Page 14

She laughed then, and even to her own ears, the sound was broken, bitter. “Either you’re still in shock over the truth of my background or that great conscience of yours is stealing your rationality, Adriano. You’re forgetting what will happen when it leaks whose daughter your wife is.
“Wronged people have long memories. Even after all these years, the slightest mention of my father’s name in the media or online sends ripples through all the innocent lives he ruined. Posts will go up in forums about how we’re hiding away in some exotic place, living like heiresses off of the blood of others.
“Your great family name, your pristine reputation as the most innovative, respectable banker Italy has ever seen will be dragged through mud.”
“That is my cross to bear,” he said with a rough exhale. “And I would have made sure it never touched you again.”
She stared at him in shock. Why wasn’t he angry that she’d hidden a truth that could ruin his and his family’s reputation? Why wasn’t he judging her, like the entire world had done, for whose daughter she was? Where was the contempt and the disgust that she and Nadia had carried like a curse and a taint with them wherever they went in those early years after their father had been imprisoned?
Overnight, they and their mother hadn’t just lost their home, but friends and classmates and neighbors they had known all their lives had turned against them. At school, their days had become unbearable. Everyone had assumed so easily that the three of them were not only complicit in his crimes but that they were still enjoying the poisonous fruits of his scams.
Where was Adriano’s very justified anger that she’d braced herself about what a headache she’d brought into his life?
Of course, his reaction was nothing like she’d assumed. And where he should have trusted her, he hadn’t. Frustration, at him and herself, roiled through her. “One glance at that disgusting photo and you should have known that it wasn’t me.”
He jerked back as if she had shouted the words at him instead of whispered them. “Nyra—”
“All I want is to raise my babies in relative peace and security. Please, Adriano, you know now the entire, pathetic tale of my background and that I didn’t cheat on you. Do this small thing for me.”
“No, you’re not listening to me.” His large hands clasped her cheeks, his words slow, but expertly enunciated. “I want you to come back to our home. To our life together. I want to raise…the babies with you. You belong with me.”
Near hysteria came upon Nyra as she registered the urgency, the honesty underlining his words. He thought he could walk in here now that he had proof, and she would simply go back to him?
Beneath the dizziness claiming her, she wished it could be that simple. That her battered, shattered heart would simple scab over and she could go on as if nothing had happened.
But she couldn’t.
“You’re powerful and arrogant and ruthless, Adriano,” she said, laughing at the ridiculousness of his demands, “but even you can’t simply turn back time to six weeks ago. I can’t go back to you. There is no marriage left, if it even was one in the first place.”
“You’re being stubborn. Any man would—”
“But you’re not any man,” she said, poking him in the chest, “as I’ve been reminded again and again. You’re better than most men.”
“Nyra—”
“No.”
“Your twin is in trouble. Worse than you might have imagined all these months.”
“What do you mean?” she said, fisting her fingers in his chest. “Is she hurt?” The very thought twisted her inside out.
He cupped her shoulders, as if he knew that her knees were close to giving out. “I’m sorry,bella. It seems she has a drug addiction problem. All the money you’ve given her, she used it to buy drugs. She’s back to living on the streets.”
The bottom dropped out of Nyra’s world. After everything she had done to give Nadia what she needed, it was all…lies? Tears prickled behind her eyes and fatigue fell over her like a dank, suffocating blanket. “She’s had it so much harder than I did, Adriano. That cousin she was sent to live with…she used to write to me that he was making her life hell. She told me he used to demand that she…work for him if she wanted to live under his roof. Now I realize why she wouldn’t see me. Please…don’t judge her for this.” She didn’t know why she even cared what he thought of her twin but it was important to her.
“Tell me something about you both,” he said, surprising her yet again. “Something from a happy time.”
She blinked, but memories came fast and easy. “As a young girl, I…I preferred to lose myself in drawing and comics. I was quite reserved. I had no friends and never needed any because all I needed was her. She, on the other hand…” A smile curved her mouth, her heart blooming with warmth at the memory. “Nadia was…a bright ray of sunshine, always making others laugh, up for any kind of prank, surrounded by tons of friends. When our birthday would come around, I’d dread it every year because what if she spent it with her friends? What if she found me boring? I mean, it’s natural that we might drift apart. But every year, she’d spend the whole day with me. Making me laugh, sharing her presents with me, buying me some kind of art supplies with her allowance. I think she…loved me just as I was.”
That sense of faith and utter love she had around her twin returned to her with each word she used to describe that moment. Nyra felt a lightness she hadn’t known in…months.
She looked up to find Adriano’s gaze studying her with that intensity that licked at her skin like a live flame. But this time, it was tempered by…curiosity. “Thank you for forcing me to remember. For giving me that piece back.”
“Thank you for helping me see,” he said, with a stiffness she didn’t understand. “You love her.”
A long breath shuddered out of her. “I do. She’s just…unwell and needs help to be that Nadia I knew once.”
“I agree.”