Page 43 of Loss and Damages

I sit in the back of the car and delete voicemails and scroll through texts, but there isn’t one from Jemma.

I knew there wouldn’t be but I still hoped.

Have a nice day. I miss you already . I scoff.

Those are things couples say to each other and we aren’t a couple.

We aren’t...anything. Not even friends.

I shove my phone into my pocket.

The elevator lets me out into the quiet foyer, Nonna and the rest of the family leaving my mother be.

My father’s at the office, his one of the many texts and voicemails asking where the fuck I am and why I’m not at my desk.

He can wonder all he likes. He wants me working on the homeless shelter deal, but that can wait. I have more important things to do.

“What is this?” my mother asks, clicking to me in her heels, gesturing angrily to the crate.

She’s ready to go out wearing a day dress, a pair of sunglasses clutched in a fist. Brunch with friends, perhaps, or a not-so-secret tryst with her lover.

She’s not angry about the ugly crate sitting in her elegant foyer.

She’s angry I’m in her penthouse, reminding her of my father.

“Something I thought you’d like to see,” I say mildly, not acknowledging her fury.

“The day I want something from you is the day hell freezes over.”

“It’s okay, Mama. It’s not from me. You could say the crate came from Jemma, but no matter who it came from, I think you’ll treasure what’s inside.”

“Jemma. What does she have to do with this?”

“More than you think.”

I ask the housekeeper if she knows where there’s a crowbar, and God bless her, she’s able to find one.

Long, thick nails hold the particle boards together, and they screech as I tear them out.

I open the crate revealing hundreds of white foam peanuts and a stack of canvases, bubble wrap protecting each one.

Whomever Jemma paid to pack Leo’s paintings did a phenomenal job, and I quickly count ten.

She must have had a few in the back of her gallery waiting to be hung and sold.

I slide the top canvas out of the plastic sleeve, my mother fuming behind me, uncovering a lakescape at sundown, ducks floating on the peaceful surface, cattails hugging the shore. It’s the view from Jemma’s gallery porch, though I doubt my mother will ever make that connection.

“Here, Mama. This is why Leo was always in Hollow Lake. Jemma paints china and sells it in her shop. Leo found her online and asked if she sold on commission. She said she did, and he started selling his paintings in her gallery. She had a few she hadn’t sold, and when I went to see her, she said she would give them to me. ”

My words are lost as her eyes skim the painting, absorbing every brushstroke, every shade of vibrant color. Leo infused his heart and soul into his work, and it captivates her. She kneels and reaches out to touch, her fingers trembling. “Leo painted this?”

“Yes. Jemma said he didn’t sign his name, preferring to sell based on his talent, but he used his initials.”

Tears fill her eyes. “And there are more?”

“Nine others. She gave me all she had left.” I leave out the one hanging in Jemma’s living room. My mother would not rest until it was in her possession.

“Leo painted.”

She can’t stop staring, her fingers hovering over a baby duck.

“Yes, he did. I thought you would want them. Leo and I were never close, and I have no need to keep them. I’m sorry to have bothered you.”

I lean the canvas against the crate and turn to go.

“Dominic.”

I tense but don’t look at her. I’ve done what I came to do, and now I want to speak to my father.

“What?”

“Did . . . Jemma . . . did she tell you anything?”

Confused, I face her. “About Leo’s paintings? Only that he would paint with her in the workshop attached to her gallery. That’s all he did when he went to Hollow Lake. They spent time together and painted.” I think of Edgar but hold my tongue. I’m allowed to keep some secrets, too.

“No. About—” She stops and her face pales. “It’s time you know that Raphael isn’t Leo’s father.”

I didn’t hear her correctly. “I’m sorry?”

“Will you sit? Come sit and I’ll have Gia pour coffee.”

“No. I think you’ll tell me what you mean. Right here, right now.” Leo is only my half-brother? How could that be?

She stares at the painting as she recounts her college days and her university lover. How her father, my grandfather, wanted her to marry Raphael Milano, and his request and heart attack destroyed all her dreams.

My mouth goes dry, listening to how she so simply explains the reason for all her hate toward me since I was born.

She never loved my father, and by default, never loved me.

Leo was her everything, born to a man she loved since she met him at twenty, and still today, the man she’s been having an affair with for the past thirty-two years.

