Chapter 6
Chapter Six
FIERO WAS NOWHERE TO be seen the next morning.
Knowing he was in the room just beyond the wall of her bedroom meant Elodie tossed and turned all night.
It had been tempting to hole up in her room the next day, to avoid the need to see him, but that would be childish – not to mention pointless.
This was his home, she couldn’t hide from him forever.
And deep down, she knew she didn’t really want to.
Dressing carefully, brushing her hair until it shone and putting on enough makeup to look like her normal self – to hide the fact she’d barely slept – she finally went downstairs, keeping a watchful eye out for Fiero as she went.
Except he wasn’t there! ‘At work’, the housekeeper informed her with a smile, before going back to the business of dusting the skirting boards.
A rush of relief filled her, and she kept herself occupied with Jack, chatting to the nanny, trying not to think about Fiero even though – in his house – he was everywhere she looked.
She felt his presence without wanting to, and she hated how much he filled her mind, how often she thought of him and the anguished look on his face whenever he spoke of the years he’d missed out on with their son.
Once Jack was settled into bed, Elodie had a light supper – some grapes and cheese – then took a mineral water onto the terrace. An infinity pool disappeared over the edge, towards Rome.
She sat at the edge of the water, dangling her lower legs in, her skirt bunched around her thighs. It was here that Fiero found her, when he arrived home just before eight.
He was still wearing a suit, and as she lifted her face to his, her heart kerthunked painfully in her chest at the sight of him – so handsome, so strong, as though he’d been cast from marble and granite.
“I’m sorry I missed Jack.” He strode across the terrace, coming to stand beside her, his hands on his hips, eyes fixed on the ancient city. It was bathed in pinks and oranges now, glowing as the sun dipped down beyond the horizon.
“He went to bed early.” Her words were soft; she cleared her throat and forced a tight smile. “We had a big day.”
She felt the intensity of his gaze. “You should still be taking it easy.”
Her heart rolled through her. Concern? She hadn’t expected that. She lifted her eyes to his face but saw nothing there, just a mask of cool disdain. It wasn’t concern then, so much as a repetition of what the doctors had said; a faithfulness to the rules that had been laid down.
“I had a call with Tokyo,” he explained abruptly, rubbing his palm against the back of his neck, his long fingers massaging the flesh there. She couldn’t watch him, it felt too personal, and yet she couldn’t look away. Heat spread through her veins like bubbling lava.
He crouched down then, his expression taut, his features a mask of control. “You put my name down at the hospital, when you were pregnant with Jack.”
“When I delivered him,” she nodded.
“Why?”
She turned away then, looking out over Rome. “There was no one else.”
Breath hissed from beneath his teeth and her eyes jerked to him again.
“If anything happened to me, I needed to know he’d be looked after.”
His eyes pinned her to the spot and saw right inside her heart. “But only if something happened to you. Only as a last resort.”
She bit down on her lip. “I’ve explained that. I can’t keep saying it. You might not agree with my decision but surely you can at least understand why—,”
He stood up then, pacing across the terrace, his back to her, his spine stiff.
“I do.” The words were quiet, so she had to strain to hear them.
He whipped round to face her, his eyes showing his torment.
“I understand that you thought you were doing the good and noble thing. But you weren’t.
You were jealous of my wife, and angry at me.
You thought I’d cheated on Alison with you and you didn’t think I deserved to know about him. ”
“No.” Her eyes were haunted. “I was angry but I would never have kept your child from you for that reason. I was thinking of her, of your wife, and how little she deserved to have a stick of dynamite thrown into her life.” She remembered the way she’d felt then so vividly, it was like a dream from which there was no escape.
“I was thinking of how complicated our baby’s life would be, how layered with arguments and unpleasantness from birth.
I was thinking of the impossibility of it all, and determined that he wouldn’t become a pawn, or an object of hatred and resentment. ”
He didn’t speak.
“Surely you can see why I thought that would be the case?” She implored him. “It wasn’t like I thought you or your wife would welcome him with open arms. Nor me. What if you or she tried to…” she looked away, the words difficult to form.
“What, Elodie?” He insisted, and when she lifted her gaze back to him, he had his hands on his hips, his face locked in an expression that was unforgiving and furious.
