Chapter Twelve
Chapter Twelve
“What?” Adriano roared in the middle of the boardroom, startling a bunch of clients and businessmen into silence.
“She fell,” Fabi repeated, her voice nearly hysteric.
He reached for the back of the chair, bile rising up through his throat. He didn’t have to ask his sister who “she” was. There was only one person who could cause such worry in Fabi’s voice and now, in Adriano.
“How is she, Fabi?” he said, somehow forming the words. “What happened? Where is she?”
His sister rattled on so fast that only every other word came through the bad connection. He fought the urge to scream at her down the line, knowing it would only distress her even more. “Breathe, Fabi. And tell me what happened. Slowly, per favore ,” he said, begging now.
A few moments of silence later, Fabi said, “I should’ve told you first that she and the babies are fine. It was a minor concussion and she’s been under observation the whole time. In fact, now that I think about it, Nyra is going to kill me for calling you. But I was so scared, and I knew you’d want to know.”
Gratitude and relief crowded in, choking the fear out of his body. Adriano cursed, rubbed his hand over his temple and prayed to the god he’d never believed in for patience. “I am glad you called. Hey, Fabi. Did I tell you that you are my favorite sibling?”
She giggled down the line, relief powering her laughter more than humor or affection. “She made me promise not to tell you. I’ve grown fond of her, and now…I broke the promise.”
For just a second, all his insecurities, all his fears that he couldn’t give Nyra everything she deserved came back, pummeling him.
No , he told himself, pushing those fears back. He was being ridiculous.
Nyra was six and a half months pregnant with his children. She was thriving, and happy, if uncomfortable most nights. And days. She had such a thin frame with barely any hips and his two daughters—God had granted him one wish of his—were growing so rapidly, that they were putting too much strain on their mother’s pelvis. She had been advised bed rest for the last month.
The only thorn in an otherwise content marriage was his wife’s worry for her twin. Nadia had finally started calling her twin for a weekly chat from the clinic. After he’d intervened and told her how much Nyra missed her and how she needed to clean up her act if she wanted to see her sister and her nieces in the future.
It was the hardest thing Adriano had ever done—to not ask Nyra how her sister was faring. Or why she still looked so worried even after several chats with her sister.
And now this…
It had killed him to go away on this trip to Japan again for two weeks, but Nyra had reassured him that she was fine with Fabi and Bruno and Maria for company and that she would rather have him by her side when the babies came. So, he had reluctantly made the trip a week ago.
“What did she make you promise?” he asked softly, dreading the answer.
“It’s about her twin,” Fabi said, after another prolonged silence that twisted his nerves into painful knots.
Adriano pressed his head to the wall in front of him. Of course, this had to be about Nadia. It was only her that Nyra would go against his wishes for. The one person, sometimes it seemed to him, that Nyra loved more than anyone in the world.
Definitely more than him. If she loved him at all, that was.
And he… he loved her with every breath in him . Enough to forgive her anything and everything if only she was safe.
“What about her twin, Fabi? You might as well tell me the whole story.”
“Will you promise not to be mad at Nyra? I mean, I helped her because I understand her pain.”
He sighed. Apparently now his wife had an army of allies. “I won’t be mad at my six-months-pregnant-with-twins wife,” he said, a humorless laugh punctuating each word. “Just tell me what happened.”
“Nadia left the rehab clinic. I think she ran away and she came to the villa. To see Nyra.”
His breath stuttered in his throat. “When?”
“Almost to the day after you left. And I can assure you that Nyra didn’t know. She was…shocked to say the least. She looks so much like Nyra, Adriano. Except for the pregnancy, I mean. No, except, around the eyes, actually. Nyra has kind eyes.”
“And?” Adriano prompted. Though he could imagine what had happened. Nyra must have told her twin that he would be out of the country. And it was the chance her volatile twin had been waiting for.
“After the shock, Nyra was crying and sobbing and hugging her sister,” Fabi continued. “And I thought this was good, you know. But then…”
Adriano bit his lower lip hard to stop himself from losing his temper with his sister.
Finally, Fabi spoke again. “Right away, she started talking about how Nyra should leave you. How cruel and ruthless you are. And how not only had you thrown Nyra away once, but had Nadia locked up because you wanted to isolate Nyra. She said you threatened her about talking to Nyra…” Fabi sounded both alarmed and horrified. “Her conspiracy theory against you went on and on. It scared me to hear all the stuff she said about you and Nyra, about how much she was urging her to leave you, to run away with her.”
It felt like his heart was now permanently lodged in his throat. He knew that Nyra would never do something as foolish as running away with her drug addict sister. But the thought of her in pain at what her sister had become…pricked him sharply, as if it were his own.
“What happened today, how did she…fall?”
