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“You know we would have welcomed you back all these years.” Not even a hint of hesitation could be heard in his father’s voice. “Why have you not returned to Palermo even once? Why have you stayed at a distance, Stefano?”
The unhidden ache in the question came at Stefan like a sharp punch, ripping through the shell he had built around himself.
Had he known, somewhere, that his father, of all the people in the world, could sense how changed he was from the inside? Had he been afraid that his father could see that there was nothing good left in his son after what Serena had done?
“Was it to punish us for threatening to cut you off all those years ago? Have you become such a cruel man, then?”
“No,” the denial waved out of him. His father would accept nothing but truth. For the first time in years, Stefan looked inward.
“What kind of a man keeps away from a mother who dreams of holding her son in her arms again?”
To hear that painful resignation in his father’s voice was Stefan’s undoing. Words rushed out of him on a wave of guilt and shame and so much more that he had locked up for so many years. “Serena...she took my very belief in myself when she left me. In just one day, I became a stranger to myself. I didn’t know myself and I could not face you as a failure. I...was not worthy of you and Mamma after choosing such a woman over you. How could I face you after I had so selfishly shattered all your dreams?”
Understanding dawned in his father’s gaze. “And all these years? After you built your empire, after you proved to yourself that you could succeed?”
Stefan shook his head, a lump in his throat. He had no answer for his father.
“Has she taken everything that was good and kind about you, too?”
She hadn’t. He’d given it all up willingly. He hadn’t wanted anything that could have made him vulnerable like that again. Along with his naïveté, he had also given up his heart.
After everything he had done to wipe her from his life, he had still let her win.
The realization clawed in his gut. He had held on to her rejection, had held on to the poison she had spewed into his life for so long.
Had let her corrupt everything that had been good and pure in his life even though he had been determined to prove her wrong.
He had denied himself and his parents the joy of seeing each other.
Clutching his father’s hands, Stefan spoke. “I have let my shame and guilt stop me from visiting you these years...I wanted to prove myself worthy of you again and in the process, I forgot what you taught me...I forgot everything that is important in life.”
Nodding, his father patted his back. “Your mother, she does not see things. But I would have been immensely sad to see my son become like this...if it were not for your Clio, Stefano. To see you with a woman like that, it makes my heart easy.”
What would his father say if he knew it was nothing but a farce? What was stopping him from making the woman he wanted with an insane hunger his own? The thought erupted on the heels of the first one.
The elevator swished open and his parents left, beaming smiles on their faces.
Instantly, Clio excused herself and Stefan let her run away for now.
The way he felt right now, it was better she stayed away until he was more in control of himself and his emotions.
All day, his parents had commented on how well Clio and he suited each other, had been ecstatic at every small exchange between them.
Hadn’t been able to keep their eyes off Clio as they went sightseeing into the city. Had demanded Clio and Stefan show them the Columbia University campus, all the spots that the media had dug up and built their love story around.
His mother had pronounced proudly that Stefan and Clio’s marriage would last longer than her own marriage of forty years, that they would continue the tradition of a long, happily married life as the Biancos always did.
His mother’s comment opened up a wound he had resolutely patched up long ago, an ache that could consume him if he let it.
Because he could never trust another woman, never reach for that happiness ever again.
And try as he did to ruthlessly remove that small part of him that wanted a fantasy to come true, Clio kept igniting it, kept pushing him toward the path where nothing but pain awaited him.
Even the happiness he had spied in his parents’ eyes demanded a high price of him.
Clio had unnecessarily brought his parents into their pretense, cruelly shown him glimpses of a future that could never be his.
And that she made him want it again was unbearable.
