Chapter 39
Sebastian
Emma makes a strangled sound. I turn to make sure she’s okay. Though shock is evident in her eyes, she says nothing.
She rests a steadying hand on my arm.
That hand grounds me. Reminds me to breathe.
Reminds me of the man I want to be, not the boy I was at eighteen when my mom, on a rare visit, showed up at my penthouse in New York and drunkenly revealed that my asshole father might not actually be my father.
Or at least she suspected he wasn’t. Because timing.
And cheating. And all sorts of other bullshit.
“It’s just as likely to be Dario Mancini.
But don’t worry. You have amazing genes either way.
Famous actor, famous director, what does it matter?
Your father always suspected, but he doesn’t know for sure.
Because, really, there’s nothing to know.
Peter Blake was my husband, and no matter what, he’ll always be the one on your birth certificate. That’s what is important.”
Even though she laughed off her drunken revelations the next day, the poison had already been administered. I couldn’t rid the insidious toxin from my system. It seeped into everything. My memories. My view of the world.
My heart.
If what my mom had said was true, it meant I had no claim to the Blake family legacy. Or to my grandparents, whom I adored.
What was the truth, and what was a lie? It probably would have been better if I’d known for sure back then.
But I hadn’t. And if my mother was telling the truth, she didn’t really know either.
There was just enough ambiguity to make me try to bury the possibility as far as it could go. Back then, it was easier to swallow that poison, stuffing it down with drugs and alcohol and partying until I could barely remember my first name, let alone any angst about the truth of my last.
That was the year of unraveling. It ended in my car accident. And then rehab.
And through it all, I couldn’t stop wondering about Mancini, the one man I’d revered for years and always thought of as the father I wished I’d had. Was he just another asshole who cheated on his wife with his leading lady and either knowingly or unknowingly abandoned his kid?
No answer ever came. It was easier to pretend.
Eventually, I got my act together and doubled down on being the perfect Blake. If I could get an Oscar like my dad and grandparents, that would mean something. That would show that I was part of their family. That I had their talent. I deserved that legacy.
Except… now, with one photo, everything I tried to forget is in black and white.
And as I see the quiet concern in the director’s eyes, I suddenly know. I know it’s all true.
Dario Mancini is my father.
I’ve never been a Blake. I’ve tried to cling to that history, hold my grandparents’ world close.
I’m the holder of their things. The mansion.
The handkerchiefs. The Jag. I’m the holder of their memories.
Chats with my grandfather as he sipped whiskey in his study.
The way he called me “young man,” even when I was five, in that hearty, affectionate voice.
Watching my grandmother get ready in her dressing room before an event.
Her wicked laugh and wispy, delicate hugs.
I’m the holder of it all. But none of it was mine. I was never truly one of them.
Disorienting pain rocks me.
Emma’s hand squeezes my arm, as if reminding me she’s here. That I’m tethered to something.
“How long have you known?” Mancini asks.
“For ten years. But I didn’t know for sure. Not until now.”