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“I wish you hadn’t. Especially since it rakes up the painful past.”
“It is done, Adriano. And honestly, I don’t regret it. I only feel sorry that I threw Nadia to the wolves too. With me being your wife and constantly in the spotlight, she will be recognized the moment she steps into public. I took the decision out of her hands and, given how fragile she already is…I’m scared of how she might react.” This guilt had been eating away at her nonstop. What if Nadia hated her for this and never wanted to see her again? It wasn’t just her babies that Nyra wanted to be strong for. “I’ve been so selfish—”
“No.” His eyes might as well be daggers pinning her in place. Not that she wanted to get away. Her lips twitched when she realized he was outraged, on her behalf.
“You jeopardized the little security you had with me to look out for her, Nyra.” His words pinged over her skin like little light charges. “If she gets angry, she’ll forgive you.”
“But what if—”
“She is safe,cara, for now. When she is recovered, we will look after her. And we will explain to her that you had no choice. That it is better for both of you this way.”
“You will help me, then?”
“Si.As long as she gets better.”
That he didn’t shove her worry for her sister aside or give her false reassurances made warmth bloom in her chest.
“What happened to your mother?”
“She overdosed a year after Papa was arrested and we lost everything.”
His fingers crawled up her ankle and rested there, as if she might slip out of his grasp if he didn’t. As if he could sense how hard this was for her. “If you would rather not talk about this, I understand,cara. I do not wish for you to distress yourself.”
While the wary concern in his words for the pregnancy itself—as if it was a separate thing from her—pricked, she knew it was high time she did talk. For the same reason he thought she shouldn’t. “I’ve never talked about them with another person, not once in all these years. It’s as if parts of me have calcified along with the memories. I want to purge this, Adriano. Be whole for them, if possible,” she said, placing one hand on her belly. “For Nadia when she gets better.”
“You’re not responsible for her well-being, Nyra. Your primary concern should be—”
“Is it true that Bruno is your half brother by your father?” she said, annoyed by his tone. When he nodded, she mirrored his action. “Is it also true that you found him as a teenager, beaten up by some street gang, and brought him home with you?”
“Who told you that?”
“He did, this past week. After I probed incessantly.”
“You should come to me with such questions.”
“Yes, but Bruno’s so much more…approachable and available.”
“I’m a jealous man, Nyra.” The rotating whiskey tumbler in his hands caught and reflected shards of golden light onto his face, and the beds of his nails were stark white with how tightly he gripped it. “While I know that neither you nor Bruno see each other that way, such a friendship is…hard for me to bear.”
Nyra realized, with a stuttering heartbeat, that this was Adriano opening up to her. “It is simply a fondness,” she said huskily.
He raised his hand, palm out. “I don’t care what it actually is. Your confidences are mine,bella.”
A part of her bristled at his authoritative tone but something more held her back. This was what she wanted to build, didn’t she? This kind of trust where they could actually verbalize what they expected from the relationship. And really, if the shoe was on the other foot, she would hate for his uptight assistant to have his confidences.
She didn’t want that woman even in the same room as him.
“Okay. I will try to come to you with these questions. Or anything else.”
He held her gaze. “Bruno’s mother was my nanny before Maria. Fabi and Federico, on the other hand, are not my father’s children.”
“Oh,” she said, shocked by this new piece of the puzzle. Suddenly, his reaction to those photos of Nadia with some man, thinking it was her, made even more sense. “I’m… How did they come to be raised as Cavalieris, then?”
“They were eight when my father found out. He threatened to throw them out and disinherit them. Fabi came to me with tears. I had already made some good investments and was beginning to build a reputation for myself in the bank. My father had never been much of a leader anyway, chasing after every woman he came across. A few choice words from me about his debts and he backed off.”
No wonder his relationship with his mother was no better than the one he shared with his father.
“So you’re responsible for looking after all of them?”