Chapter Twenty-One
Rafael
I’m still in shock and anger is coursing through my veins, and I shouldn’t have said the things I said.
I shouldn’t have blamed her for loving me, not when it’s myself I’m furious with.
Furious that I didn’t think her own heart would be at risk.
Furious that I thought that denying her the one thing she deserved would be enough.
Furious that gifts and studios and pleasure aren’t enough, that she wants more.
She doesn’t want more. She told you that. She’s not demanding anything of you. And she’s right. You don’t listen.
That thought is still echoing in my head when she stops dead in her tracks and I see fluid running down her legs and onto the ground. And everything inside me seizes.
She’s shivering as she turns to look at me, her golden eyes wide with fear. And all my fury vanishes as if it’s never been. She’s looking at me as if she needs me, and, no matter what I feel now, nothing is more important than her and our baby in this moment.
I move towards her and pick her up in my arms. ‘It’s all right,’ I murmur as I stride towards the house. ‘I’m here and I’m calling the doctor.’
She doesn’t fight me, turning her head and burying it in my chest as we enter the house.
Then everything moves very quickly. I call the private obstetrician who is managing her pregnancy.
We both decided that we wanted our child to be born here, and from the looks of Olympia, we probably wouldn’t have the time to go elsewhere anyway.
The doctor is on her way, so I get my dragonfly into a hot shower to warm her up, then bundle her up on our bed.
I hold her tightly as she trembles and for some reason start telling her stupid stories about my own childhood here and how I got into trouble all the time and how long-suffering my parents were.
She doesn’t laugh at my pathetic attempts to cheer her, but when I fall silent, she says, ‘Keep talking.’
So I do and the memories come. And like that Christmas night under the tree, they’re not painful. They’re good memories, happy memories, and far more of them than I thought, and something inside me loosens.
I keep talking when the doctor finally arrives and I keep talking as she examines Olympia and then gives me some instructions about what to do next.
Apparently our baby is on its way, and I’m terrified.
But this is one situation where I’m happy to let the doctor order me around until I’m finally holding my dragonfly as our baby is born.
‘It’s a girl,’ the doctor says, beaming as she quickly wraps my daughter up and sets her on Olympia’s stomach.
And I look down at the tiny creature wrapped up in white muslin.
Her little face is all screwed up and she looks so angry, and it fills me then, the most intense feeling I’ve ever had in my life.
A force so strong and pure and right that I can’t deny it.
Olympia has gathered her into her arms and I stare like a fool at the pair of them.
And I realise that the feeling isn’t just for my daughter.
It’s for the woman who gave birth to her, who created her.
The woman who has stayed with me for six months, loving me, and who even when I told her to leave, didn’t.
It’s been there a long time, that feeling.
‘Call Ulysses,’ Olympia says to me. ‘Tell him he’s an uncle.’
‘You don’t want to?’ I ask stupidly.
She shakes her head, her attention on our daughter.
I don’t want to leave and yet I move out of the room, fumbling for my phone, my hands shaking. The doctor is talking to Olympia now and she doesn’t need me any more. Our baby is born.
Out in the hallway, I hit the number for Ulysses and wait, still dazed.
‘Zakynthos,’ he answers.
All thought goes out of my head. For years I’ve wanted revenge on this man and that was all I could think about but now… Now I’ve even forgotten why I was so angry with him in the first place.
Your father. Your mother. Remember?
Ah yes, that’s right. Revenge. But it feels so distant now, the anger that drove me. And after recounting all those happy childhood stories to Olympia, it doesn’t even feel like me.
‘You have a niece,’ I say hoarsely.
There’s a silence and then he says, ‘Santangelo?’
‘Yes.’
‘Olympia, how is—’
‘She’s well. She’s fine and so is the baby.’
Another silence.
‘Have you been forbidding her from seeing me?’ he asks.
It’s a question I’m not expecting. ‘No,’ I say, my brain still feeling sluggish and slow. ‘No, I didn’t.’
‘Then why doesn’t she visit?’
But I know the answer to that and I find myself saying, to my enemy, ‘Because she doesn’t want you to know that she’s unhappy.’
‘If you have hurt her,’ Zakynthos snarls down the phone, ‘I will personally cut out your heart and feed it to you.’
I shut my eyes, a curious, deep pain radiating through me. ‘I’m sorry,’ I hear myself say. ‘I should never have taken her. I should never have even touched her.’
‘No,’ he says tersely. ‘You shouldn’t have. But you did and so here we are. Now. Why is she unhappy?’
It’s a valid question and I have to answer. ‘Because she loves me.’
Another silence, even longer this time.
‘And you don’t love her?’ he asks. ‘Be very, very careful how you answer.’
I swallow, my mouth dry, my heart like a drum in my chest. And I open my mouth to say no, but even as I go to shape the word, I know it’s a lie.
It was a lie six months ago and it’s a lie still.
I do love her. I’ve loved her since the moment I saw her in a red gown with a dragonfly clip in her hair in Singapore, and I have no idea what to do about it.
