Page 57 of Cinderella's Fling with the Off-Limits Billionaire

Ronaldo shook his head. “But I didn’t tell him, so that is no defense.”

“I couldn’t bear for you to know,” Patrizia continued. “The thing is, from the moment you came home with us, you were mine. All mine. There have been times when I’ve convinced myself that you really were born to me. I told you that I do not love you differently, Leo. Not from your brother and sister. But the truth is, I love you, in some ways, so much more, because you were alone in the world. All alone. Without me, there was no one to protect you, to care for you. Being able to give that to you has been the greatest privilege of my life.”

Her voice cracked and Leandro’s eyes stung. He blinked quickly.

“Loving you was never a choice,” she said gently. “I just felt it, in here.” She pressed her fingers to her chest. “And I knew that if we told you the truth, you might not understand. You might doubt that love, doubt your place with us. I couldn’t risk it. I am so sorry that you found out as you did. I can imagine the shock you felt. But please understand, we didn’t lie to you to hurt you, it was simply because in my heart, you are completely and utterly our son.”

They’d said something like that, the night he’d confronted them, but this was different. It felt different. Time had shifted something inside of him, or maybe it was space. Maybe it was New York. Maybe it was Skye and Harper. Whatever the cause, he felt differently now than he had when he’d first seen that document.

“Who were my parents?” He asked, the question seeming somehow important and irrelevant. Whoever they were, they’d given him up. Why should he care about them?

“We did not know your mother, but your father was a distant relation of your father’s.”

Leandro sat up straighter. “He was?”

“And a friend from childhood,” Ronaldo agreed. “But he went off the rails. Your mother was an addict. She got clean long enough to carry you to term, and then overdosed when you were three days old. Your father did his best to raise you for a time, but he was also, I am sorry to say it, a junkie. I didn’t know him by then. The first I heard his name, in many years, was when he died and the hospital called. I was next of kin on his medical records.”

Leandro’s eyes widened. “Why you?”

“I wondered if it was for cynical reasons, like he knew I could afford his hospital bills,” Ronaldo said. “But in fact, as I reflected on our friendship, I wondered if I was not the only person he’d ever had in his life, who’d really cared about him.”

Leandro swore softly.

Patrizia leaned into Ronaldo, her eyes glazed over with the force of her memories. “You were an orphan, Leo, just one month old. You were alone in the world, and from the moment your father told me about you, I knew I would move heaven and earth to bring you here and make you safe.”

Leandro nodded; his throat thick with emotion.

“It was all so sad,” she continued. “And you were so happy with us. You are one of us, Leo. You always have been, you always will be. I know in my heart that you are mine, and God knows, I am yours. I would die for you. I would do anything for you. Just like Max and Emme. You have to believe me. You have to believe—,” But Patrizia was becoming agitated, tears streaming down her cheeks and Leo stood, pained to see his mother hurting. To know that he’d run away and caused her this distress. Instead of staying and listening to her back then, he’d gone off to lick his wounds, and he’d put her through weeks of not knowing if he’d ever forgive her.

“Stop,” he said firmly, going to crouch in front of her. “Please, do not keep speaking.” He laid his hands on her hands, now clasped near her knees. “I understand.”

She bit into her lower lip. “I am sorry.”

He shook his head. “Don’t apologise.”

“I have to. I need you to know?—,”

“I do know. You love me. I am yours. You are my mother. You are my father. You loved me when you didn’t have to, and not once have I doubted that” he said, remembering Skye’s words to him in New York.

“Do you mean it?” Ronaldo asked.

“I don’t say things I don’t mean.” Leandro stood, hands on hips. “As far as I am concerned, we need never speak of this again.”

Patrizia’s eyes closed. “And Emme?”

“She doesn’t know?”

“Of course not.”

“Then we’ll tell her, but let’s do it together. It’s the only way she’ll understand that it doesn’t change anything.”

Ronaldo stood, putting a hand on Leandro’s arm. “It changes nothing, my boy. Nothing.” And then he wrapped him in a huge hug, holding him so tight Leandro almost couldn’t breathe.

Leandro read the invitation with a strange feeling in his gut. Two weeks after Skye had ended things with him, here was something he couldn’t refuse: a gala fundraiser being thrown by a very dear family friend, Antonio’s brother Carlo. In Manhattan, of all places. The ball would be attended by the world’s elite, and the cause was certainly one Leandro sympathized with: rehabilitation for victims of car accidents and support for family members left behind, in the case of fatalities. With Carlo having lost his own brother Antonio in a way that had scarred Max emotionally for life, Leandro and all of the Valentinos were intimately familiar with Carlo’s ongoing work in this area.

Leandro had to go.

The whole family would.

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