“Nyra told Nadia she would meet her at this café. And she asked me to come along. When we arrived, Nadia started arguing with her immediately. Demanding that she give her the cash she asked for if she was going to ditch Nadia anyway. Then she saw that Nyra had alerted Bruno. Nyra was holding her hands, begging her to go back to the clinic, that it was the drugs making her talk like this. Nadia jerked away so fast that Nyra fell and hit her head on the footpath. She lost consciousness for like two minutes. And in the scuffle, Nadia ran away.”
“And she’s okay now? You aren’t lying to me?”
“No, Adriano. She’s fine but she won’t stop crying these…silent tears. She…needs you here.”
Adriano told his sister that she had indeed become very wise and that, yes, he would be on his private jet in a half hour. Only when Fabi hung up and he reached the privacy of his suite did he lean back against the door, nearly sliding to the floor on shaking knees.
She was fine , he told himself over and over again.
He needed to be strong because she needed him. Whatever else he might be feeling now—anger, fear and this…knee-buckling love for her—they were all his to bear and manage.
His wife and her well-being would always come first.
* * *
Nyra was lying on the comfortable chaise longue in Adriano’s study at the villa, watching boats lazily drift over Lake Como, with the background of pretty villages. The afternoon felt eternal from her unmoving spot.
Rain was pelting outside mercilessly, matching her gloomy mood.
She pulled Adriano’s leather jacket close around her shoulders, even though the last thing she felt was cold. All she wanted was to drown in the scent of him, and the leather jacket still had a whiff of him. She shifted restlessly. At her lower back, there was that persistent twinge, arrowing down to her pelvis.
It would be better to lie down in her bed, but she didn’t want to leave the cozy room with its large fireplace and books. Here, she felt surrounded by him.
For the millionth time, she picked up her phone, her finger hovering over his number. Cursing, she jerked away and switched the display off.
Anger at herself washed through her. What right did she have to call and inconvenience him when she hadn’t heeded his advice in the first place? He had told her, again and again, that Nadia would only distress her in her current condition. It was almost as if he’d known what would happen.
At least she’d stopped crying over her sister’s actions and stopped panicking about how much worse it could have been, if not for Fabi’s and Bruno’s prompt action.
As if sensing the fracture in her composure, the babies gave a swift kick, nearly up into her chest, making her gasp and laugh.
While she would always wonder about Nadia, she had enough sense now to see the new sister she had acquired. Just this morning, on an impulse, she had hugged Fabi, overwhelmed by affection for the younger woman. Who had burst into tears and admitted that she had been so terrified that she had called Adriano and confessed everything.
Now Nyra was waiting for her husband and the black temper he surely was going to be in. Not that she didn’t deserve it. God, she would bear it happily—make all the promises he demanded of her, if it meant he would hold her after giving her the tongue-lashing she deserved.
Rubbing a hand over her lower back, she put her feet on the ground and was about to shift her bottom when her nape prickled.
She turned so fast that she made herself dizzy. The reward, six foot three inches of masculinity, stood under the archway. Her heart rabbited in her chest and every inch of her longed to run across the study and throw herself at him, like she’d done once.
The only thing she would manage in reality, if she even got up to her feet now, was to waddle toward him. With his thick brows tying into a frown—his penetrating gaze sweeping over her, from her hair to her toes as if looking for proof of her misadventure—his posture told her not to dare something like that.
So she stayed there and simply looked at him to her heart’s content. Just seeing him here, under the same roof, was enough to lighten her grief just a little. And that’s what, she realized with a sudden flare of understanding, it meant to love him.
“I know you’re angry with me,” she finally said, tired of waiting for him to come to her. “And I will take any punishment you give me, but you should know that I did not lie to you at any point. Except after you left. Even that was omission rather than a lie.”
“That’s a concession you will make for yourself, then?” he said, his silky tone hiding something far more volatile.
“What point would it serve to worry you?” she said, hoping he could hear the truth in her words. “I didn’t know that she was coming, Adriano. She had three more months left at the clinic. I didn’t even dream that she was going to run away. All I told her was that you were going out of the country on a trip, and that too, because she asked me about you.” She rubbed at the stupid tears filling her eyes with the back of her hand. “She must have been planning it for a while, and I…didn’t even realize that she was using me. I know you’ll call me foolish for trusting her. I just wish…”
He came to her then, all brooding angles and volatile energy packed into that strong, powerful frame.
Before she could get to her feet, he knelt before her. Making her head swoon with both joy and a sudden flooding of grief.
Hand on her belly, Nyra spread her thighs apart so that they straddled his hips. She longed to kiss him, but her face was wet with tears and snot and sweat.
“Where did you hit your head?” he asked, a whiteness emerging around his lush mouth.
His words sounded like gravel, like they were coming from somewhere far, muffled by some great force on the way.
