Chapter 0021
Chapter 0021
Layla
Just like that, this strange woman had read beneath my mask like she’d torn down his. In mere minutes, this woman–who I’d spent nearly eight years hating, blaming for my heartache–had seen through my lies to the real me.
You still love him.
Was I so obvious to everyone around me? Was it obvious to him, too?
I spun to face her. “You know nothing—”
She held up a hand to stop me–from speaking or from coming after her? “When someone’s broken your heart like that, how could you not?”
The gentleness in her voice, as much as the words, halted my argument in its tracks. Froze my feet before I could step towards her. My breath puffed from my nose like an angry bull.
She was right. For someone to have crushed a heart to oblivion, they must first have held it. Been given it to hold. Been trusted with such a fragile organ, such a critical part of existence.
I’d given him my whole heart.
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And he’d pulverized it.
“I still love him,” I whispered, letting this strange, beautiful woman into my confidence. This woman who’d marched into my life and stolen away the man I’d once loved. Still loved.
I set my shoulders back against the door and let all the breath from my lungs in a long, slow stream through my nose. “I’ll always love him.”
“I know,” Aurora murmured. And then she slid a step closer, nearly eliminating the distance between us, so her next words whispered against my cheek. “But I’d recommend keeping the child hidden.”
The meaning behind those words slammed into me like a physical force. She knew! She knew the identity of Eli’s father. My pulse felt fluttery, panicked, my skin cold and warm all at once.
This woman, this stranger, this once–enemy, now owned such a critical secret. She held my whole world—everything I cared about–in the palm of her hand.
What could she do with such power?
What could she make me do? The answer was obvious: anything. She could make me do anything. With such a secret, she owned me.
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Chapter 0021
Aurora smiled, but it wasn’t cruel or devious. Not like the smile she’d given me that day beside the mantle when Vasco had asked me for a divorce. No, this was a soft, almost kind smile. “I wasn’t sure. But you don’t have to worry about me. I’ll help you.”
“Help me?” My brows pulled low in confusion, and my heart still beat too fast. “Why would you do that?”
She winked. “You could say keeping your son a secret benefits me.
))
“Benefit. …?” My brain wasn’t working right, under all the panic. “How could that possibly benefit you?”
Aurora’s smile faded, and her beautiful face pulled into hard lines of seriousness. Of determination. ” The family is in turmoil right now. Aldo’s place as Don isn’t secure.”
Oh. Oh.
Bile crawled up my throat at her meaning. He has no heir. “He needs a child. And you want to be the mother.”
She wanted to be the one to bear the child he so desperately needed to cement his place as Don.
“It’s always been my place, at his side.” A tendon
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flickered in her jaw, and the lines of her face hardened. “I don’t want your son to become an … obstacle,”
“I see.” I did. And in a way, it made me feel better, to know her motives. She wasn’t offering her help; she didn’t care about me.
But keeping Eli’s father a secret benefitted both of us. We had very different goals where Aldo was concerned, but in this, we shared a common
interest.
That, at least, secured her silence.
didn’t trust her, but I trusted her desire. This wasn’t something she’d woken up one morning and decided she wanted. She’d wanted this far longer than I’d known Aldo. Far longer that I could imagine.
“If Aldo realizes he’s the father…” Aurora let the words trail off. “I can only imagine what he’d do.”
My stomach churned sickeningly at the barely veiled suggestion. She’d keep my secrets–but she didn’t want me getting any ideas of my own.
“Don’t worry.” I turned back to the door, set my hand on the knob. I was done with this damned house. “You think I want my son caught up in this shit?”
But before I walked through that door, I threw her a
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Chapter 0021
parting glance over my shoulder. “Eli’s my only child, and I will never let anyone take him away. I’ll do whatever it takes to protect him.”
Aldo
I watched Layla’s car slide down the driveway from the window of my office. I hadn’t spoken to her this morning, but I knew she was on her way to another day at the hospital. The woman was nothing if not determined to be the good doctor she was meant to
- be.
God knew I couldn’t blame her.
