LITMIR.BIZ

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tone even, because the penance he’d done for a woman who hadn’t actually died was not his brother’s business. “It was time to grow up. I did.”

      “Rafael.” Luca shifted in his chair, then blew out a breath, shoving back that unruly hair of his. “You were a wreck when you thought she was dead, and for a long time after. Maybe you should take heart that she is not. All the rest is noise that will sort itself out, surely.”

      Rafael frowned at him. “Of course I’m pleased that she’s not dead, Luca.”

      “But are you happy she’s alive?” Luca asked, with that uncanny insight of his that suggested he was something more than the lazy creature he’d spent most of his life pretending he was. At least in public. “It’s not quite the same thing, is it?”

      “Of course.” But Rafael had waited a moment too long to respond, and he knew it. “Of course I’m happy she’s alive. What a thing to ask.”

      His younger brother studied him for a moment. “Is it that she can’t remember you?” His mouth curved slightly. “Or anything else, for that matter?”

      “I don’t believe that she has forgotten a thing,” Rafael said quietly, and it took him a moment to recognize the sheer savagery in his voice, to hear the way it sliced through the air between them, harsh and unmistakable. “Not one single thing. She left.”

      He did not say, she left me, and yet that sat there for a moment in the middle of the room as well. Right there in the center of the priceless rug that was older than the two of them and Lily combined. Obvious and terrible, and Rafael thought he couldn’t possibly loathe himself more than he did at that moment.

      Luca shifted in his chair, his whole body suddenly gripped with a different kind of tension.

      “Rafael,” he began. “Mio fratello—”

      “I’m finished discussing this,” Rafael gritted out.

      “But I am not.” Luca shook his head. “This is not the same. Lily is not our mother. There is no comparison between an accident and what happened here.”

      “You don’t actually know that,” Rafael said quietly. Too quietly. It revealed too much and even if he hadn’t heard that in his own voice as it hung there between them, he saw it in his brother’s eyes.

      “Raf—”

      “No more,” Rafael said, cutting his brother off. “Lily and I will come to terms with what she’s actually forgotten and what she’s found convenient to pretend she’s forgotten, I’m sure. That’s quite enough ancient history to dredge up. There’s no need to drag our mother into this.”

      For a moment he thought Luca would protest that. He felt himself tense, as if he thought he might fight back if his brother dared—

      You need to pull yourself together, he ordered himself. This is Luca. He’s the only person you love who’s never betrayed you.

      “Do you have any particular reason to think she’s pretending?” Luca asked after a moment, his voice as light and easy as if they’d never strayed into the muddy waters of their mother’s sad fate. He even smiled again. “Most women, of course, would hold you like the North Star deep within them, knowing you even if they lost themselves. Such is the Castelli charm. I know this myself, obviously. But Lily always was different.”

      Rafael forced himself to smile. To play off the darkness pounding through his veins even then, whispering things he didn’t want to hear.

      “She was that.”

      “Her memory will return or it won’t,” Luca said carefully, watching Rafael much too closely. “And in the meantime, there is the child. My nephew.”

      “My son,” Rafael agreed.

      He didn’t think he’d said that out loud before. My son. He wasn’t prepared for that rush inside, that simmering, inarticulate joy, beating back the darkness. He hardly knew what to make of it.

      “Indeed.” Luca’s dark eyes gleamed. “So perhaps what she remembers, or what happened in this ancient history of yours, is unimportant next to that. Or should be.”

      “Goodbye, Luca,” Rafael said softly, and he didn’t care what his brother could read in his tone. He didn’t care what he revealed, as long as this uncomfortable conversation ended immediately. As long as Luca left him here to fight his way toward his equilibrium again. Rafael was sure it had to be in there somewhere. “I don’t expect to see you again until Christmas. What a shame. You’ll be missed. By someone, I’m sure.”

      “Liar,” said his irrepressible brother, wholly unconcerned by his dismissal. “You miss me already.”

      Rafael shook his head, then turned back to the window and ignored the sound of his brother’s laughter behind him as Luca took his leave.

      Outside, the little boy—his little boy—was still running, the hood of his bright blue coat tossed back and his head tipped toward the sky.

      Arlo was a miracle. Arlo was impossible. Arlo was a perfect, wonderful mistake Rafael hadn’t known he’d made, and Rafael already thought he was a pure delight.

      But he changed nothing.

      He only made Rafael’s course of action that much more clear.

      * * *

      The ancient Castelli mansion bristled with the kind of supernaturally perfect staff that Lily had forgotten about over the course of these past five years. Impeccably trained, they made her feel as if she was gleaming and perfectly presentable at all times. When in fact it was their ability to clean rooms while she was still in them, produce a phalanx of nannies with credentials in hand to watch Arlo whenever she needed a moment and maintain the elegance all around her so expertly that made it feel quite natural that she should find herself living in it again.

      It had been different going in the other direction, from these nonchalant everyday luxuries to the challenges of real life without them, but at the time, Lily had viewed all of that as her penance. And her test. If she could manage it, she’d told herself as she’d waited tables in places the old Lily wouldn’t have dared enter, she’d earn the right to raise her child herself.

      She’d given herself a deadline. If, by her eighth month of pregnancy, she couldn’t come up with a better life than the hand-to-mouth, on-the-run existence she’d fashioned for herself, then she would have to tell Rafael about the baby. Or arrange for him to get custody without directly confronting him, maybe. Something. No child deserved to struggle along in poverty at all, but certainly not when his mother could make one phone call and whisk him away from a truck stop diner to a place like this. Lily might have left her life the way she had for what had felt like very good reasons, despite the pain she knew she’d caused—but she hoped she wasn’t that selfish.

      Lily had been six months pregnant when Pepper had walked into her diner, headed home after delivering a pair of rescue dogs from a high-kill shelter in Virginia to their loving new home in Missouri. Maybe it wasn’t surprising that they’d hit it off instantly—after all, Pepper had a way with strays.

      And when she’d hit that eight-month deadline, Lily had been living in the guest cottage on Pepper’s land, with a job she quite enjoyed to go along with it. She’d liked her life there and had seen no reason her baby wouldn’t, too. Pepper had felt like the long-lost older sister Lily had never had. And then she’d been more like a doting grandmother to Arlo.

      Lily didn’t regret a single minute of her time in Virginia, and she told herself she didn’t regret keeping Arlo’s existence from Rafael, either.

      But it was shockingly easy to adjust to life in all of that Castelli luxury again, she found, regrets or no. From the stately ballrooms to the gracious salons to the many libraries, large and small, that dotted the rambling old house, every inch of the place was a song of praise to the ancient Castelli name and a celebration of their many centuries of wealth

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