Unwrapping the Castelli Secret

by Caitlin Crews

  And much closer, down in the gardens that were little more than a suggestion beneath packed and frozen earth this time of year, the five-year-old child who was indisputably his own ran in loopy circles around the woman who claimed she could not remember Rafael at all.

  He was certain she could. More than certain. He’d seen it in those lovely eyes of hers the way he’d always seen her need. Her surrender. He knew she was lying as sure as he’d known who she was when he’d seen her on the street.

  What Rafael didn’t know was why.

  “Are you planning to speak?” he asked Luca with perhaps more aggression than necessary. “Or will you loom there like one of the mountains, silent and disapproving?”

  “I can speak, if you like,” Luca replied, sounding wholly unaffected by Rafael’s tone, much as he always did. “But the stories I have to tell are far less interesting than yours, I think.”

  Rafael turned then and eyed his little brother. “I thought you were heading down to Rome tonight.”

  “I am. I imagine you and Lily have a bit more to talk about than she and I do.” The sound of a child’s excited laughter wafted up from the gardens then, as if on cue, and hung there between them. Luca only smiled. “All of those interesting stories, for example, that you still haven’t seen fit to tell me.”

  They looked at each other across the relatively small room. The fire licked at the grate. The December wind shook the windows, sweeping down from the heights of the mountains and off the surface of the freezing lake. And outside, a little boy was running hard enough to make himself dizzy in the very same spot they’d done so themselves, though in their case, it had been entirely without any parental supervision from the increasingly unwell woman who had never wanted to be a mother in the first place.

  Rafael had never intended to have a child of his own. He didn’t have the slightest idea what to do now it turned out he had one, without his permission. Without his knowledge, even. Thanks to a woman who had run from him and then concealed that child’s very existence from him for all these years.

  Deliberately. She had done this deliberately.

  He didn’t know what he felt. Or more precisely, which dark thing he should feel first.

  “Have you come to ask me something?” Rafael asked after a moment or two dragged by. “Or is this the sort of tactic you use in negotiations, hoping the other party will fall to pieces in the silence?”

  Luca laughed, but he didn’t deny that. “I would ask you to confirm that you did, in fact, sleep with our sister—”

  “Stepsister,” Rafael growled. “A crucial distinction, I think you are aware.”

  “—but that would be for dramatic effect, nothing more.” Luca waved a languid hand. “I already know the answer. Unless you have a contorted tale of a petri dish and a turkey baster you’d like to tell me, in which case, I am all ears.”

  Luca proceeded to drape himself over the nearest chair, lounging there as if this really was a bit of mildly entertaining theater and not Rafael’s life. But then, he supposed that for Luca, it was.

  Rafael sighed. “Was there a question in there somewhere?”

  “Is this why she ran away, then?” Luca’s voice was light. Almost carefree, but Rafael didn’t quite believe it. He’d seen the shock on Luca’s face when she’d walked into that café.

  “I couldn’t say why she ran away,” Rafael replied evenly. Or faked her own death, if he was to call this situation what it truly was. That was what she’d done, after all. Why pretty it up? “And she doesn’t appear to have any intention of telling me.”

  Luca watched him for a moment, as if weighing his words. “It’s uncanny, how much that little boy looks like you. Father might well have a heart attack when he sees him. Or lapse further into dementia, never to return, mumbling on about ghosts in the family wing.”

  “I will be certain to schedule time to worry about that,” Rafael assured him, his lips twitching despite himself. “But as I do not expect the old man and his brand-new child bride until much nearer Christmas, I think we can hold off on the family melodrama until then.”

  “Buon Natale, brother,” Luca murmured, and then laughed again. “It will be the most joyous Christmas yet, I’m sure. Ghosts and resurrections and a surprise grandson, too. It’s nearly biblical.”

  “I’m glad you find this amusing.”

  “I wouldn’t say this is amusing, exactly,” Luca said then, the laughter disappearing. “But what would be the point in beating you up any further? You’ve been rolling around in the proverbial hair shirt for the last five years and have taken all the pleasure out of needling you, to be honest.”

  “There was no hair shirt,” Rafael said, trying to keep his tone even, because the penance he’d done for a woman who hadn’t actually died was not his brother’s business. “It was time to grow up. I did.”

  “Rafael.” Luca shifted in his chair, then blew out a breath, shoving back that unruly hair of his. “You were a wreck when you thought she was dead, and for a long time after. Maybe you should take heart that she is not. All the rest is noise that will sort itself out, surely.”

  Rafael frowned at him. “Of course I’m pleased that she’s not dead, Luca.”

  “But are you happy she’s alive?” Luca asked, with that uncanny insight of his that suggested he was something more than the lazy creature he’d spent most of his life pretending he was. At least in public. “It’s not quite the same thing, is it?”

  “Of course.” But Rafael had waited a moment too long to respond, and he knew it. “Of course I’m happy she’s alive. What a thing to ask.”

  His younger brother studied him for a moment. “Is it that she can’t remember you?” His mouth curved slightly. “Or anything else, for that matter?”