Nyra had the sudden realization that it was emotion that had changed the tenor of his voice. For a second, she considered laughing it off, but something about the feral look in his eyes arrested the impulse. She lifted her hand and pressed on the still-painful bump on the right side of her head.
“Bend your head,” he said.
Dutifully, Nyra did. Long fingers gently probed the edges of her bump, without causing more pain. “They said everything was okay with you? And the babies?” he said again in that far-off voice.
Nyra was hit with another swift realization. It wasn’t just any emotion that was choking him, it was fear. Fear that he might have lost her, or that she might have been hurt worse or that she might have been in pain.
Fresh tears—God, did she do anything other than cry these days—filled her eyes. “It was an accident. We were arguing…and she was angry with me. I told her I would bring cash so that we could get away and when she realized I had lied and asked Bruno to be present…” She studied her fingers, replaying the scene in her head one more time. “Neither did I take any risk. I realized immediately after she showed up that she needed to go back to the clinic. She was in bad shape, Adriano. All I wanted was to send her back so that she could get help. The only action I could have taken, in your absence, was to call security on her when she first showed up at the villa, and I couldn’t. I just couldn’t.”
“I’m not going to scold you, Nyra,” he said, his own voice cracking.
It only made her cry harder. “She’s my sister and she hates me now and she thinks I’ve betrayed her and…”
Finally, he took her hands in his and raised them to his mouth. “I am sorry that she hurt you like this. I’m sorry that I cannot change this for you.” His throat moved up and down in a hard swallow. When he looked up, his eyes were bleak. “Fabi said she urged you to run away with her? That she said I threatened her and that I intended to separate you two all along… I interfered, yes, Nyra. I only did it because I knew how much you wanted to talk to her. All I told her was that the sooner she got better, the sooner she would get to see you. That just speaking to her regularly would cheer you up. She asked to come here without finishing the rehab and I said no. That in your current condition, it was not good for you or her. I never intended to keep her away from you forever, Nyra. Never.”
He raised such anguished eyes to her that Nyra’s tears stopped. In the face of his pain, hers felt like nothing.
She quickly wiped her hands over her cheeks.
“Of course, I know you didn’t threaten her. She is very sick, Adriano. You tried to tell me that and I didn’t listen. She is not the sister I knew as a child. Nadia was bright, rational, kind. The woman who came to see me is someone else. You cannot think for one second that I believed any of that?”
“When Fabi told me what happened,” he said, “I couldn’t breathe. All I could think of was you, Nyra, and the babies and…us. I realized how foolish it was that I didn’t tell you.”
Her heart stuttered in her chest. “What? What didn’t you tell me?”
“How much I adore you, my sweet wife. How much I love you. How much…” Again he took her hands in his and kissed her knuckles gently. “You are my world, my stars, my sun, my entire universe, Nyra. You and these babies and our family… I cannot imagine my life without you. And I feared that I would not know how to love you. That I would not deserve your generous…”
She pressed her palm to his mouth. “There is no deserving in love, Adriano. That’s what you have taught me. Even after I came back to you, even after I made my vow to you, I still kept thinking that I had to earn your love. A place in your heart. But it doesn’t work like that, does it? Even without admitting it to yourself or saying it to me, you have loved me, in the way you know, from the beginning. I just didn’t see it because, like you, I didn’t know it. And seeing Nadia again, in the condition she is in, I realized how foolish my fears were. I realized how stupid it was to pass even a single day without telling you how much I adore you. I loved you from that first minute when I leaned toward you and breathed in your scent, Adriano. You are the storm and the shelter for me.”
He jumped onto the chase longue while Nyra giggled, pulled her into his lap and pressed fervent kisses over her face and her jaw and her temple and her neck. His arms were tied around her and his breath came in rough pants.
“You want to know what your punishment is, wife?”
“What?” she whispered, drowning in the scent and feel of him.
“Since you have shaved ten years off my life, I will not leave your side for a moment for the next two months.”
“Oh, really? Because sitting on my ass all day is boring.”
He laughed then, and with wonder in her heart, Nyra traced the lines that laughter drew around his mouth. With love shining in his eyes, he was even more gorgeous. “It’s punishment, bella . You’re supposed to not like it.”
She shrugged. “You could teach me about the finance world and I could teach you how to paint. And together, we could learn how to knit some booties for the babies.”
He groaned and caught her mouth for a fast, hard, breath-stealing kiss. “I was hoping we could front load all the good stuff before they get here.”
Nyra laughed and stole another kiss right back, her heart jumping with joy. “I love you, Adriano.”
“Say it again,” he demanded.
And she did, over and over again, while he paid the tithe for it in kisses and languid caresses that turned the gloomy rainy afternoon into something altogether hot and bright.