“When I found out what your father really was, it didn’t feel like a revelation,” she said quietly. “It felt like something clicking into place that I had already half known.”
She paused.
“I was angry with him. Scared. I felt betrayed. But if I’m honest, I was even angrier with myself, because I knew. I had seen enough. And on some level, I had still chosen to stand by his side. That made me question everything I thought I knew about myself. My morals. My sense of justice. The way I understood right and wrong. All of it had to be rewritten, and that takes time.”
“That sounds like a warning,” I said.
“It is,” she replied simply. “Not against telling her. Against assuming that once you tell her the truth, you’ve done the hard part.” She took a small sip of wine. “The truth is only the beginning, Pietro. What comes after is the what decides everything.”
I said nothing.
She went on, her voice as steady as ever. “She has to choose this with full knowledge of what she’s choosing. Not because you make it sound manageable. Not because she loves you. Because she has looked at it and decided it is worth it anyway.”
“And if she doesn’t?” I asked, hating how even my voice remained.
"Then you let her go," she said. "And you do not make her feel foolish for it."
"Let her go..." Even the words tasted poisonous.
My mother’s mouth curved with something softer, sadder.
“Would he have ever let you go?” I asked.
She gave me a small sideways smile. “You don’t remember, but he did.”
Before I could ask what she meant, a shadow moved behind her. My father came into frame without warning, crouching behind her chair and dropping a kiss to her temple as naturally as breathing. One of his hands settled possessively on her shoulder, and the look he gave her was indecent.
Then he looked at me.
“Good. My son is alive.” His eyes flicked briefly to the wine in my mother’s hand, then back to my face. “Stop stealing my wife’s time. I need her.”
I stared at him. “Your wife is my mother.”
“Yes,” he said, entirely untroubled. “But based on the wine and your tragic expression, you now have your own woman to charm.” One dark brow lifted. “Try to make me proud.”
“That is a terrible way to phrase?—”
The call disconnected before I could finish.
I looked at my dark screen, then let out a breath that was half disbelief and half reluctant amusement.
Even now, after all these years, they were impossible.
Somewhere under my mother's warning and my father's arrogance, the truth remained. Emily would either know me or lose me. And I would have to be man enough to survive whatever answer she gave me.
CHAPTER 11
EMILY
“Ingersoll said,” I began, pointing the laser at the quote projected on the screen behind me, “‘If you wish to know what a man really is, give him power.’ What do you think he meant by that?”
I waited, hoping for a response that contained at least the faintest trace of thought. It was a nine a.m. Monday class, though, so that was probably too ambitious. Half the room looked hungover, the other half looked half dead, and most of them had the expression of people who would rather be almost anywhere else.
Honestly, same.
I was running on very little sleep and far too many thoughts. I spent most of the night constructing arguments for why Pietro had stopped things before they went further, then immediately dismantling them. All I really felt this morning was rejected and tired.
“Anyone?” I scanned the room and stopped on the student who was far too busy texting to even pretend he was listening. “Ben. Since you clearly have time for your phone, I’m going to assume you also have time for an answer.”
