Chapter 10 Where His Name Meant Nothing
YSABEL
Leon doesn't move from the gate. He just stands there, waiting, his sleeves rolled tight against his forearms, dust already settling on his polished shoes. The morning sun catches the gray beneath his eyes, the tension in his jaw. He looks like a man who hasn't slept properly in days.
Good, I think. Then I feel guilty for thinking it. Then I feel angry at myself for feeling guilty.
"Ysabel." His voice carries across the yard, not loud, just clear. "I know you asked for time. I know you said not to follow right away."
"It's only been a few days, Leon."
"I know." He doesn't make excuses. Doesn't say it felt longer, doesn't claim he couldn't wait. He just stands there, his hands still at his sides, not reaching for the gate latch. "I'm not here to demand anything. I just needed to see you. To talk, if you'll let me."
The kitchen door opens behind me. My father steps out onto the porch, coffee cup in hand, and takes in the scene with the particular stillness of a man who has spent his life reading situations before speaking.
"Ysabel," he says quietly. "Everything all right?"
"I don't know yet."
My father looks at Leon, standing at the gate like a supplicant, and something moves across his face that I can't quite read. Not anger, not welcome. Something more like assessment.
"You want me to tell him to leave?" he asks.
I consider it. I could say yes, and my father would walk down to that gate and tell the Don of Tenuta Rosciano to get back in his car and drive away.
Leon would go, I'm certain of that. He wouldn't force his way onto property that isn't his, wouldn't make a scene or demand his rights as my husband. That's not who he is.
But sending him away won't solve anything. It will just delay the conversation I've been dreading, the one I know I have to have eventually.
"No," I say. "I'll talk to him."
My father nods once. "I'll be in the kitchen if you need me."
He goes back inside, and I'm left standing in the yard with my husband waiting at the gate. I take a breath, then another, and walk toward him.
He watches me approach, his expression careful, guarded in a way I'm not used to seeing. Leon has always been confident, certain of his place in the world. But here, at my parents' gate, he looks like a man who knows he has no ground to stand on.
I stop a few feet from the fence, close enough to talk without raising my voice but far enough to keep the barrier between us.
"You shouldn't have come," I say.
"Probably not." He doesn't argue, doesn't defend himself. "But I couldn't stay away any longer. I tried. That doesn't mean you owe me a conversation now. I was afraid that if I kept doing nothing, you'd think I was willing to let you go without trying."
"Maybe I wouldn't have been."
"Then you can tell me that now. You can tell me to leave and I'll go. But I had to at least try, Ysabel. I had to at least come here and ask."
I cross my arms over my chest, a barrier of my own. "Ask what?"
"If there's any chance. Any possibility that we can fix this."
"You think coming here is going to fix two years of being invisible?"
He flinches at that, a small movement that he can't quite hide.
"No. I know it won't. But I don't know what else to do.
I don't know how to make you understand that I see it now, all of it, everything I did wrong.
And I don't know how to prove that I can be different unless you give me the chance to try. "
"You've had chances, Leon. Every day for two years, you've had chances."
"I know."
"Do you? Because from where I was standing, it looked like you kept choosing the easy path. Choosing not to make waves. Choosing your mother's peace over my dignity."
"I know." His voice cracks slightly on the second word. "I know I did that. And I can't undo it. I can't go back and stand up for you all the times I should have. I can't make the last two years different. All I can do is be different now, if you'll let me."
I want to believe him. Some part of me, the part that still loves him despite everything, wants to open this gate and fall into his arms and pretend that everything can go back to the way it was.
But I know better now. I know that love isn't enough by itself, that promises mean nothing without action, that the man who couldn't defend me in public isn't going to transform overnight just because I signed separation papers.
I stand there for a long moment, neither of us speaking. Then I reach for the gate latch.
"One conversation," I say. "That's all I'm agreeing to right now."
I open the gate and step aside. Leon walks through, careful not to brush against me as he passes. I lead him to the bench under the old olive tree just inside the fence, beside the path. We sit at opposite ends, the worn wood warm from the morning sun.
"You remember when I showed you my bakeshop plans?" I ask. The question surprises me. I hadn't planned to start there.
