Page 48 of Cinderella's Fling with the Off-Limits Billionaire

“Oh my God.” Skye pressed a hand to her mouth. He should have cancelled tonight. He should have told her he was busy, working, made up an excuse. He didn’t want to have to explain the cut on his cheek from his brother’s wedding ring, nor the bruise beneath his eye.

“I’m fine.”

“Were you mugged?”

She thought he might smile at that, but instead, he kept staring straight ahead, then took another sip of scotch. “No.”

Frustration zipped through her, and sympathy too. His pain was palpable. Not physical pain, but wounds that he’d been carrying since she’d first met him. Instead of peppering him with questions she knew he wouldn’t answer, she moved to the fridge and pressed the button for ice, filling a cup with it before tipping it into a clean tea towel. She formed a makeshift icepack and carried it around to Leandro, standing between his legs as she applied it gently to his cheek.

His jaw tightened. “I’m fine.”

“You said that already.”

“And it’s true.”

Her eyes blinked to his. “You’re not fine.”

“I’m not going to die from a punch to the face.”

“That’s not what I mean.” She pressed her flat palm to the middle of his chest. “You’re not fine in here,” she murmured, then lifted her hand to the side of his face. “Or in here. You’ve been carrying around the weight of the whole world since the night we met.”

A muscle throbbed at the base of his jaw. His eyes met hers. The world stopped spinning. Her lungs stopped working. She stared at him, silently telling him she was here, that she would listen if he wanted to talk.

He must have heard her, because a moment later, he spoke, and his voice was a deep, soulful husk, and his eyes couldn’t break their lock to hers.

“About a week before I met you, I found out I was adopted.”

Skye was very, very still. He was opening up to her, and whatever reaction she had to this, she knew that by being overt, she might silence him again. She didn’t want him to clam up, so she waited, just keeping the ice pack pressed to his cheek.

“It was an accident. I needed some family documents from our lawyers—to do with Max’s wedding, and some trusts we were restructuring for him and Andie.” His voice was robotic now, and his eyes had a faraway look in them, as though he was seeing the events replay in his mind’s eye. “They sent over the files but something else was included. My adoption certificate.” He said the last three words so softly she almost didn’t hear, but then his eyes cleared, and he was looking right at her, burning her with the intensity in his gaze. “I was raised a Valentino. It’s who I have been taught to be. My whole identity is bound up in this family, in my siblings, my work. It never occurred to me that I wouldn’t be a part of our family businesses, that this legacy wasn’t entirely mine. But it’s not. None of my life is real, it’s all a lie. My parents lied to me, Skye.”

Her heart was shattering now. She placed the ice pack on the bench behind her and moved deeper into the triangle of his legs, wrapping her arms around his waist and hugging him tight, keeping her head in the crook of his shoulder and neck.

“They are not my parents, my brother is not my brother, my sister is not my sister. And they don’t know,” he groaned. “I have to tell them, but I can’t yet. I can’t. I can’t even face my parents. I am so angry with them for keeping this from me…”

“I suppose they consider you to be their child.”

“Yes, but they should have been honest with me. I was not born to them. I’m not biologically related.”

Skye sighed, stroking his back, wishing she could take away this hurt.

“And if I hadn’t been sent those papers, I doubt they would ever have told me the truth.”

Skye’s eyes shuttered. “Oh, Leo,” she murmured, then pulled back just enough to place a kiss on his lips, gentle, soft, reassuring.

“I have no idea who I am,” he said with a shake of his head.

“You’re the same person you’ve always been.”

“No, I’m not. So much of my identity came from being a Valentino?—,”

“You are a Valentino.”

“I am not. It’s all a lie.”

“But they raised you. They chose to love you.”

“I’m not saying that’s not true. But they should have been honest with me. This did not need to be a secret. I feel as though every touchstone I considered stable has been shifted away from me. I don’t know who I am anymore,” he repeated, and she heard it this time. She really heard it. The desperation that a man like Leandro must feel. His pride, his sense of identity. She hugged him hard, trying to find words that might help him.

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