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She swiped her fingertips over her eyes, sniffling, while an ache grew roots inside her head. Her injuries, heartbreak, and exhaustion took a toll, but none so bad as when she turned her gaze down the hall. Her sight caught on Vittorio Bonacci striding toward her in his tailored navy suit and his gray-streaked hair.
Any normal person might have run for their dad, sought comfort, but children were masters at knowing what they could rely on from their parents. Emilia was no exception. So she merely sat, her strength too far gone to fight or walk away. After all, there wasn’t much her father could say that would add to the hurt she already felt.
He sat beside her, and for the longest time, they just stared at each other. She blinked, internally startled as she began to speak. “Have you come to deliver me to the Stucco’s next most eligible bachelor?”
Her father’s eyes narrowed. She couldn’t tell if he displayed annoyance or a shame-filled wince. Did her dad ever experience shame? Then again, she’d never spoken back to him. So maybe his expression was of surprise.
He shook his head and turned his attention to his polished, black leather shoes. “I probably deserved that.”
Everything within her stilled, forcing her to wonder if she’d heard right. Her father conceding to something… anything... ever.
She watched him a while longer, flicking her gaze at his lowered stare. One that, for once, wasn’t meeting hers, a deflated energy flowing off him.
“There’s no ‘probably’ about that, Dad.” She clamped her lips together, amazed and shocked that she was finally taking him to task.
This time she turned away, staring in the opposite direction toward some nurses swapping papers at a small station up the hall. She refused to look at him for the longest time, even though she wished to see some kind of evidence her words inflicted just a fraction of the hurt she experienced now.
“I know.” His low tone crossed the small space between them, just above a whisper, and so unlike the staunch man she’d known her whole life. “I never saw things as you did. I only saw things as a man from the village, and I thought, ‘This is the way things are. How they’re supposed to be. Who am I to do different?’”
“You’re Vittorio Bonacci.” She swung her head around, glaring at him, her eyes hot as though her burning home still surrounded her. “Being ‘different’ was always in your power.”
“I know. I know.” He slammed his eyes shut. The gray tinge to his skin and the added wrinkles over his forehead made him appear older and frailer. “I let everyone else get in my head. And maybe being Vittorio Bonacci meant I didn’t want to admit I had gotten it so wrong. And before you say it, all that should have mattered was that my little girl needed me.”
He opened his eyes, giving her his direct stare, so much about his words and demeanor making her feel as though he meant what he said. Still, she refused to believe him. “But it didn’t, did it? What I needed didn’t matter at all.”
The strain over his cheekbones dropped, denoting hurt. If she looked close enough, she swore she could see a red and glistening sheen to his eyes. “Who was I before your mother died? Do you remember?”
Something tiny shifted inside her, an inexplicable knowledge.
Happy. He was always happy. And kind. And someone I could talk to.
The memory wasn’t enough to forgive her father, but enough to remind her that her mother’s death had changed him. No. Not changed. It broke him.
She’d been too young and immature to think deeply about what her father experienced. Too immersed in her own grief. Had never put two and two together to truly connect her mother’s death with her father’s sudden bullheadedness and drive to succeed. Yes, she’d figured success had become his coping mechanism, but time and maturity tended to cast a different light on events.
And maybe because of her, he forgot about me.
That idea sent a dull pain winding through her belly. The new perspective explained so much about why he’d become so cold. Now that she stood on the precipice of losing Blaine, maybe she saw a little of how losing love could fracture someone forever.
If Blaine died right now, who would she be? Would she ever find it in her to let others in? Allow them the chance to hurt her?
“With money came more pressure, more people looking at us, Emilia. I wasn’t little Vittorio from the village anymore.” His expensive watch, the one with the black face and gold details, glinted up at her, but what she noticed most was the powerless curl of his hands on his lap. “Success hasn’t been the blessing I expected.”
She didn’t want to let him off the hook so easily, likely never. Not likely. Probably. No, definitely never. “So, you abandoned me to the Stuccos? Every time I came to you for help, you abandoned me.”
“Let me try to help you now.”
She spluttered out a laugh, one loud enough to have the staff, patients, and visitors in the hall turn to her like she’d lost her mind. Well, maybe she had. Or maybe she’d finally found it since she was now capable of telling her father what she really thought.
I have Blaine to thank for that.
Yes, Blaine. But also herself. One good thing to come from her escape had been finding herself. Her hidden courage. Her ability to tell someone how she felt about their horrible behavior.
So, she shook her head and uttered the one truth she could hold on to in all that had happened. “There’s not a thing you could do that would make me forgive you, Dad.”
His stare paused on her for a while, the lines over his cheekbones ever deeper and his skin pale before he gave a slow understanding nod. “I should expect you not to forgive me but let me explain this. Anthony manipulated me too. All those years ago, he said he saw you in the car with Blaine and that you were trying to fight him off. Anthony said Blaine had been trying to take advantage.”
Anthony’s lies never seemed to end. They went back so much further than she anticipated. Perhaps this new information did explain some of her father’s actions at the time, but not nearly enough to excuse everything. “The only man to ever take advantage of me was Anthony. And all I want to know is, if you were me, would you forgive you so easily?”
