Chapter 0022
Chapter 0022
Aurora had vanished from the house, too, though I couldn’t be sure where she’d gone. I trusted her enough that I didn’t keep tabs on her whereabouts. Carlo, I was sure, did.
“Vas?”
Speak of the devil. My aforementioned second in command poked his head through my opened door as I drained my second mug of coffee.
“Come in.” I slid the mug to the corner of the desk and reclined in my too–large desk chair. My father’s, technically, and I’d never bothered to replace it. Replace any of it. None of it was me, but I’d never bothered to make any of it … mine.
Like somehow, even after all these years, I still hoped this was temporary.
“We’ve got more on the man you wanted investigated.” Carlo slipped into the chair in front of my desk. He set a slim file on the vast wooden space between us.
“Oh?” My fingers slid the file across the desk towards me. “There’s more?”
“Well …” Carlo grimaced. “You’re not gonna like it.”
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I opened the file anyway. Expecting dark secrets. Skeletons tucked into closets. Robbery, betrayal, murder, mayhem—
The first photo froze my fingers.
It was Marco … and a woman who was not Layla. He leaned in, lips against her cheek. Intimate. Flirtatious. And the way her eyes had fluttered closed–that wasn’t the end of their interactions.
The next photo was much of the same, this at a bar.
The third was another woman, at the hospital again. “Is this a patient?”
“Yes.” Carlo grimaced. “And she’s not the first. Or the last.”
“Disgusting.” I shoved the photo aside, only to find a stack more beneath. Marco was a complete playboy, it seemed. Certainly, he had a reputation as a brilliant doctor–among the best, if his records were anything to go by.
But in reality, he was a man with no morals.
“These are from the same night!” I protested, shoving two photos in front of Carlo, each stamped with the date and time. Hours apart.
My second merely nodded. No words, I supposed, were needed, when the evidence was laid out in
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Chapter 0022
front of me. And this was the man Layla had chosen to father her child?
No, he could never be what she wanted. What she
deserved.
“Thank you, Carlo,” I murmured, closing the file. I couldn’t look at those pictures anymore.
“Course. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.”
I shrugged. “It doesn’t matter.”
But it did. And after Carlo took his leave of my office, I sat in my chair for far too long, staring at that closed file.
Even when I tucked it away, moved on to work and business–family matters–those photos haunted me. For the rest of the day, the truth haunted me.
Eight years ago, I’d left Layla because I wanted her to have a good life. I’d given up everything to give her a chance. And somehow, she’d wound up in the clutches of another man who’d only find new ways to tear her apart.
No, she needed to know about this.
So that evening, after I’d finished with work for the day, after I’d watched her Mercedes pull back into the driveway, I unearthed the file from my desk and strode from the office. Determined. I couldn’t control what she did, but at the very least, I could
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Chapter 0022
present her with the truth.
From there, she could make a clear–headed decision. I hoped.
Layla typically passed her evenings before dinner in my courtyard garden. But when I slipped through the side door into the small green space, it wasn’t Layla I found but Eli.
The little boy sat cross–legged in the center of the courtyard, his back to me. I almost turned away, left him, but the book in his lap caught my eye. Pulled me forward rather than back.
It was a sketchbook.
I inched forward on silent feet, intrigued. The scene that had unfolded from the young boy’s hands was impressively detailed; he’d captured the lighting, the shadows, the nuances of the flowers with breathtaking precision.
“That’s quite good,” I found myself saying before realizing I’d planned to speak.
Eli’s shoulders stiffened, and his pencil ceased on the page, but he didn’t turn.
“You must like to draw,” I said, softening my voice as I sidled up beside him. “Could I see more?”
The boy didn’t turn, didn’t speak, didn’t so much as budge. Like he was refusing to engage.
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Chapter 0022
“Do you take classes?” I pressed. “Would you like to?”
Still, nothing. Like he was trying to ignore my presence–my existence. My chest clenched painfully. Because I’d hurt his mother.
I crouched down beside him, but still he didn’t turn. Refused to acknowledge me. Maybe that’s why my next words escaped–harsh and a little bitter. “Do you know your father is a bastard?”
Eli finally, finally, turned to look up at me, and I nearly recoiled from the scorn in his gaze. “Of course I know.”
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