“He doesn’t know Leo was his son.”

“No. I wanted to protect Leo, and Antonio. I had to keep the secret close to my heart.”

“Why did you ask if Jemma told me? She knows.”

Rage rips through me but dissipates just as quickly as it consumed me. Jemma didn’t keep it from me to hurt me.

“She knows. I told her some of the story at the fundraiser, then she came to see me not long ago and asked me to tell her the rest. I took a chance she would keep my secret, and she did. She would know the story was not hers to tell.”

“Then why are you telling me now?” I’ve never hit a woman, but I want to slap my mother for turning my life into a living hell when I did nothing to deserve it but exist.

She grips my arm and I need all my willpower not to shake her off.

“I want you to ask your father to grant me a divorce. Antonio wants to marry me. I’ll leave this marriage with nothing.

” She meets my eyes, and I know she means me, as well.

If she walks away from Raphael Milano, she’ll walk away from his son.

“Why would I do anything for you?”

My mother lifts her chin and a hard glint comes into her eyes. Jemma is made of the same steel. I never asked what ethnicity she is, but Italian blood runs in her veins all the same.

“Think of what I told you and now think of your own position. What if Jemma was promised to another?”

“I don’t have feelings for her. Your little scenario does nothing.”

“You may hate me, but I am still your mother. I see the way your eyes heat whenever I say her name. I see the way your lips tremble when you think of her. She’s your lover, unlike Leo who used her for other things. You’ve taken her to bed, perhaps already made her pregnant—”

I try to keep my eyes from widening in surprise, but her knowing smile tells me I’m not successful.

“You want to marry her, now think of being told you cannot. What does it do to you to imagine another man’s baby in her belly and what it took to put it there? If he wasn’t kind? If he used force? If she cried?”

I know precisely what my mother’s talking about. Didn’t I ask Jemma more times than I care to admit if she and Leo had had a sexual relationship? How many times did I ask her if she was pregnant? Because I didn’t want the nightmare of her belonging to someone else to be true.

All I can do when I picture Jemma under some brute is tell her the truth. “It would kill me.”

“As it did me. I lived without Antonio for seven years. When his wife passed away, it was as if God gave us a second chance. Your father wanted nothing to do with me and let me do as I pleased. I’ve been seeing him for all these years.

Please, Dominic. Your father listens to you. Ask him to let me go.”

“He won’t give you a penny.”

“I don’t need his blood money. You and he will do what you like to the citizens of St. Charlotte.

Buy every piece of land, let the poor starve.

Let them go homeless while you live in your castle and sit on your golden throne.

What do I care? Antonio has done well and we can live simply for the rest of our lives. ”

I rake my gaze over my mother’s expensive body. Her definition of “simply” and Jemma’s would be vastly different. I don’t know who this Antonio is, but he has the funds to provide for my mother in the way she has become accustomed.

“Antonio is Leo’s father. That’s why you loved him more than you love me.”

“Yes. And I will not apologize for it. You may hate me, and I may go to hell for what I did, but I am no worse than my father who wouldn’t let me marry for love.

I am no worse than your father who said his vows in the Church and promised he would love and protect me for the rest of my life then abused me the second we were alone. ”

“Even if Jemma and I never spoke again, if I made her pregnant, she would never treat my child the way you’ve treated me.”

My mother scoffs. “Do you think she likes the man you are? Do you think she can love you when she knows what you’re capable of? That your baby’s eyes wouldn’t remind her day after day that you broke her heart? Leo hated you. What is stopping Jemma from feeling the same?”

“Leo didn’t hate me.” He didn’t. We may not have had a close relationship, but he didn’t hate me. Just like I didn’t hate him. We were different, in more ways than one, I’m learning. Perhaps if Raphael had been his father too, Leo would have followed in his footsteps like I have.

That wouldn’t have been a credit to him. Just as it’s not a credit to me, being called heartless. The billionaire bastard.

Instead, Leo grew up kind, sensitive. All a person needs is one glance at a painting to see the feelings and emotions he created with.

He was a better match for Jemma.

Unless I change.

My father will force me to choose between his admiration and her love.

“If I can convince him to give you a divorce, I never want to see you again. You will never lay eyes on my child, you will never hold him or her, you will never visit me or Jemma. I will cut you from our lives as completely as you cut me out of yours.”