“I don’t want to.” I admit it openly, not trying to hide how upset I am, letting him see all the confusion and hurt I feel.
“But you do.”
I can’t deny it. Nor should I. Whatever’s really happening here, it’s best for everyone involved if we put all our cards on the table right now. “Put yourself in my shoes. How would you feel? What would you think?”
“Dominic has hated my mother for a very long time.”
“Why?”
“She married another man.”
That rocks me back on my heels. “They were together?”
“When they were very young. Before she met my father.”
I have a flashback to the marchesa’s reaction when I mentioned Dominic’s name the afternoon at the house when I first found out Matteo was her son. She was upset but tried to hide it.
Whenever I cried as a child, I’d get a beating, she’d told
