Chapter 34 This is My Nightmare #2
He chuckles and gets a faraway look in his eye. "She lied about a few things back then. Not just her age, but also her pedigree. She'd had me believe she was some media heiress whose family owned a second home on the Costa Brava where we met."
"But she wasn't a media heiress?"
"Not even close." He smirks. "She was a girl from Ohio backpacking through Europe on a shoestring budget, wearing clothes she 'borrowed' from the clothesline of one of my friends.
I recognized the dress right away, you see.
Played along, though. We spent weeks together.
I met her every day to walk the coastline.
We ate tapas at all the finest restaurants. Drank wine on the beach until dawn."
"Sounds so romantic."
It does. He paints a pretty picture. Woven with intrigue and interest. Almost real enough for me to believe any of it actually happened.
Something tells me it's all bullshit, but I smile dreamily anyway, resting my chin on my palm to listen.
Ambrose nods. "She came clean, of course. Thought I'd never want to speak to her again, but…by then, I already loved her. When she told me she was set to fly home in less than a week, I proposed right there on the spot."
I gasp. "After only a couple of weeks?"
He shrugs, lifting his wine again and gesturing for service to clear away the first course, which neither of us ate much of. "When you know, you know."
"She sounds like such an interesting woman. Backpacking through Europe and lying about her identity. Sounds like something out of a movie."
"And she would've loved to hear you say it." He laughs. "She always loved a good spectacle, my wife. Lived her whole life as if she were the star in some film only she read the script for."
I let my face fall. "I wish I'd gotten to meet her."
His lips purse, and his gaze grows distant as if he's thought of something. "Your, um, what is it?" He snaps his fingers. "Fall break? You have that now, yes?"
I nod. "It's all this week."
"Why don't you let me take you to see the house?"
"The house?"
He nods. "Yes. Where you were born. I can't bring your mother back, but I can bring you to the last piece of her that still exists.
I had the west wing of the villa sealed up after everything happened.
That space, her rooms and yours…are in almost the exact state they were in when she…
Anyway, there are so many photos of her—of you as a baby. I'd love to show you."
My stomach twists. "Oh, I would love that…" I answer as animatedly as I can manage, but even though I tried to suggest that the deeper I could get into Ambrose's world, the better, Seven and Elijah completely torpedoed the idea.
We all agreed to take this slow, Elijah reminded me, and I knew I couldn't push him.
"…but," I continue, "I already have plans this break, and so much reading to do for the second half of the term."
I can't say what those plans are because I actually don't know. Atticus is still working it out, seeing if he can find any possible way to be able to get me out of my apartment and to their house without suspicion.
Deflect, he'd said. Just deflect if it comes up and change the subject.
"Oh, that's too bad, what if—"
"Maybe on a weekend?" I offer before he asks too many questions and talks me into a corner I can't get out of. "I could probably talk my dog sitter into it with enough notice."
"Oh yes, I forgot. Ellie, was it?"
"Yep."
"Right. I've never had a dog, much to your mother's chagrin back in the day. She always wanted one."
Who says chagrin in regular conversation?
…only the rich.
"I might be biased, but I highly recommend it. She's the best thing that ever happened to me."
…not counting the three men I cannot tell you about.
No, two men. Not three.
I cough, realizing I forgot. "I mean, other than—" I wave my hands around our lunch table. "This. You."
I lift my wine for a sip that's more of a swallow as the waiter returns with the second course, a weird arrangement of what looks like salmon and vegetables all spiked up like a parrot's feathers.
"I would have to agree." He tilts his glass toward me, and I clink mine gently to his, taking another sip.
"I couldn't believe it when both tests came back with positive results. I think I'm still processing. It's all a bit…surreal. Like a dream."
My fingers tremble on the glass, and I try—fuck, I try so hard not to let the emotion show on my face—because did he say there were two tests?
I choke a little on the wine in my mouth, but force it down my throat even though it burns.
"Oh dear, are you all right?"
"Yes." I cough. "Wrong hole."
When I finally get control of the spasm in my throat, I've almost gaslit myself into believing I've heard him wrong. I'm getting good at that, but then he has to go and open his stupid mouth again.
"Yes, when I saw your picture, I already knew I wanted to do an extra test, to be thorough. You looked so very much like your mother. And the necklace looked similar to one she had."
"Mmm." I nod, pretending I'm not a cavern of heart-pounding dread on the inside.
"And then when I saw the necklace up close—in person…"
Oh god.
"Her necklace," he corrects, grinning like he won the lottery and can't quite believe it. "I almost had three tests done, but my lawyer assured me using two different testing facilities would offer more than enough certainty to know beyond a shadow of a doubt."
There's a ringing in my ears, and he's lying. He has to be lying, right?
