by L. D. Davis
“Probably not. I am sure my mother would like to yell at me some more before I leave tomorrow.”
“Right. You deserve it.”
“I am beginning to suspect I deserve that and more, my Terrible One.”
She smirked at the old nickname before reaching out her hand to Daniel, and the two returned to the kitchen. I made a plate for myself and gestured for Massimo to go on.
“So, Celia told me she was pregnant, and I was an ass about it. I asked her who the father was, and she said she was certain it was mine. I asked her if I was the man she had been referring to when she confided in Tess, and she said I was. Then I lost my temper and demanded to know why she’d done that. She messed everything up for Tess and me because of her grand allusions. It took a few days for me to calm down enough to talk to her again. I wasn’t sure if I was the father of her baby or not, but I knew we needed to discuss that and other things.
“She claimed she tried to tell you about the baby, but you were volatile and sent her away. I had no reason to doubt or disbelieve her at that time. As far as I knew, she had not had a track record of lying and manipulation. Our one night together didn’t necessarily make her a bad person. Even her confession to Tess was explained in a way that made sense. She had never told Tess that I was in love with her, only that she was in love with someone.”
There was so much information to process, but I could only zero in on one thing at a time. “Massimo, Celia never said anything to me about being pregnant during those weeks.”
He nodded solemnly. “I know that now, but again…I had no reason not to believe her, especially because you had been volatile and unreasonable. I insisted we do a DNA test. She’d been reluctant at first because she thought if the baby was yours, you wouldn’t want to marry her after how badly she hurt you. She cried and said her mother would disown her, and she’d be labeled a whore. You know how traditional her family was. It would not have gone well for her to become a single parent, even though I promised her our family would help her, and that no matter what, you would never abandon your child. In the end, none of that mattered. As I said before, Roberto is mine. I felt responsible for Celia’s honor and reputation. In my mind, she wouldn’t have been in that situation if not for my actions.”
“So, you gave up on Tessa and married Celia,” I concluded as my heart ached for the decision my brother had to make back then. Even though the woman he had let go then was now only a few feet away, with their child, the pain of that decision was still with him.
“It was the hardest thing I’d ever done,” he admitted quietly.
I gave him a small, sad smile. “It must not have been such a heavy burden on you if you were able to have four more kids.”
He shrugged. “I learned to love her. I never fell in love with her, but I did love her. The problem was that I loved her more than a friend, but less than a wife. I treated her with respect, spoiled her with pretty things, and not once did I cheat or stray, but my heart was always with Tessa. No matter how much I tried to forget about her, my heart was always with her.”
I rubbed my eyes wearily. “Look, Massimo. You’ve told me a lot, so much I didn’t know, and I am glad to know it now, but none of what you have said proves that Celia is anything as you described in the beginning.”
“Patience, brother. You will understand when I have finished.”
I was doubtful, but I sat back and waited for him to carry on.
“When Celia was still in the hospital with the twins, I had left for a couple hours so I could shower and spend some time with the other kids. When I got back to the hospital, Paolo was in Celia’s room.”
My brows shot up. “Cousin Paolo? Why was he there?”
Our cousin was an ass. He was pompous, lazy, and spoiled, and none of us kids had ever gotten along with him. We put up with him for family functions, and that was it. No one missed him when he married a British royal and moved away.
“I wondered the same thing,” Massimo said. “And I wondered why he was holding my baby boy in his arms. I hung back out of sight. He and Celia were arguing in whispers, so I didn’t hear everything. Celia kept saying ‘Paolo, give me my baby. Give him to me, Paolo.’ It was the anxiety in her voice that finally made me enter the room. I didn’t like the vibe at all. Celia was anxious, and Paolo was smug. I pretended I hadn’t heard anything before I came in and just took Carlo from his arms as I smiled and asked him what he was doing there. Celia quickly picked up Clarice from her bassinet and said he came by to congratulate us, but that he was just leaving. He did leave, but the whole thing had left a bad taste in my mouth.
“For a few months, I often thought about Paolo’s presence that day. Celia blew it off every time I brought it up. When the twins were about six months old, I came home a day early from a business trip. I was going to surprise her and the kids and take us all on a mini vacation over a long weekend in Spain. The older children must have been in school that day, because the house was relatively quiet. I only heard Celia and her mother talking in the kitchen. It sounded like a heated conversation. I didn’t want to be in the middle of another one of their mother-daughter spats, so I hung back in the hallway. I started to look through the stack of mail I’d missed over the past few days, but I heard everything.”
Massimo pushed his knit cap off, rubbed his bald head for a moment and put the cap back on. I thought it was more of a reaction to his high emotions more than anything. I remained quiet, barely breathing.
“I heard Carmela scolding Celia. She told her she never knew when to leave well enough alone, that she should have left Paolo alone fifteen years ago after she found out Roberto was not his baby. She told her she was lucky that I had not known about that.”
Massimo rubbed his forehead again as he recounted what he’d heard. He was getting tired, but I thought his weariness was more than physical. The tale was emotionally exhausting for me; I couldn’t imagine what it felt like for him.
