Page 38 of Italian Baby Shock

Yet more shock echoed through her. ‘What? All of it?’

‘Yes.’ He pushed himself away from the mantelpiece and turned to face her. ‘Don’t mistake me, little bird. I’m as selfish and self-serving as my parents. I tried to be good for them, to be the perfect son for them. I listened to my mother’s complaints and I obeyed my father’s every directive. I thought that if Iwas only good and obedient enough they’d finally stop arguing about me. But nothing I did made any difference, and for a long time I blamed myself for their deaths. They hadn’t made a will, because they couldn’t agree on the terms, at least that’s what my aunt told me before she died, and that’s when I realised the truth.

‘Nothing I did made any difference to them, because they didn’t care about me. Their arguments and grudges and petty slights were more important to them than providing for their child. So why should I care about them? Why should I blame myself for something that wasn’t my fault? They were gone, but I still had their toxic legacy to look after and that’s when I decided I was done looking after it.’

She didn’t have an answer to that, mainly because she could understand why he felt that way. Who wouldn’t? After they’d been treated the way he’d been treated?

‘But you changed your mind about that, didn’t you?’ she asked.

‘I did,’ he agreed. ‘I changed it the minute I saw Maya’s picture on your phone and I knew she was mine.’ His blue gaze gleamed suddenly. ‘I decided she would be my new start. My new beginning. A chance to create a different Donati legacy, a better legacy. She’s untouched by my history, by what my parents did to me, and I want her to stay untouched by it. I want her to grow up knowing what happiness is like, to put something better out in the world that isn’t just selfishness.’ He paused a moment. ‘I want her to grow up to be a better person than I am, a better Donati.’

The tightness in Lark’s chest wouldn’t ease. He saw himself in such a negative light, didn’t he? He called himself selfish, thought he wasn’t a good person, though she didn’t understand why. Then again, he’d grown up in the middle of a cold war, where the people who were supposed to protect him had beenmore interested in hurting each other. And they’d argued over him as if he was the problem, and he’d felt that way too. And she suspected that no matter what he’d told her about deciding he was done with blaming himself, a part of him still did. Why else would he keep seeing himself as selfish when everything he’d done so far was the opposite?

Well, however he felt, while she hated that he’d been forced into that position, she admired his resolution. Sometimes when she’d been younger, she’d often used to wonder what it would be like to just be allowed to be angry. To shout if you wanted to, cry if you wanted to. Not be told that your smile was the best thing about you and how great it was that you were always happy. How your positivity made the world a better place.

Then how your one bad mood could cause a depression spiral that ended with your mother not leaving her bed for days.

What would have happened if she’d been a little bit selfish herself?

But there was no point in thinking that. Her mother was gone and those kinds of thoughts were disloyal. She’d been in a terrible situation and she’d done her best with Lark, so who was Lark to criticise?

‘You’re not a bad person, Cesare,’ Lark said. ‘Why demonise yourself? It was your parents who had the behavioural issues, not you.’

‘I’m not demonising myself. I’m only accepting who I am. No one wins in a situation like that one and certainly not the child caught in the middle of it.’

‘You’re not selfish, though. Why would you think that?’

He lifted a shoulder. ‘Because I want what I want when I want it. I wanted revenge for what my parents did to me, so I put it in motion. And then when I realised I had a child, I wanted to make sure she was the new legacy I put out in the world. It’s notabout her, Lark. It’s about me and what I want. Don’t ever forget that.’

But there was something in that statement that just didn’t ring true, especially not after seeing him with Maya. And not after he’d knelt at her feet, the look on his face nothing but sincere as he told her she wasn’t alone.

‘You do care about her, though,’ she said. ‘You wanted me to come with her because she needed her mother and her happiness was important to you. And what you said to me—’

‘It’s the legacy, Lark,’ he corrected her gently. ‘That’s all I care about. Creating a new and improved dynasty, that’s all. Now.’ The flame in his eyes leapt. ‘I’m tired of talking about this. Why don’t we get to our wedding night?’

There wasn’t much distance between them and yet he felt suddenly as if any distance at all was far too much.

Nothing about his recitation of his terrible childhood should have been difficult, because it had been a very long time since he’d woken up in that hospital bed and his aunt had told him the truth about what happened.

Yet...he’d found himself tensing as he’d told Lark about it. Found that the fury he’d thought he’d buried, the fury that had consumed him as a teenager and that had no outlet because the people he was furious at were gone, was back. It simmered like a field of burning magma just under the earth’s crust, scalding, melting anything in its path.

He’d hated that anger. It reminded him of his parents, of his mother’s shrill rage and his father’s outraged roaring. Of standing in that airport as the two of them had yanked him back and forth, fighting over him as if he was a bone between two dogs. Of the feverish brightness in his mother’s bright eyes asshe’d poured him that orange juice, and the satisfaction in his father’s expression as he’d told Cesare that he was forbidding Bianca to see him.

No one could understand what had happened in their marriage to make the two of them hate each other like that. Cesare had read all about it in the media, the articles and the think pieces, the theories on why, but he knew, because he felt it himself.

The why was in the ferocity of his anger, an anger that had come from love.

Love was the issue. Love was the problem.

He’d loved his parents, yet they’d continually made him feel as if he was failing one or the other of them, and so that love had turned to rage. He hated them now and that hate was the same hate they’d turned on each other, which was why he had to be careful.

Anger could turn into toxicity so quickly, and he himself might have been consumed back when he was younger, if he hadn’t funnelled it into determination. A determination to not let his parents ruin his life. To not be scarred by it or harmed by it. To come out of it unmarked and strong and successful.

So that’s what he’d done. Yet his anger was still with him, still bubbling away under the surface. He’d thought he’d managed to get rid of it, but clearly he hadn’t, which meant he’d made a mistake somewhere along the line.

He’d let himself care; that was the issue. He’d let himself care about Lark, about what she thought of him, and now he was angry that he cared. So he’d thrown his own selfishness back in her face so she knew what kind of man he was. Yet she hadn’t flinched from him. She’d only looked at him levelly and told him not to demonise himself, that he wasn’t selfish and why would he think he was?

He didn’t like that and he didn’t like the way she was staring at him now, with an expression of sympathy and understanding. Looking at him as if he was still that hurt little boy all those years ago.

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