“You were married, wealthy, prominent in the business community. I was a nobody, on my own in a foreign country. I couldn’t afford to fight you for him.”
“The day in the hospital, you implied that you could.”
Danger rushed through her but having such a monumental lie between them, she needed to be completely honest now.
“I have some money, but not enough. As you said, you’d hire ten lawyers for every one of mine.
I was alone, pregnant, hormonal and terrified, yes, okay? I was terrified of what would happen.”
“So you took the easy path and kept me from him.” The words were thrown at her, harsh and searing.
“The easy path? Do you think for one second any of this has been easy for me? Raising a little boy on my own, looking at him and seeing you, carrying the guilt of my decision every day,” her voice cracked.
“Whenever I see other families, dads with their babies, I would think of you, imagine you and him, and it felt as though my heart had been torn into pieces. Do you think I didn’t realise the importance of what I was doing?
Separating you from him?” She shook her head angrily.
“But so far as I knew you were married, and there was no easy way to ignore that. I couldn’t see what our life would be like – his and mine – I didn’t know he’d be welcomed, and there was a part of me that felt it was better for him to be a secret than to be unwanted. ”
“He is my son,” he shouted, and then tilted his head back, staring at the sky, his chest moving with the force of his breathing. “I would always have wanted him.”
“I know that now.”
“You would have known it then, if you’d put aside your fears and come to speak to me.”
A tiny sob escaped her because he was right. But how could she have known he would feel like this? Everything she knew about him to that point made it impossible to believe he would act in her best interests – or those of their son.
He shook his head, his expression like an iron mask. “There is no sense discussing it. Neither of us can change the past, even if we wanted to.”
“No,” she agreed with him there. Her voice grew soft, cautious. “But you can’t keep banging me over the head with it, either, Fiero.”
At the use of his name, they both shifted a little. It was such a distinctive name, the sounds so familiar to her, names she had cried into the air on that night they spent together. “If this is going to work, you have to let it go. You have to accept what I did, and who I am.”
His eyes narrowed.
“We made a child together. A beautiful, intelligent little boy, and you’re in his life now, regardless of the decisions I made then.”
“But if you hadn’t been hit by a van, Elodie?”
She nodded jerkily, surprised by the rush of fear that assaulted her. “I know.”
“You don’t know.” He moved back towards her, crouching down at her eye level once more, so she could see the torment in his features.
“All I can think about is ‘what if’. What if you hadn’t been hit by the van?
What if you were taken to a different hospital?
What if you had died and our son was sent somewhere with someone else, and I never knew about him.
You say it is in the past but the decision you made will haunt me for the rest of my life. ”
Stricken, she dropped her head, but his fingers caught her chin, lifting her face, forcing her to meet his gaze. “You cannot keep hiding from this. You think you can tell me you are sorry, that you can apologise and I will forgive you. I can’t. Not now, perhaps not ever. Our son deserved better.”
Tears sparkled on her lashes. “Please don’t say this. All I have done has been for Jack…”
“In some ways, perhaps. But you cut me out of his life, and nothing makes up for that. I’m not beating you over the head. I have no interest in that. My anger isn’t a vindictive punishment, it’s not petty revenge. It’s how I feel every time I look at him and see what I’ve missed out on.”
She nodded, her eyes sparkling with unwanted tears.
“You chose to come here, to my home, to live with me…”
“To stay with Jack,” she reminded him.
“Yes. But that means me as well, and as part of that you get a front row seat to how I feel, what I think about you, to how your decision has affected me. If that makes you uncomfortable, then you can leave, anytime.”
Her throat was raw. “You know I can’t do that.”
“So put up with this. Put up with the fact that I am going to take time to deal with your duplicity, to reconcile the woman I thought you were with the decisions you made, and the consequences of those decisions. My intention is not to hurt you, Elodie.” His words cut her deep though, exposing her heart and her soul.
“But hurting you may well be an unavoidable by-product of how I come to terms with what you did. I can’t help that. ”
A small sob strangled in her throat. “And it makes you feel better? To see me like this?”
“No.” A raw, guttural admission. “Nothing will.”