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Struggling to respond with anything that didn’t sound lame and shallow, Maya offered another tissue, which was refused as her half-sister shook back her glossy hair.
‘You have this little one and he has you,’ Maya finally said hoarsely as she felt her throat thicken with tears. She swallowed hard; ifshestarted crying it would not be as pretty as Violetta’s efforts. ‘All a child needs is to be wanted and loved,’ she added, even as she reminded herself that love did not pay the bills. ‘I know it must be hard financially being a single parent and—’
‘But Mattio is an Agosti!’
Maya shook her head, confused.
Her ignorance appeared to shock the younger woman, whose blue eyes flew wide. ‘He is heir to half the Agosti fortune.’
‘Oh, right...’ Maya nodded vaguely, getting the picture, though to her mind, as useful as silver spoons might be, surely a child would be better off with a living father?
‘Of course, the money should have come to me as his widow, but Cristiano changed his will, and I know exactly who to blame for that,’ she said darkly. ‘Not that I have a problem with the money going to Mattio,’ she added hastily, seeing the look on Maya’s face.
Maya nodded, feeling uncharitable that she had trouble believing this claim. How could she blame the woman? It must be hard if she had expected to inherit.
‘I have a problem with having to go toSamuelefor every penny.Hesaw to it that Cristiano left financial control of our child’s fortune to him.’
‘Who is Samuele?’ Maya asked, seriously struggling to keep up.
‘He is Cristiano’s older brother. He’s always hated me—he was jealous because Cristiano stopped letting him make all the decisions. Oh, I don’t blame my darling Cristiano, he was vulnerable and Samuele dripped poison in his ear and turned my own husband against me... I can tell you don’t believe me, but then no one does!’ she cried, her voice rising to a shrill hopeless note. ‘They don’t understand—they think that Samuele is caring of his family, including me.’
Maya pressed her fingers to the throbbing in her temples. With each word a picture appeared that was horribly familiar to her, channelling her anger into a quiet resolve.
‘Oh, I understand. I understandperfectly,’ she said, ‘how someone can appear one thing on the surface and be something very different.’
Before he had married her and Beatrice’s mother, Maya had believed her stepfather was the person that the world thought he was: caring and considerate and, most importantly, making her grieving mother happy again. Then they had married and the abuse had begun, so subtle, so insidious that her mother hadn’t seen that she was being isolated from her friends, her support network, and in the end even her daughters, until it was almost too late. Maya had not known then but she did realise now that Edward had seen her own closeness to her mother as an obstacle to his all-consuming need for total control over his wife.
Golden girl, he had mocked as he’d deliberately set about revealing to the world and her mother that she was not golden at all; she was useless, she was deceitful.
‘They call it coercive control,’ Maya said grimly. ‘But you’re not alone.’ And neither had she been; Beatrice had been there for her. Now it was Maya’s turn to offer support to another woman and she was glad to be able to.
‘You understand!’ Gratitude shone in her half-sister’s eyes that was quickly replaced by despair. ‘But there’s nothing you can do to help me, because he has everything. Samuele has money and power, and now I think...’ She faltered, kissing the top of her baby’s head before revealing, ‘No, Iknowhe’s trying to take my baby away from me, but no one will believe me. But maybe they are right?’ she cried wildly.
‘No, don’t believe that, ever! Believe in yourself,’ Maya replied fiercely, her voice shaking with emotional emphasis.
‘Coming here was a total act of impulse. It all became too much for me and...well, I just need some space to work out what to do next.’
‘You can stay here with me. Take all the time you need.’
‘Really?’
What are you letting yourself in for?
Immediately ashamed of the momentary flicker of uncertainty, Maya lifted her chin and she smiled. ‘Really.’
It had been the early hours of the morning before Maya had finally crawled into bed, but despite being exhausted she slept in fits and starts, repeatedly waking and remembering all over again that Beatrice’s room was not empty any more. It was occupied by a half-sister she did not really know, a half-sister whom, given what she was going through, Mayaoughtto feel a connection with, and she was confused by the fact she didn’t.
But then maybe it was unrealistic to expect emotions like that to just materialise out of thin air, and it obviously didn’t help that she found herself comparing Violetta to Beatrice and finding her blood relative coming out second.
Whatever she did not feel for Violetta was more than compensated for by what shedidfeel for Mattio. She had felt nervous when Violetta, pleading utter exhaustion, had handed over the baby to Maya to feed and change.
Maya had been surprised by the little ache in her heart when she had eventually handed him back, and it had made her wonder if her own birth mother had felt that way when Olivia had given her up? Had the sound of her crying triggered the same instinct that had Maya leaving her warm duvet cocoon as she heard Mattio wailing in the next room? Dragging both hands in a futile smoothing motion across her wildly tumbled dark curls, she swung her feet to the floor.
Maya closed down the useless speculation over her birth mother and caught sight of herself in the mirror as she grabbed a robe off the hook behind the door, the sleep-deprived face that stared back at her bringing a fleeting grimace to her face.
On the plus side, her disturbed night had not been troubled by the recurrent dream that she half dreaded, half longed for. She never remembered specific details. On waking all that remained was an erotic blur; the sense of deep yearning, the memory of a deep honeyed voice and a strong sense of shame that usually lingered until she’d had her second cup of coffee.
It hardly seemed possible that a chance encounter so many months ago with a tall, arrogant stranger should leave such a strong imprint on her unconscious. She lifted a hand to her suddenly tingling lips. Had he kissed her or had that been a fiction invented by her overactive imagination too?
