But even as she thought it, she knew she was trying to rationalize her dilemma away instead of addressing it head-on, the way she should. Because he kept hurting her feelings all these years later, not because she truly believed Dario would ever do anything to hurt a child.
Not telling him now would change everything. She recognized that. Up until today, the fact that Damian didn’t know his father had been entirely Dario’s own fault. He’d made sure Anais couldn’t contact him, and she hadn’t seen how taking out an advertisement in the papers—as her aunt had suggested one night after a few too many of Anais’s tears and rants to the heedless walls—could help her child. By feeding Damian to the hungry tabloids? By making his life a circus? No, thank you. And she’d have eaten a burning hot coal before she’d have called Dante for any help, that manipulative bastard.
Dario had maintained his silence ever since that day back in New York. That wasn’t her fault.
But letting him leave here today no wiser? That would be.
She felt her hands bunch into fists and couldn’t quite make herself smooth them out again, even though she knew he’d see it. He could think what he liked, she told herself stoutly. He would, anyway.
“I have something to tell you,” she said woodenly, forcing the words out past lips that felt like ice and keeping her eyes trained on the sea. The beautiful Hawaiian sea that didn’t care about her troubles. The sea that washed them all away, or seemed to, if she stared at it long enough. The sea that had saved her once and could again, if she let it. Even from this.
Even from him. Again.
“I’m not interested.”
“I don’t really care if you’re interested or not. This might come as a surprise to you, but there are some things in this world that are more important than your feelings of persecution.”
He pushed back in his chair and looked up at her, and because he was Dario, he appeared in no way diminished by the fact that he had to look up to meet her gaze. Or by the fact she was standing over him, wearing three-inch wedges that made her nearly six feet tall. If anything, he appeared even more powerful than he had before.
She’d forgotten that. How easily he dominated whole rooms, whole cities, whole swathes of people, without even trying. How that beat in her like her own traitorous heart.
“I don’t feel persecuted, Anais. I feel lucky.” Dario even smiled, in that same sharp and bitter way that she worried might actually leave scars on both of them. Perhaps it already had. “It wakes me up at night, wondering what my life would be like if I hadn’t caught the two of you when I did. How many more ways would you have tricked me while I was so wrapped up in my work? How much more of a fool would you have made of me right under my nose? What if I’d never caught on?” He shook his head and blew out a breath. “I should thank you for being dumb enough to take my own brother into our bed. It saved me a world of hurt.”
It shouldn’t still cause her pain. None of what he said was a surprise to her. She knew what he thought. What Dante had stood by and let him think. Dario hadn’t bothered to ask her, his wife, to confirm or deny his suspicions. He’d walked into the house, seen Dante buttoning up a shirt in their bedroom and leaped to the worst possible conclusion. He’d believed the worst, instantly, and that was that.
And still, she felt that heaviness deep inside of her, a little too much like shame. As if she’d actually done something to make him think so little of her. As if she could have done something to prevent it. As if, despite everything, the things he’d done to her and the son he didn’t know he had was somehow all her fault.
She didn’t think she’d forgive him for that, either.
“I keep waiting for you to come to your senses, but you’re not going to, are you?” she asked softly. Rhetorically, she was aware. “This is who you are. The Dario Di Sione I met and married was the make-believe version.”
She’d believed in that made-up version, that was the trouble. Why did some part of her still wish that was the real Dario? She should know better by now, surely.
“Whatever you need to tell yourself.” He signed the last page of each set of documents and then shoved the stack of them toward her. “Can I have the earrings now? Or are there more hoops to jump through?”
“No hoops.” She did her part with the documents, slipping them back into the leather folder when she was finished. Then she reached into one of the deep pockets of her dress and pulled out the small jeweler’s box. She cracked it open and set it down on the table between them, watching the way the light danced and gleamed on the precious stones, perfect white diamonds and gorgeous emeralds. “These are the earrings. Note the size of the emeralds and the delicate craftsmanship of the diamonds. They’re extraordinary and unusual, and Mr. Fuginawa would not have let them go to anyone save your grandfather. He conveys his deepest respects, of course.”
“They’re earrings,” Dario said bluntly. He snapped the box shut as he surged to his feet, then shoved it in his front pocket. “Whatever tiny bit of sentimentality I had was beaten out of me six years ago, Anais. Old earrings are just old earrings. They don’t matter to anyone in the long run. My grandfather is a foolish old man who should be using his money to make his last days easier, not for this kind of nonsense.”
Anais straightened her shoulders and told herself to spit it out. To get it over with. To do what was right because it was right.
Because none of this was about her. It was about Damian.
“I’m delighted to hear you’re so unsentimental,” she said, and her only possible defense was to keep her voice as ice cold as she could. To act like she was a glacier, the way she had as a girl, because feigned, icy indifference was the only way she could get her parents to leave her out of their daily target practice. So that was exactly what she did now. It was almost alarming, how easy it was to slip back into old patterns. “Maybe this conversation doesn’t have to be as unpleasant as I feared it would be.”
He didn’t actually sneer. Not quite. “This conversation is already unpleasant.”
“Then what I’m about to tell you is unlikely to improve it.”
Anais held that harsh blue gaze of his. She reminded herself this was the right thing to do, no matter how it felt.
Be cold straight through, she told herself. Feel nothing but ice until you become it.
She didn’t look away. “You have a son.”
* * *
“I beg your pardon?”
Dario felt bolted to the stones beneath his feet. Pierced straight through. His heart stopped beating, then kicked at him hard, while his entire gut seemed to drop down to the ground and stay there.
And Anais only stood before him, as calm and unbothered and untouched as ever, damn her.
“You have a son.” She didn’t seem surprised she had to repeat that. “We do, I suppose. Biologically speaking. His name is Damian.”
He didn’t think he could breathe. “Tell me this is one of your jokes.”
“Because I’m renowned for my stand-up routine?” she asked tartly, and he recognized that sharp tone. He remembered it. On some level, it was much better than unbothered—but he couldn’t process that at the moment. “No. I’m not joking about my child.”
He continued to stare at her, like an idiot, while his head spun. As if she’d anticipated that reaction—and of course she had, he told himself bitterly, because she’d known he was coming today, hadn’t she?—she reached into the other pocket of that long, flowing dress and pulled out something. It took him a moment to understand it was a slightly bent photograph, and then she was sliding it onto the table before him.
Dario didn’t want to look. Looking would be admitting...something. But he couldn’t help himself.
A