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“Libby wanted to stay with Molly. Can you give her a day or two?” She drew back to smooth Sasha’s hair. “It’s not just you. She’s worried about Molly and upset we didn’t tell her about the baby.”
Rafael was vaguely aware of Gio ghosting past him and out the door, but he was wholly focused on the way Sasha’s face crumpled even as she nodded with acceptance.
His heart folded in on itself. Her agony was so tangibly his, it nearly destroyed him.
This is love, he thought. He wouldn’t feel her pain so acutely if she wasn’t in possession of his heart. He wanted to go to her and hold her, but she was clinging to Patricia. He understood that that was where she needed to express that particular pain, but it was more devastation than he could witness.
He stepped outside the room and closed the door, then leaned on the wall, trying to ease the fire in his chest with slow, even breaths.
It was hitting him, though, the magnitude of responsibility Sasha had shouldered at sixteen. He had dismissed her animosity toward her mother and stepfather as a spoiled heiress who didn’t like to be hemmed in. He hadn’t imagined that she could understand his struggles, making adult decisions as an adolescent himself, taking over his father’s business, and prying it loose from crooks.
Yet at sixteen, she’d carried a baby in secret because the adults who should have been protecting her had left her as bait for a wolf. She’d found a loving home for her baby, refusing to risk that baby suffering the abuse that she’d endured. Letting go of her baby had been so painful, she hadn’t been able to speak about it for more than ten years.
He was so racked with pain on her behalf, he braced his hands on his knees, trying not to be sick.
Italian shoes and bespoke trouser cuffs came into his line of vision. He straightened to see Gio.
“Molly is awake. She wants to see her mother.” He stepped past Rafael and knocked on the door, then poked his head in to deliver his message. He closed it again, looking grave. “I’ve arranged a hotel for Patty and Libby. I’ll take them when they’re ready.”
“I’ve arranged a hotel,” Rafael said with annoyance.
“It’s one less thing on your plate and...” Gio’s cheek ticked. “I’d like to look after Molly’s family.”
Molly’s sister wasn’t just Molly’s family, though, was she?
A few hours ago, when Sasha had relayed her past to him, all of this had been a story. Now it was real. Real people. Real heartache.
Patricia came out of the lounge and squeezed Rafael’s arm.
“See if you can talk her into going home for some rest. I need to get Libby to bed, too. We’ll talk more tomorrow.” She had such a reassuring air about her, he wanted to catch her back and insist she come home with them.
He slipped into the lounge to see Sasha was on the couch, doubled over her folded arms. She wore a shell-shocked expression, eyes dry, but her face was ravaged by tears.
“Sash?”
She drew back when he tried to cradle her cheek and turned her face away.
“She doesn’t want to see me,” she said in a voice shredded by desolation. “But I can’t walk away from her again. Stand in the hall and tell me when she’s gone.”
A chasm opened inside him. He wanted to sit down and pull her into his lap. He wanted to walk down the hall and tell that little girl to get her butt in here, but she was only a little girl. A child who had probably started her day by getting ready for school, never dreaming she would meet her birth mother today, or that her sister’s life would be in danger. She had been completely ignorant of the fact she had a half brother or sister on the way.
Punch drunk from all the shocks, Rafael stepped out the door and, a moment later, Gio emerged from Molly’s room with Patty. She said something in a hushed voice and held out her arm for the preteen who joined her.
Nothing could have prepared him for his first glimpse of Libby. How had he not known that she would be a version of Sasha that was like looking at his wife through a lens that saw back in time. She had Sasha’s same long hair and slender build, her graceful profile, and she brushed her hair off her shoulder in exactly the same way. Her eyes were so blue he felt the splash of them when she glanced his direction.
And that expression. When she noticed he was staring at her, her brows gathered into a scowl that asked, Who the hell are you?
He was a man experiencing love in its most pure and innocent form. What an impudent brat! He wanted to laugh and cry and say, Sasha, she’s beautiful. She’s you. Come see.
He waited until he heard the elevator doors open and close, then he went in to gather his wife, deciding it was best to say nothing at all.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
SASHA WOKE WITH a vague memory of Rafael holding her until she fell asleep, but the apartment was empty. He’d left her a text that he was at the office and would stop by the hospital midday.
There was also a text from Molly.
Peanut is doing somersaults. Dr. says no change. Mom says I have to stagger my visitors so I can rest. I feel like I’m grounded. I didn’t even stay out past curfew!
