“That doesn’t make it any better.”
“It more than does. It erases it.”
She felt she’d have a seizure from the pressure of her emotions. She wanted to scream and say that nothing would ever erase his suffering. That not even her and her father’s lives would be enough to repay what they owed him. “Tell me the rest, Ferruccio. Your story. Did my…your father know about you, too?”
He looked away. She guessed that he didn’t want to add to her pain. Her pain. Hatred, for herself, for her father, for the world, shot to a new height. She grabbed his face, forced him to look at her.
At last he muttered. “He found out when I was fifteen.”
“And he left you on the streets? Oh, Dio…Dio…”
He sat up, taking her with him, cradling her in the curve of his body. “Amore, it doesn’t matter.”
“Doesn’t matter? That is the worst thing yet. It’s unbearable. Unimaginable. It’s an unforgivable crime!”
“It didn’t happen like you think.”
“Then tell me how it did happen before my head bursts!”
He exhaled his surrender to her need to know. “When King Benedetto sought out my mother, she was married, and she’d already had Gabrielle.”
It clicked in her mind. “Gabrielle is your sister! That’s why you look at her that way!”
“Yes. I thought I’d never be able to approach her, since the price was telling her the truth. Even with Durante’s prior investigations and the subsequent revelations before she married him, she remained ignorant she had a brother.”
“But even without knowing, she…recognized the bond between you. I can swear she did.”
“It was fun to see you act jealous, though. It gave me hope.”
She wasn’t in a condition to understand what that meant. “And you were willing to live your whole life not telling her that you are brother and sister, to protect me from the truth?”
“Considering I have her in my life anyway, that isn’t such a huge sacrifice.”
“Dio, Ferruccio, shut up. And talk.”
He huffed a distressed laugh. “I said exactly that to your doctors a week ago. And if you’re in half as appalling a state as I was then, I’d better talk fast. Just promise me, no more tears.”
Her eyes gushed again. “No can do. Please, Ferruccio. You were saying your mother was married, had Gabrielle…?”
He kept wiping her tears with his fingers, his lips. “When King Benedetto reappeared in her life, she told him about me, how in her worst moments after she’d given birth, she’d weakened and put me up for adoption. She tried to look for me later, to take me back, but she’d been denied information. All she could find out was that I was never adopted, that I ended up in the foster system. They searched for me, but didn’t find me until two years after I left my last foster home. They were heartbroken to find their son a hardened survivor on the streets.”
“They were heartbroken? The nerve!”
“There was no villain here, amore, it was all a series of horrible miscommunications and terrible decisions.”
“Which are crimes, and makes them villains, especially since there was only one victim. You!”
“Are you defending me again, leonessa mia? Against the pain of the past and the mistakes of my parents?”
“If that pain and those mistakes were flesh and blood now, I’d tear them apart with my teeth and nails!”
His laugh was delighted this time, as he hugged her. “You see? Hearing you say that erases it all.” An impatient, indignant sound rolled from her throat. He raised a placating hand. “Don’t growl, leonessa mia. I’ll go on peacefully.”
He adjusted their position to place her on his lap, where she could feel every rock-hard inch of him thrusting between her legs. Even through the upheaval, her body blossomed and melted into instant readiness. How she’d starved for him.
“My parents were justifiably shocked. I was a hulking, surly, violent teenager they had every reason to suspect would become, or already was, a hardened criminal.”
“Thanks to them!”
“Actually, I don’t believe there is any excuse for turning to crime. Not neglect, not hardships, not abuse. I never considered my ordeals a reason to take the easy way out.”
“I did tell you before, Ferruccio. You are a miracle.”
“Look who’s talking.” He hugged her again, pressed his forehead to hers in a gesture that melted all her heart valves. “But I did look scary. And as much as they were shocked to see me, I was shocked to see them, to discover that I wasn’t just any bastard, but a royal one. The king pledged to support me, but he told me, for the sake of his family and kingdom, he wouldn’t be able to acknowledge me. I told him what to do with his support. The only thing I’d ever accept from him was his name.”
“He’s the man who raised me, and I love him. But I also hate him now. How could he think his other children more important than you? How could he deny you what he gave them?”
“It was all for you, mia bella unica. He might have lost you completely if a chain reaction of revelations was started.”
To that she could only sob and bury her face in his chest. She tugged at him to go on.
“The king kept putting money for me in the bank, enough to have seen me through a luxurious life and the best education.”
She glanced up. “But you never touched it.”
His chuckle rumbled beneath her ear. “You know me well. That money in the bank was like a tormenting imp, lashing me to succeed, to reach ever higher on my own. I was bent on showing him I didn’t need him in any way. So, I guess I should thank him for that. And because I became who I am, I can now do all I’m doing for Castaldini. So in a roundabout way, all of Castaldini is in your father’s debt, too.”
“In his debt for not acknowledging his son?” she seethed. “Excuse me as I puke! And bull to this owing your success to your ordeals or to anyone. You would have suceeded no matter what!”
“But maybe I wouldn’t have become the same man.”
The man I worship? she almost blurted out.
She didn’t. It was time she asked the question that really mattered to her. “T-tell me about the first time you came to Castaldini.”
“Ah, that first time. Even with my very…eventful life, that was the day its course changed forever.” The look he gave her told her she’d been the reason.