Page 85 of Lucian

Lucian shrugged and moved a little further into the room. “I always wondered what my biological father wanted for me. He kept me secret from everyone, even his best friends. It’s ridiculous, too, because if anyone considered the dates, I was born months before John even married Kate.

“I was not a product of an affair. Kate and John were in no way involved before their wedding night. It was all business. And even if they were, Kate would have been the other woman because my father had been involved with my mother for years before her. His father would have disapproved of her lower economic status and half-Italian, half-American heritage. My father could have publically announced my birth, Jordyn, but he didn’t. He still kept me a secret.”

“Have you asked Antony why that was?”

“Sure. Like I said, he thinks it was a mixture of John knowing his father would be critical of my mother and the deal with Kate’s father. We never went much deeper into it. I don’t like to talk about what it means to me and Antony didn’t push me to.”

“Like John didn’t want you involved in the family, you mean.”

“Maybe,” Lucian answered, his voice strained with emotion. “I mean, that’s easier to consider than thinking he didn’t want me at all, right? Because it’s either he didn’t want me to be the man I am now, or he didn’t want people to know he had a child with a woman he didn’t consider appropriate to marry. Which would you want to be, the failure to a dead man, or a dirty secret?”

“Lucian, don’t …”

“Well? Which one?”

Jordyn took a deep breath, forcing her inner turmoil to calm. “Neither. I’d want to be exactly who I wanted to be. That’s what we’re supposed to do, anyway. Find and make our own way. Do our own thing. We’re unique to us, Lucian. We’re not the people who came before. If it works for you, that’s what matters.”

“So why am I focusing on what doesn’t?”

“I suppose it does, too. You have questions for people who aren’t here. I think what’s more important for you to deal with is if you can be happy not knowing the answers.”

“I like who I am, Jordyn.”

“So be happy with what you are, Lucian. You expect it to be the same thing, and I don’t think it is. Lucian the man and Luciano the little boy are the same people. You can’t like who you are if you’re not happy with what you were. It can’t be swept away like dirt under a rug. Eventually, it all gets washed out.”

Lucian had come to stand by the side of the bed, and he fiddled with the blanket. “Since when did you become so well-versed in human mentality?”

Jordyn snorted indelicately. “Since I was born to an addict mother who cared more for her drugs and men than feeding her own daughter. Being a teenager struggling to find some self-worth when you weren’t worth very damned much to the woman who gave you your life, it can really screw with your head. It was no surprise I grabbed on to the closest people I thought would treat me like family because I didn’t have the first clue of what a real family was.”

Lucian’s fingers skipped under the blanket, his hand laying to Jordyn’s leg. “Sometimes I think my family is too intrusive. Always around, sticking their noses in where it doesn’t belong … I could tell them to screw off, but it probably wouldn’t make a difference.”

“I’m going to ask about Antony finding you now,” Jordyn warned.

Lucian’s tone grew thicker as he said, “Yeah, okay.”

“What happened?”

“I don’t remember a lot being only six, but after John was killed, my mother somehow knew it had to do with her and me. She tried to protect me; moved us from place to place for a little while. Motels, shelters, and things like that. Anything to keep under the radar. Problem was, she didn’t get out of New York. This was her home, too.

“The bigger problem was that she relied on my father,” Lucian continued, heaving a sigh. “To keep things paid, and money for everything. Whatever she had was probably used up pretty quick. She screwed up when she went to her sister for help. She left me at a shelter and told me to stay hidden, that she’d be back. I remember her crying, because I think she knew.”

“And she didn’t come back,” Jordyn assumed.

Lucian shook his head sadly. “No. A couple of days without her showing up, the people who ran the shelter started talking. They were going to call the authorities about me since I was abandoned. It’d been beat into my head that those weren’t good people, and they wouldn’t help me. My last name wasn’t safe, and I needed to stay hidden. So, I ran. I did just what my mother told me to do and I stayed in the shadows everywhere. The streets were my home for two years. I slept in alleys that were warmer because of heating vents, and I stayed out of the rain because I didn’t have clothes if mine were ruined.

“Some of the homeless helped me when I would let them,” Lucian added, a shake quaking his words. “Some gave me food, others clothes, if they had it. Some just kept me safe from the predators, because there are awful monsters who hide in those streets. And nobody even cares because it’s not their child or family those people hunt.”

Jordyn’s emotions threatened to spill over, but she forced them back long enough to ask, “How did Antony find you?”

“I was hiding in an alley beside one of his restaurants to find something to eat. A few of his men had noticed me there before. They’d tried to follow me once, but lost me. I guess me muttering about in Italian made one of them stop and think. By that time, Antony had already gone in search of my mother and found the documents of me in her old apartment. Anyway, that night, when he said my father’s name, I trusted him. He apologized to me and then he took me home.”

“Lucian—”

“Antony paid for my mother’s burial, because her family couldn’t afford it. I’ve never been to her grave.”

Jordyn felt his hand tighten to her leg, like he was rotting himself in place. “Hey, look at me.”

Lucian wouldn’t. “I attached myself to Dante first, because he was the closest in age, but he scared the shit out of me half of the time. He was a lot louder as a kid than he is now. Gio talked a lot and was a joker always causing trouble, and he still does. I liked the house because it was big, but sometimes it was too big, so I’d hide in the closets for hours until someone finally found me. Cecelia hated that, but she never once scolded me for it. A few months after my ninth birthday, Antony found me under his desk playing with a pocket knife. Instead of punishing me for having the knife, he showed me how to peel an apple and I’ve called him my father ever since.”