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Kosta’s edition had been dog-eared and full of notes and highlighted sections. This version was new. Well, it would have been new at the time. He flipped the cover open, and inside was the scrawled handwriting of the man he’d once wished was his father.
Nico. I know you have it in you to do great things.
“I don’t know if you remember, but it was your birthday the day they found us,” Alethea said. “I think he’d bought this for you, but everything went to hell before he got a chance to give it to you.”
“And he kept it all this time?”
“Looks like it,” she said. “I wanted you to have it. Whether you keep it or not is up to you.”
Why would Kosta have kept his gift all that time? It wasn’t like they were ever going to see each other again. Even when Dion had convinced the older man to invest in their company—which Nico had assumed was in spite of Dion’s partnership with him—there’d never been any contact between them.
“He wasn’t very good at admitting when he was wrong. I’m trying to learn from his mistakes,” she added. “It’s part of the reason I’m telling you I’m sorry now. I don’t want to go to my grave one day without having apologized.”
Nico placed the book down, emotion stirring in his gut. Nico had been “off” for the past year since Kosta’s death, as much as he hated to admit it. But he’d refused to let himself deal with those feelings, because in his head they shouldn’t exist in the first place.
“I didn’t come to the funeral because I knew I would break down in front of everyone.” He curled and uncurled his fists. “I didn’t want your family to see how much it hurt me.”
Alethea nodded. “I can understand that.”
For some reason, he thought of Marianna then, of the pain he’d felt watching her walk out of his office. There’d been no goodbyes, no closure. Like with Kosta.
Would he spend the next ten years pretending that he didn’t care that he’d lost her?
“Tell Marianna that I appreciate her passing on my message, even if I had to storm in here uninvited,” Alethea said, as if picking up that he was thinking of his wife.
“She’s gone,” he said quietly. He placed a palm flat over the cover of the book, as if he was about to swear an oath. “I made her go.”
“Because you were worried that she was going to hurt you?”
He nodded.
“What happens if your child hurts you one day?”
The question pulled him from the dark memories fogging his brain. “What?”
“Your child. They’ll grow up and make decisions that will impact you. Like I hurt my dad.” She folded her hands in her lap. “What will you do then?”
He hadn’t ever thought that far ahead. Nico’s main weapon against pain was retreat—he could walk away from anyone or anything. He’d perfected cutting ties by doing it over and over and over. He’d walked away from business partnerships, ceased communication with people from the orphanage, deleted emails and left telephones ringing. These days he refused to put himself into a position where he might need to cut ties by avoiding those bonds from the beginning.
Until Marianna.
She’d coaxed him into connecting. And whether or not he let her into his heart, the bond between them could not be fully severed. They were going to have a child together. And that was a bond he would never allow himself to break. He still held the same promise he’d made ten years ago, when Alethea had announced she was pregnant—he would be a good father no matter what. No matter how hard it might be, no matter how tired he was, no matter how busy or stressed or worried.
And yet, he’d pushed away the woman carrying his child because he was frightened of her getting too close. How could he even be capable of being a good father if he couldn’t be a good husband?
He thought about the letter from the pathology clinic sitting in his desk drawer at home. He still hadn’t been able to bring himself to open it. Because the fact was, he did trust Marianna. He knew she hadn’t lied, that it was his baby. A piece of paper wasn’t going to change that.
“I don’t know what I would do.” He realized then that he didn’t have all the answers.
“You’ve still got plenty of time to decide,” she said softly. “When’s the baby due?”
“Not for another five months.”
That would mean months of not knowing how Marianna was doing, of not being by her side for tests and checkups. Not being by her side to find out the sex of their baby. Not being by her side to greet their child when they came into the world.
His stomach twisted violently. In his selfish attempt to fortify the walls of protection around him, he’d already been a bad father. And a bad husband. But the time for putting himself first was over.
“I accept your apology,” he said suddenly. He glanced at the clock on his laptop. Fifteen minutes had come and gone some time ago.
Alethea nodded and got up from her chair. “Thank you.”
“You should talk to someone, though. About your dad and being angry.” He watched as she struggled to hold her emotions together. “And I’m not that person.”