“Celia tried to tell her mother that she was overreacting and nothing was going on, but Carmela told her that she was her mother, and she knew when her daughter was lying. She told Celia that she was nothing more than Paolo’s whore, and that she has not been able to do anything right since she first began to see that man when she was just a girl. She said her focus should be on her children and her husband, and that nothing good would come from opening her legs for a man who would never leave his wife.”
My eyes widened, and my jaw dropped. I had no idea this was the direction the story would take. My heart pounded just hearing it. I could not imagine how my brother felt reliving it.
“I was…shocked, to say the least,” he said, his voice weaker. “And I was hurt, surprisingly more hurt than you would think. I did love her. I didn’t say anything about what I’d heard. Discreetly, I had all the kids tested. I even had Roberto retested.”
“And?” I demanded.
Massimo paused and looked at me with the most serious expression yet. “Carlo and Clarice are my children, Marco. They are your niece and your nephew.”
“And biologically?”
After a moment, his shoulder rose and fell. He shook his head, and said softly, “Biologically, they are not mine.”
I fell back in my chair, dismayed and speechless. Massimo treated those kids no differently than his other children. He loved them just as much as their siblings. If he wouldn’t have told me, I would have never known by his actions or words that Clarice and Carlo were fathered by someone else. My respect for him quadrupled, because not many men would have been able to do the same. Including me.
“My heart broke when I saw those results,” he murmured. “I needed some time to think everything through, so I pretended to have a business trip and went away for a couple weeks. While I was gone, I concluded that I had been fooled from the beginning. Celia had been with Paolo before she broke up with you and before she’d slept with me. If you recall, that day when everything went down, Paolo had announced at lunch that he was soon to be marri
ed, but he did not tell us who the woman was.”
I nodded as I remembered that brief conversation that had seemed so meaningless at the time. Something else came to me, too. “When I thought she was looking at you in the churchyard, she wasn’t,” I said quietly. “I’d forgotten, but Paolo was standing just beyond you. If everything you say is true, she wasn’t looking at you. She was looking at him.”
His brow lifted. “I didn’t know. You’re probably right. You know, she was already pregnant then. She broke up with you because she thought she carried Paolo’s child, and that he would marry her, but he left for England soon thereafter. Once she realized he wasn’t going to marry her, she came to me. It was just lucky for her that Roberto was mine and not his. Paolo married his wife, and I married Celia a couple weeks later.
“When I returned from my ‘business trip,’ I tried to uphold our marriage for the sake of our children, but I began to pay closer attention and realized Celia was still secretly meeting with Paolo. They had carried on in their affair throughout the entirety of our marriage. I only know that because I paid someone a lot of money to dig deep. I was not going to play cuckhold to anyone. Besides, I wasn’t in love with her, so what was the point? So I quietly started the divorce. When I finally told her about it, I didn’t give her many options. She either had to do things my way or be exposed and lose her children, home, and the lifestyle she’d been accustomed to.”
“You kept the divorce quiet to what…to protect the kids?”
He nodded. “Especially the twins and Armano. They were so young. I had a small apartment in town close to work that I used as my own separate residence. I made sure to spend as much time as possible at the house, to be there for dinners and special occasions. To the outside world, everything was fine. We were the picture of a perfect family, but Celia and I no longer shared a bed. I could barely stand to be in the same space with her. Maria, Mamma, and Papa knew, but that was it.
“When the three years passed and the divorce finalized, I immediately went to Greece to see Tessa. I guess I expected her life to be on hold. It had never crossed my mind that she would have moved on after all those years, but she had. When I got there—unannounced, mind you—she was engaged to someone else. I was crushed, but I was also glad she didn’t slam the door in my face. Over the next couple months, I flew down to Naxos frequently to visit her. We were only friends, but any fool could see the fire that burned between us. Her fiancé saw it and broke off the engagement. Of course, I took advantage of this, and for a short time, we were together—at least, as much as possible with the distance. I wanted to spend my life with her, but when it came down to it, even though I was the one who made the rules, I was not yet ready to stop pretending with Celia for my children’s sake. The twins and Armano were still so young, and Laura’s mental health problems were beginning to manifest. I had to tread very carefully.”
He sighed. His eyes glazed over, and I knew he was back there, in the past with his mistakes and difficult decisions.
“Moving to Greece was not an option for me at that time, and Tessa had made a life in Naxos she was reluctant to leave. Selfishly, arrogantly, I tried to convince her to come back anyway, even though I also knew that we wouldn’t have been able to have our relationship out in the open, not until I thought the kids were stable enough. That could’ve been months, weeks, or years, and still I pushed and pressured. I was an ass about it, and just like before, she did not stand for it. We fought. I left. For weeks, there was no communication between us, and then I found out from Francesca that Tess married that man. Soon after that, I heard she was pregnant.”
Even though the woman he loved was in the next room, he sounded broken just recalling the memories. It made my own chest tight, made me think of Lydia and my actions that brought us to the point we were at. I was very confident that our ending would be like my brother’s and Tess’s.