Leon looks at me. "At the desk in our bedroom. You had the folder open on your laptop."
"You remember what you said?"
He's quiet for a moment. "I said we could talk about it after the reception. After things settled down."
"Before that. You said I didn't need to work."
His jaw tightens. "I remember."
"Do you understand why that hurt?"
"I think I'm starting to."
"I wasn't asking for money, Leon. I wasn't asking you to fund anything or set me up in business.
I was showing you something I'd been building for years, something that was mine, and you told me I didn't need it.
" I pull at a loose thread on my sleeve.
"Like wanting something of my own was a problem to be solved instead of a dream to be supported. "
"I should have listened. I should have asked what you wanted to sell, what the plan was, why it mattered to you."
"The menu was on the screen, Leon. You were standing right behind me."
He closes his eyes briefly. "Almond crescents. Orange cakes. I remember the menu."
"You remember."
"I remember all of it. I just didn't understand what it meant to you. I thought..." He stops, shakes his head. "I thought if you had everything you needed, you wouldn't need anything else. I didn't realize that having everything isn't the same as building something yourself."
"No. It's not."
We sit in silence. A breeze moves through the olive branches above us, dappling the ground with shifting light. I can feel him beside me, the familiar warmth of his presence, and I hate how much I still want to lean into it.
"I could have made those biscuits for real customers," I say quietly. "I could have had something that was mine, that I built with my own hands. I had those plans sitting on my laptop for years. When you finally saw them, I let myself think we might actually talk about them."
"I know."
"Later never came."
"I know that too." He turns toward me slightly, not reaching for me but present, attentive in a way he wasn't then. "What would you have called it? The shop?"
"I never decided. I kept thinking I'd figure it out when it was real.
" I look at him, at the tired lines around his eyes, at the way he's leaning toward me like he's afraid I'll disappear if he blinks.
"It was never going to be real, was it? Not while I was living in your mother's house, trying to become someone she could tolerate. "
"It could be real now."
"Maybe. But not because of you. Because of me. Because I decide it's what I want."
"I understand." He doesn't offer money or help or solutions. He just sits there, accepting what I've said. "I should have understood a long time ago."
"There's something you should know," Leon says. "About why I didn't make it home for our anniversary."
"Your booking was canceled. You told me."
"It was canceled by my mother."
I stare at him. "What?"
"I talked to Sofia, our travel coordinator. My mother called her the morning before I was supposed to fly back and told her I had approved an extension. That I wanted to stay another day for meetings. Sofia canceled my booking because my mother told her to, using my name."
The words hit me like cold water. Vera canceled his booking.
Vera made sure he couldn't get home. The booking that mysteriously disappeared, the desperate scramble for alternatives, the empty table.
She knew I was waiting. This was the woman who has been trying to push me out since the day I married her son.
"She admitted it?"
"She said she was creating an opportunity for me to see clearly." Leon's voice is bitter. "She said one extra evening shouldn't end a marriage, and if you were fragile enough to leave over a minor delay, that proved you weren't suited to this life."
I feel sick, and not from the pregnancy. "She called what she did to us a minor delay?"
"She tried to dismiss it. I confronted her. I told her she doesn't speak for me anymore, doesn't arrange anything involving my marriage, doesn't touch my travel bookings or position Nadia or anyone else as my partner."
"Is she still at the estate?"
He hesitates. "Yes."
"So you told her off and then let her stay in your house."
"Yes. I won't pretend I've put everything right at home. I told her what she would no longer do, but saying it to her isn't the same as making it clear to everyone else."
I shake my head, a harsh sound escaping my throat that might be a laugh.
"That's exactly the problem, Leon. You always need to figure out what to do next.
You always need time to think, to plan, to find the path that causes the least disruption.
And while you're figuring things out, I'm the one who pays the price. "
"I know."
"Stop saying that. Stop saying you know as if it changes anything."
"What do you want me to say?"
"I want you to tell me why. Why you let her do this for two years. Why you stood next to Nadia on television and let that reporter assume you were together without saying a single word about having a wife. Why I spent our entire marriage feeling like a secret you were ashamed of."