  “I don’t believe that she has forgotten a thing,” Rafael said quietly, and it took him a moment to recognize the sheer savagery in his voice, to hear the way it sliced through the air between them, harsh and unmistakable. “Not one single thing. She left.”

  He did not say, she left me, and yet that sat there for a moment in the middle of the room as well. Right there in the center of the priceless rug that was older than the two of them and Lily combined. Obvious and terrible, and Rafael thought he couldn’t possibly loathe himself more than he did at that moment.

  Luca shifted in his chair, his whole body suddenly gripped with a different kind of tension.

  “Rafael,” he began. “Mio fratello—”

  “I’m finished discussing this,” Rafael gritted out.

  “But I am not.” Luca shook his head. “This is not the same. Lily is not our mother. There is no comparison between an accident and what happened here.”

  “You don’t actually know that,” Rafael said quietly. Too quietly. It revealed too much and even if he hadn’t heard that in his own voice as it hung there between them, he saw it in his brother’s eyes.

  “Raf—”

  “No more,” Rafael said, cutting his brother off. “Lily and I will come to terms with what she’s actually forgotten and what she’s found convenient to pretend she’s forgotten, I’m sure. That’s quite enough ancient history to dredge up. There’s no need to drag our mother into this.”

  For a moment he thought Luca would protest that. He felt himself tense, as if he thought he might fight back if his brother dared—

  You need to pull yourself together, he ordered himself. This is Luca. He’s the only person you love who’s never betrayed you.

  “Do you have any particular reason to think she’s pretending?” Luca asked after a moment, his voice as light and easy as if they’d never strayed into the muddy waters of their mother’s sad fate. He even smiled again. “Most women, of course, would hold you like the North Star deep within them, knowing you even if they lost themselves. Such is the Castelli charm. I know this myself, o
bviously. But Lily always was different.”

  Rafael forced himself to smile. To play off the darkness pounding through his veins even then, whispering things he didn’t want to hear.

  “She was that.”

  “Her memory will return or it won’t,” Luca said carefully, watching Rafael much too closely. “And in the meantime, there is the child. My nephew.”

  “My son,” Rafael agreed.

  He didn’t think he’d said that out loud before. My son. He wasn’t prepared for that rush inside, that simmering, inarticulate joy, beating back the darkness. He hardly knew what to make of it.

  “Indeed.” Luca’s dark eyes gleamed. “So perhaps what she remembers, or what happened in this ancient history of yours, is unimportant next to that. Or should be.”

  “Goodbye, Luca,” Rafael said softly, and he didn’t care what his brother could read in his tone. He didn’t care what he revealed, as long as this uncomfortable conversation ended immediately. As long as Luca left him here to fight his way toward his equilibrium again. Rafael was sure it had to be in there somewhere. “I don’t expect to see you again until Christmas. What a shame. You’ll be missed. By someone, I’m sure.”

  “Liar,” said his irrepressible brother, wholly unconcerned by his dismissal. “You miss me already.”

  Rafael shook his head, then turned back to the window and ignored the sound of his brother’s laughter behind him as Luca took his leave.

  Outside, the little boy—his little boy—was still running, the hood of his bright blue coat tossed back and his head tipped toward the sky.

  Arlo was a miracle. Arlo was impossible. Arlo was a perfect, wonderful mistake Rafael hadn’t known he’d made, and Rafael already thought he was a pure delight.

  But he changed nothing.

  He only made Rafael’s course of action that much more clear.

  * * *

  The ancient Castelli mansion bristled with the kind of supernaturally perfect staff that Lily had forgotten about over the course of these past five years. Impeccably trained, they made her feel as if she was gleaming and perfectly presentable at all times. When in fact it was their ability to clean rooms while she was still in them, produce a phalanx of nannies with credentials in hand to watch Arlo whenever she needed a moment and maintain the elegance all around her so expertly that made it feel quite natural that she should find herself living in it again.

  It had been different going in the other direction, from these nonchalant everyday luxuries to the challenges of real life without them, but at the time, Lily had viewed all of that as her penance. And her test. If she could manage it, she’d told herself as she’d waited tables in places the old Lily wouldn’t have dared enter, she’d earn the right to raise her child herself.

  She’d given herself a deadline. If, by her eighth month of pregnancy, she couldn’t come up with a better life than the hand-to-mouth, on-the-run existence she’d fashioned for herself, then she would have to tell Rafael about the baby. Or arrange for him to get custody without directly confronting him, maybe. Something. No child deserved to struggle along in poverty at all, but certainly not when his mother could make one phone call and whisk him away from a truck stop diner to a place like this. Lily might have left her life the way she had for what had felt like very good reasons, despite the pain she knew she’d caused—but she hoped she wasn’t that selfish.

  Lily had been six months pregnant when Pepper had walked into her diner, headed home after delivering a pair of rescue dogs from a high-kill shelter in Virginia to their loving new home in Missouri. Maybe it wasn’t surprising that they’d hit it off instantly—after all, Pepper had a way with strays.