Massimo continued, his eyes clearing and his voice sounding closer to normal. “As Daniel got older, Tess started to suspect he was mine. Not wanting to live a lie, she told her husband. Once they had solid proof that Daniel was, in fact, my child, her husband was willing to continue to raise him as his own, but Tess wanted to tell me the truth. He gave her an ultimatum. If she told me, he would divorce her. If she kept silent, they would continue with their happy life—and she was happy with him, as much as she could be. She refused to hide my son from me, though, and her husband left. It just so happened that when she made the trip here with Daniel to tell me about him, it was about the same time I found out I had cancer. Even though she knew she couldn’t be out in the open with me because of my farce with Celia, she moved back to Lecco almost instantly. She dropped everything so she could be here with me, for me, as much as possible, and to give me time with my son.
“As you saw for yourself, Celia was taking advantage of her place in our arrangement. After this last stint in the hospital I decided enough was enough. I have no idea how much time I have left, Marcello. Whether it is days, weeks, or years, I want to spend that time with my soulmate.”
Silence fell between us for some time. We heard Tessa and Daniel in the kitchen, giggling and talking while children’s music played in the background. I was happy for my brother, I really was, but I was nervous about how Tess was going to handle an energetic toddler while taking care of Massimo and herself.
“What about your other kids?” I asked after several minutes. “Are you abandoning them?”
His features grew stormy at that. “No. My attorney is already in the process of taking care of that. Celia does not have full custody of the kids. I do.”
“How are you going to explain all of this to them?” I waved a hand to encompass the house, Tessa, and Daniel. “And won’t Celia fight you?”
“I do not know how I will explain it yet, but no, she will not fight. She will go along with what I want, or everything she’s ever done will be made public.”
I hesitated before asking my next question. “Did you know she wanted me to take her and the kids to America?”
Not for the first time, my brother threatened me. “Marcello, I am warning you. If my children leave this country without my permission, there will be hell to pay.”
I sighed heavily and swiped a hand over my face. “I’m not taking them. I almost did, though.”
“You should be more concerned about your own woman and children. You’ve let her get in your head.”
“Massimo. You told me to take care of your family. I thought I was doing what you wanted by taking care of Celia, too.”
“I did not mean for you to give up your own life and the people you love for the people in my life. For the record, however, I told you to take care of my kids, and to take care of the family—meaning our parents and siblings. I also told you not to waste your time on people and places who matter less. I told you to show Lydia she was not less than anyone or anything, and what did you do? You put Celia ahead of her at every turn, just like she orchestrated. And I did not mean for you to literally park your ass here in Italy for months at a time.”
“Well, I’m leaving tomorrow. At this point, I don’t know if Lydia will let me anywhere near her. She tried to talk to me about Celia and I never wanted to hear it. Everything you said…it is still hard to believe. It seems so bizarre, like one of Mamma’s and Martina’s soap operas.”
I felt overwhelmed by everything I’d heard, and I was still struggling to absorb it all. After a minute, I asked a question aloud, though it was more to myself than to my brother.
“What does she want from me?”
“I don’t know,” Massimo said wearily. “But you better figure it out.”
Saying goodbye to my brother was hard. There was no way to really know if I would ever see him alive again. I couldn’t stay forever; I had to fix my own life back home. Honestly, for the first time since I found out he was sick, I felt okay leaving him in someone else’s care. Tessa would do anything for him. Once I thought about that, I remembered all the time
s that she was by his side, handling some of the nastiest tasks without hesitation or complaint. Although I was still overwhelmed and sometimes confused by the infusion of info I’d received, I knew Massimo was better in Tessa’s hands than anyone else’s.
Chapter Nineteen
Marco
Celia didn’t have to come look for me later that evening. I went to the other side of the estate after dinner so I could say goodbye to my nieces and nephews. I spent about forty minutes with them before the little ones were sent off to bed by their mother. Laura, who knew something had gone down between her parents, quietly went off to her room after throwing Celia questioning looks.
“So, you talked to him,” she said once we were alone.
I nodded slowly. “I did.”
She was nervous, pulling her hands into her sleeves and rocking from foot to foot. “And what did he tell you?”
“He told me you are no longer his wife.”
She bit her lip and did not deny it. “Did he tell you why?”
I stared at her for a long moment. She was still a beautiful woman. All the bad things I’d heard about her hadn’t tarnished her beauty at all, but now I felt like I was looking at someone who did not exist. She was only a figment that existed in my imagination.
“What exactly is it that you want from me, Celia?”
She tried to smile, but it shook and fell apart. Tears crowded her eyes, but unlike before, I was unmoved by them. “I want you to want me like you used to.”
I had not expected her to say anything like that. “That was a very long time ago, Celia, and you are not the person I once loved.”
Lydia’s handprint was beginning to show through her makeup. I never condoned violence against women, but I began to believe she deserved what Lydia had given her. I’d always considered her sweet and kind, but I’d also thought she made my brother happy all these years.
“What did you really say to Lydia to make her slap you?”
