning to recognize. It usually appeared when he was putting together words but couldn’t come up with the perfect execution. “I want to tell my grandmother, Nina. My sisters. When you get engaged to someone, they’re supposed to meet your family. They’re supposed to get to know them. Mine has only met you once. Even Frankie doesn’t know you’ve been coming around.”
His eyes looked pained, and it was then I realized this was such a key difference between us. For me, family was less of a buttress to my life and more of a cage. They were supportive monetarily, but for the most part my family were obstacles to overcome, people who thwarted my dreams more often than they helped. For Matthew, his family was the cornerstone of life, its stability hard won and even more thoroughly defended. The relationship he had with his sisters and grandmother was truly his raison d’être. Which meant that until they knew what we were to one another, my place in his life wouldn’t be real. Not to him. Or really, to me.
With another glance at the window to make sure Jane wasn’t watching, I reached out and squeezed Matthew’s hand. “All right.”
After all, with any luck, I’d be out of this marriage within a week or two.
Matthew blinked. “All right?”
The Honest Affair (Rose Gold Book 3) Page 24