  And when she’d hit that eight-month deadline, Lily had been living in the guest cottage on Pepper’s land, with a job she quite enjoyed to go along with it. She’d liked her life there and had seen no reason her baby wouldn’t, too. Pepper had felt like the long-lost older sister Lily had never had. And then she’d been more like a doting grandmother to Arlo.

  Lily didn’t regret a single minute of her time in Virginia, and she told herself she didn’t regret keeping Arlo’s existence from Rafael, either.

  But it was shockingly easy to adjust to life in all of that Castelli luxury again, she found, regrets or no. From the stately ballrooms to the gracious salons to the many libraries, large and small, that dotted the rambling old house, every inch of the place was a song of praise to the ancient Castelli name and a celebration of their many centuries of wealth and prominence. She’d made her way to her favorite library tonight, a week after they’d arrived in Italy, while the nannies she’d have said she didn’t need tended to Arlo’s nightly bath.

  This was what they’d been hired to do, she’d been informed the first night they’d come to spirit him away. Which meant Rafael had decreed it—and in this great house, what Rafael decreed was law. That took some getting used to.

  “You always loved this room.”

  Lily jumped at the sound of his voice. It was as if she’d summoned him out of thin air with a single thought, and it took everything she had not to whirl around and face him, the way a guilty person who remembered exactly how much she’d loved this room might do.

  “I do like libraries,” she said, trying to sound vague. “Doesn’t everyone?”

  “You like this one because you said it felt like a tree house,” Rafael said, and it was only when she heard how calm and even his voice was that she realized she’d been much too close to snapping at him.

  Lily heard him move farther into the cozy room, all dark woods and packed bookshelves and the bay window that sat out amid the leafy green treetops in summer. This time of year the bare branches scratched at the glass and made her think about all the ghosts that stood in this room with them, none of whom she wanted to contend with just then.

  She turned to find Rafael much closer than she’d expected. He stood there in casual trousers and a sleek sweater that made her palms itch to touch it—him—and she told herself the way her heart leaped inside her chest was anxiety. Panic at this awful role she had to play, when she’d never been any good at pretending much of anything.

  But the heat that washed over her told a much different story, especially as it settled low and deep and heavy in her belly. And then began to pulse.

  It was then that she realized that she hadn’t been alone with Rafael since that cold street back in Charlottesville. Not truly alone. Not like this—closed off in a faraway room in a rambling old house where no one could hear them and no one was likely to intervene even if they could.

  Lily’s heart began to drum against her ribs, so loud that for a moment she was genuinely afraid he could hear it.

  “A tree house?” she asked now. She frowned at him, then out the window and into the darkness, where the December trees were skeletal at best. Someone who had never been here before would certainly not make the summertime connection. It required having whiled away hours in the window seat, surrounded by all of those leaves. “I don’t get it.”

  His dark gaze was intent on hers, as if he was parsing it—her—for lies, though he still stood a few feet away, his hands thrust in his pockets. She supposed that was meant to be a safe distance. But this was Rafael. Nothing about him was safe and there was no distance in the world that cut off that electricity that bloomed in the air between them. Even now, as if nothing had happened. As if it was five years ago and no time had passed.

  No car accidents. No Arlo. Just this thing that had stalked them both for years.

  “How have you enjoyed your week here?” Rafael asked. So mildly, as if he had nothing on his mind save the duties of a host and this was a mere holiday for the both of them.

  Lily didn’t believe that tone of voice at all.

  “It’s very pretty here,” she said, the way a first-time guest might have. “If a bit bleak this time
of year. And obviously, the house itself is amazing. But that doesn’t make it feel like any less of a prison.”

  “You are not in prison, Lily.”

  “That’s not—” She cut herself off. “I don’t like it when you call me that.”

  “I can’t call you anything else,” he said, a dark fire in his voice, his eyes, and it stirred up that dangerous matching blaze inside her. “It sits on my tongue like lead.”

  She didn’t really want to think about his tongue. “If this isn’t a prison, when can I leave?”

  “Don’t.”

  “I don’t know you. I don’t know this place. The fact that you remember this life you think I had doesn’t change the fact that I don’t remember living it. A blood test doesn’t change how I feel.”

  She thought if she kept saying that, over and over again, it might make it true.

  “I’m sorry you feel that way,” Rafael said, in a remarkably calm tone that was completely at odds with that harsh look on his dark, beautiful face. “But things are complicated. I can’t simply let you go and hope you’ll be kind enough to stay in touch. You are somewhat more than a mere flight risk.”

  Lily thought better of showing him her reaction to that. She might not have been truly alone with him since they’d arrived here, but she’d certainly suffered through too many of these sorts of seemingly innocuous barbs that she worried were actually tests. At the various meals they’d taken together with Arlo, because, she’d been informed, hiding away with a tray in her room was not allowed. Every time Rafael encountered her, in fact.

  Was she responding as Lily? Or as someone who didn’t know who Lily was? Having to worry over every single word she said or expression she let show on her face was like talking through a stone wall, and she was beginning to feel the weight of it inside her, dragging her down.

  “And why not?” she asked crisply. “When you know that’s what I want?”

  “Because,” he said softly, “I am a father.”