Page 156 of The Temptation

I swing around to face her with rage vibrating through my body. “Is that what she told you? She gave my mother an ultimatum. Abort me or be disowned. And when my mother refused, they slammed the door in her face and never looked back.”

“Hold on,” she says gently, raising one of her hands. “I’m talking about your father’s mother. Your paternal grandmother.”

I rear back. “My father’s mother?”

She nods. “They didn’t know about you. They neversaw your mother again after the accident. She had no idea your mum was pregnant. Not until I told her.”

And just like that, the ground I thought I was standing on starts to tilt beneath me.

Tears glisten in Lucia’s eyes as she steps forward, her fingers fisting in the front of my shirt.

“I’m sorry if I crossed a line,” she whispers. “But when you told me you didn’t know anything about your father, not even where he was buried, I couldn’t let that be the end of it.”

Her voice shakes, but she keeps going.

“I started at the library. Pulled every archive I could get my hands on. You once told me your mother found out she was pregnant after the accident, so I used that to my advantage and started narrowing down the dates. I found an article about the crash, then the death notice.”

She swallows hard, searching my face.

“Bit by bit, I pieced it together. Names. Locations. Connections. And eventually, I found your grandparents.” She presses her forehead lightly to my chest, but her voice is barely audible now. “I didn’t do it to hurt you. I did it because you deserved to know. To have something real. Not just a mountain of unanswered questions.”

I cup her face in my hands; her skin is warm beneath my palms as I tilt her head until our eyes meet.

“They really didn’t know about me?” I ask, my voice is rough and uneven.

Hope pulses in my chest. It’s a familiar feeling, and it’s almost too much. I learned when I was a boy that hoping only ever led to disappointment.

She shakes her head slowly. “No, they didn’t. They cried real, genuine tears when I told them about you, not out of guilt or shock, but out of grief. They cried because they’d missed a lifetime with you. Because your father nevergot the chance to know he had a son.” Her voice trembles as she goes on. “But most of all … they cried because there was a part of their beloved son still living and they had no idea.”

The words hit something deep, something I’ve kept buried for years.

They didn’t reject me.

They just never knew I existed.

“They were devastated?” I ask, trying to wrap my head around the idea that someone was mourning the loss of a life without me in it.

“Yes,” she breathes. “Completely.”

I search her eyes, needing for this to be real.

“I have all their information. Where they live. How to reach them. If or when you’re ready, they want to meet you.”

I blink, trying to absorb it all. “They do?”

She nods, her smile trembling with emotion. “They really, truly do, Romeo. They’re the sweetest people. Kind and warm. I think you’d love them.”

Chapter 38

Romeo

Ihave my mother’s ashes in hand. The urn is still sealed inside the box it arrived in, unopened. It’s been sitting in the bottom of a cupboard in my spare room for weeks because, truthfully, I didn’t know what to do with them. Now I do.

When Lucia first told me she’d been to see my grandparents, I thought she was referring to my mother’s parents. For some reason, that felt like the ultimate betrayal.

As a boy, I yearned for a relationship with them, but over the years, that want turned to resentment. After the way they acted at my uncle’s funeral, it morphed into full-blown hate. They’ve known about my existence before I was even born, and wanted nothing to do with me.

They could’ve helped me when I was a kid. They could’ve helped my mum, and the underlying hurt that comes with that knowledge is unforgivable. That kind of blinded silence doesn’t fade.