Love wasn’t something I ever wanted to involve myself with again, because I know how it can rip your life apart. How once given, you can’t take it back, no matter how badly you want to. And how in the end, even after you’ve given up everything for it, it’s still not enough.
‘I do love her,’ I say, my voice still hoarse. ‘But…’
‘But what?’ he says impatiently.
And I realise then that I have to think about this, that I can’t just push it aside for once. That the question of love isn’t about what I do and don’t want, it’s about fear. My fear.
‘I’m afraid,’ I say slowly, knowing even as I do that admitting a vulnerability to this man is a mistake. ‘I’m afraid it’s not enough. That I won’t be able to make her happy.’
And it’s true. My very existence wasn’t enough to stay my father’s hand when he picked up that gun, and as for my mother, she was too bound up in grief to think about me.
And I was their son. So what am I to Olympia?
The man who got her pregnant, kidnapped her, forced her into marriage, and who made her stay here in my villa, with my baby. Who made her love him.
I’ve trapped her as surely as her brother once did, and, worse, I want to deny her the only thing she’s never asked me for. And all because I’m too afraid to give it.
‘Well, that’s bullshit,’ Zakynthos says, brutally frank.
‘You have a child now and a woman who loves you, and whether you’re afraid or not, that’s what you have.
So stop being a coward. Your only job now is to spend the rest of your life at least trying to make her happy or I’ll gut you like a fish.
’ He ends the call abruptly, leaving me standing there staring at the wall like a fool.
He’s right, though. Whether I’m afraid or not, I know now that there was never any leaving my dragonfly. And if she won’t walk away, where does that leave me? I could give into my fear and walk away from her and our child, tell myself I’m setting her free of me, or…
Or I could stop lying to myself. Stop telling myself that I’m not afraid.
Stop thinking that she’s better off without me and I’m better off without her, because she’s not.
She loves me. I could see the fear in her eyes as she told me so, and yet she said it anyway, so how can I throw that back in her face?
How can I be such a coward when she’s the bravest person I’ve ever met?
That would do to her what my father did to me and I can’t do that.
I have to make a different choice, a better choice.
She told me once that it’s okay to love someone who hurt you, that it doesn’t mean you forgive them, it’s just an acknowledgement of what’s in your heart, and finally now, I understand.
I can love my father and still be furious with him.
And I can love my dragonfly and still be afraid.
Because she’s more important to me than my fear.
She’s more important than me entirely, and I can’t walk away from her.
I have to get over myself and be as honest with her as she was with me.
After all, I have a wife who loves me and a child of my own, and that’s more than some men ever get. It’s certainly more than I deserve.
I turn and walk back into the bedroom.
Olympia is sitting back against the headboard, our daughter in her arms. She looks exhausted and very pale, but her eyes are glowing so bright it makes my heart hurt.
I sit on the bed beside her and as the doctor leaves, I meet her steady gaze. ‘Don’t leave me, dragonfly,’ I say roughly. ‘Please stay. Stay for me.’
Her brow creases. ‘I’m not going anywhere, you idiot. I told you I wouldn’t.’
I reach out and push a lock of hair behind her ear. ‘I am an idiot,’ I agree. ‘Your brother told me that if I don’t spend the rest of my life making you happy, he’ll gut me like a fish.’
Her expression softens. ‘You know I’m not going to demand that you—’
I reach out and lay a finger across her lovely mouth, silencing her.
‘No. You need to demand it. You’re right to demand it.
Because you deserve it, dragonfly. And I…
’ I stop and take my finger away. ‘I’ve been lying to you and lying to myself all this time.
I told you love would never be part of our marriage, but even when I said it, there was a part of me that knew it was already too late.
It was too late the moment I saw you in Singapore. I’ve been in love with you since then.’
She blinks, her eyes filling with sudden tears, and our daughter makes a soft sound as if responding to her mother’s distress.
But it’s not distress, I can see that now.
It’s joy. And I realise that her brother was right.
I really will dedicate the rest of my life to making her happy, because I want that joy. I want that joy of hers for ever.
‘You were right,’ I tell her, because I want her to know that I did listen. ‘I did love Dad and I still do, but I can be angry at him as well. And I can love you and still be afraid that it might not be enough.’
Her smile is the second sweetest thing I’ve seen today, the first being our daughter. ‘Of course it’s enough,’ she says huskily. ‘You’re here, aren’t you? That’s enough for me. That’s all I ever wanted.’
My heart is painful inside me and it takes me a minute to understand that joy can be painful too, a beautiful, bittersweet pain.
And I want to kiss her passionately, kiss her senseless, but she’s just had our child and needs more care from me than that.
So I satisfy myself with the softest, most gentle kiss I can give her and am rewarded with her sigh of pleasure.
‘Do you want to hold our daughter, love?’ she asks me as I lift my head, her eyes the most brilliant gold.
‘Yes. I thought you’d never ask.’
So Olympia hands me our child, the warm weight of her settling into my arms. Her eyes are dark, like mine, but I swear she has a mouth just like her mother’s.
I settle back beside my beautiful wife and as I do, I realise something.
After my parents died, I didn’t really have a life. I only had revenge. But right here, right now, I do. And it starts with my dragonfly.