But I think back, and I remember. I remember that they took both a hair sample and a swab on the inside of my cheek. Protocol, Linette had said. Like it was totally normal to take two different samples.
I didn't even question it.
"Aurora, are you well? You look a bit pale."
"Oh, I'm fine," I rush to say. "It's like you said—all so surreal. The fact that you did two tests… I mean, to be honest, I was sort of thinking that maybe the people who did the test got it wrong and this was all—" I swallow. "Some big mistake, you know?"
Sloppy recovery, but it'll have to do. I can barely hear my own voice over the roaring in my ears. My palms are slick, and I rub them into the napkin on my lap, feeling sweat trickle down my side beneath my shirt.
He reaches across the table, and I hold my breath as he wraps his vile fingers around my arm, giving it what is meant to be a reassuring squeeze. But makes me want to be violently ill.
"No mistakes here, my daughter."
I taste bile in the back of my throat and force it back down. Force myself to smile through the burn in my eyes that I hope he reads as me being overcome with positive emotion instead of the most harrowing shame I've ever felt in my life.
My daughter.
Not Aurora Bellerose. Delilah De La Rosa.
He could still be lying.
My mind's vain attempt to gaslight itself doesn't hold water this time. I need to know. Really know. Even if it breaks me.
Ambrose pulls his hand back to his side of the table, and I swallow past the lump in my throat. "Do you think I could see them?" I ask. "The results, I mean."
He draws out his phone from the inner pocket of his dinner jacket. "Hearing secondhand isn't the same as seeing it for yourself."
"Exactly." I smile tightly.
"I'll have Linette email them to you."
"No," I say far too quickly, and mentally slap myself for my lack of control right now. "I mean, do you have access to them on your phone? To see for myself. I don't need copies or anything."
Definitely not sent directly to the fucking laptop Atticus has cloned in the laundromat.
My heart beats hard behind my rib cage, and it's a struggle not to squirm in my seat or, better yet, run right back out the door of this restaurant before he can show me a truth I'd rather not know.
His brow lifts, but he snaps his fingers, and his private security appears a moment later with a pair of reading glasses open and ready for him to quickly slip onto his face.
"I do believe I have it here in my email. One moment."
One moment is like an eternity.
"Ah. Here it is."
He rises and comes around the table instead of handing me his phone like I'd hoped he would.
Ambrose crouches next to my seat, and I release the death grip I have on the napkin, making my hands still, folding them all ladylike in my lap.
He holds out the phone so I can see, and I notice how he smells like thick musk and pine.
He taps the screen to zoom in, and I can't hear a word he's saying as he scrolls through two very similar documents, showing one with a seal on it I recognize from Atticus's files.
And another I don't recognize, but that appears to be equally legitimate.
Both have the same number under a line that says 'probability of parentage'.
99.9%.
"Satisfied?" he asks, closing the documents and getting back to his feet.
As he sits down and hands the glasses back to his security personnel, oblivious to the way I can't seem to breathe, he adds, "Even though there's no chance for a false positive, I still think it's best we keep things to ourselves for now. You haven't told anyone, have you?"
"What? Oh…no. No, I haven't."
"That's good. Once the media gets a hold of this, they'll have a field day. We should try to strategize how we'd like to make any formal announcements and when, but that can come later. I know it's all still very new and…"
I hope I nod and smile at the appropriate times as Ambrose prattles on about lawyers and media image, and incorporating me into his life in ways that can't be undone.
I'm trying to pay attention. I know he might say something important.
Something I need to remember and regurgitate later for Atticus and the others.
But I can't. My mind screams, racing with a thousand questions that I can't outrun.
What will they think when they find out?
How could they ever love me now?
Will they even trust me anymore?
Somehow, the lunch is over so fast, and I wish I could stay longer, because I don't know what happens when I walk out that door. When I have to see them.
"So, what happens now?" Ambrose asks, walking me to the entrance of the restaurant.
"What do you mean?"
"Will I be able to see you again soon? I know you're busy with your studies and I don't expect you to completely uproot your life, but I have great connections for the best private schools in the country and we could have you studying under—"
"Mr. De La Rosa," I interrupt him because, honestly, I need him to shut up.
"Ambrose," he corrects. "Let's start with Ambrose."
"Ambrose," I echo. "I know you have really good intentions—"
There's the puke again, trying to get out.
"But, I like my life. I like it here. I like my classes, and I'm making friends. I think we…should take it slow. Like you said."
He pushes his hair back, stands taller, and nods. "I apologize. My excitement is getting away from me."
"It's okay."
Now, please let me leave.
Before I realize what he's doing, he has his arms around me, and that scent—musk and pine—fills my nose. My lungs. Cloying. Choking.
I want to cry so hard for the little girl who always dreamed of this moment, but I can't, because this isn't that dream—this is my nightmare.