Bound by the Millionaire's Ring(27)

"Can you please stop asking me questions? I was talking to Papa in my  head. I want him to know that I love him. You can go, if you want. I'm  just going to sit here."



Ouch.

He wasn't going anywhere, not that he wanted to be in a hospital again.  It hadn't been very long since he'd sat vigil with his brother, waiting  for news on Cinnia. It was the most helpless feeling in the world.

But he couldn't let her face it alone.

He did what little he could, checking with a nurse for a prognosis,  which was at the grim wait-and-see stage. He shared the update with his  siblings, who were all troubled by the news, then found a coffee  station. He made a cup for Isidora, heavily sweetened and creamed.

"Gracias." She sipped and set it aside, all her focus on her father.

Time crawled for several hours, then suddenly her mother fluttered in.

"Ah, mi ángel! Lo siento mucho. I should have been here sooner. I didn't  have my phone. How is he?" Her tearstained face contorted with fresh  anguish as she looked at Bernardo. She burst into fresh tears, one hand  on the bed rail, the other going around Isidora's waist as her daughter  rose to stand beside her. She turned her face into Isidora's shoulder  and cried without reserve for several minutes.         

     



 

Silent tears slid out of Isidora's closed eyes, but even he could sense  her mixed feelings, her distancing as her mother came up for air.

Francisca's expression grew even more stricken. "You're upset with me. Why?" Her gaze swung to Ramon with alarm. "Did you-?"

He jerked his head in swift denial. Now was not the time to reveal Isidora's parentage.

He braced himself for Isidora to catch on and demand to know what they were hiding, but she didn't even look at him.

"I'm upset that you left him, Mama." Isidora's voice was that heavy, anguished thing that wrung out his heart.

"No para un hombre. To a spa. I swear." She grasped at Isidora's arms. "We argued and I needed time-"

"No, Mama." Isidora tried to shrug off her mother's touch. "I don't want to be in the middle of it."

"There's nothing to be in the middle of! You have to believe me,  querida." Her mother gave her a little shake as she searched her  daughter's expression, her own growing frantic. Fearful. "He asked me to  marry him again. I said I would move in, but he insisted on marriage.  Now he may die-"

"He won't," Isidora quickly said, shoulders caving as she reached for her mother. "He'll pull through. He has to."

Francisca looked like a lost child as Isidora comforted her, completely the wrong way around.

Ramon looked away, dismayed by all of it. Suspicious that Francisca had  been with a man, but he wasn't about to throw accusations around a room  like this.

Not long after, the doctor told them Bernardo's vitals had improved.

Ramon convinced Isidora to let him take her home to rest. She was so  exhausted, she didn't have any fight left in her and fell asleep in the  car. She woke when they arrived and said plaintively, "I thought we were  going to my home."

"Your mother's?"

"My apartment. The one I bought when I requested a transfer. I sent all  the things you removed from my place in Paris. I was going to start  unpacking."

"That will have to wait." She was a wreck. "We're here now." In  Salamanca, at the villa built by his mother's ancestors in the  nineteenth century, not that that made an impression on her.

She moved like a zombie as she accompanied him up the front steps of the family mansion, barely looking around.

This home was one of the places few people except immediate family ever  entered. He had lived here as a child, until Trella's kidnapping had  prompted their father to create the heavily guarded compound, Sus  Brazos, in southern Spain. Like all their homes, this one had been  retrofitted and secured to the nth degree, but retained its exemplary  architecture and original grandeur. Their father used to say it was more  stairs than house, but it had tremendous charm, with its stained glass  windows, ornate scrollwork and marble columns. The staff took care of  him very well and seemed genuinely pleased to see him. He felt good to  be home.

"I know you're tired," he said to Isidora. "But I called ahead. The soup is ready. You need to eat."

She sighed with resignation and let him guide her into the stately  dining room, where she lowered onto the velvet-covered chair he held for  her. She smiled weakly as their cocido madrileño arrived, fragrant  enough to make his own stomach pang.

As they were left alone, and the only sound was the quiet clink of  spoons against bowls, she said softly, "It's okay. I already know."

"Perdóname?" He paused with his spoon in midair.

"Mama told you when you were sharing secrets that night, I suppose?" The  low light cast shadows over her hollow cheeks, making her look that  much more haunted with her bruised eyes and cloak of anguish.

His mind went first to how blindly he had walked into Trella's trap. He liked to think he learned from his mistakes.

"You'll have to be more specific. I'm not sure what you're talking about."

The corners of her mouth trembled as though she tried for a cynical  smile, but didn't have the strength. He suspected there was  disappointment there, too. In him, for making her spell it out.

"My mother has never had it in her to be exclusive to anyone. She  cheated on my father a lot, right from the beginning. He married her  because she was pregnant. He thought it would get better, but it didn't.  He blamed himself. He traveled so much, working for your father." She  waved her spoon toward him. "I don't say that to imply your father is  responsible for her infidelity. Papa has no regrets about working so  closely with him. When Trella was taken... He had a daughter. He wanted  desperately to help, not be one of the vipers who tried to capitalize."         

     



 

"We know." The words seemed to vibrate in the still, empty cavern that  his chest became. "Bernardo was one of the few to take our side after  our father passed, supporting us against the board. He has always been  highly valued by our family. We're all upset he's in hospital."

"I know." She dropped her gaze to her bowl as she stirred her soup. "And  he was an ambitious man when he was younger. He wanted to work that  hard. When he did come home, he wanted that home to include his  daughter, so he didn't confront Mama about her infidelity. He didn't  want to divorce her. He knew she had been molded into what she was by  her childhood. He didn't want a replay of custody battles and risk  turning me into the same thing. But by the time I was starting school,  he couldn't ignore any longer that I looked nothing like him."

Ramon set down his spoon and sat back.

"He knew she must at least suspect I wasn't his. He had a DNA test done and knew for sure."

"But he didn't confront her."

She shook her head. "He was angry enough to divorce her outright,  but...he loved me." She smiled through a sheen of tears. "He knew he  would lose me in a custody battle. I wasn't his. He didn't know what to  do. He asked your father for advice and your father asked him, 'Who will  be her father if not you?' So he stayed a little longer."

Her smile wobbled and turned down.

"I owe your father for that," she said huskily. "It wasn't easy for Papa."

He watched her swirl her soup, eating nothing, thinking of Trella saying  "For some crazy reason she has decided she would die for us."

"This is why you agreed to our engagement." He wanted to be alone then,  to deal with the roaring, howling shame in him. Somewhere, in his past,  his father had done something so noble and kind for this girl, it filled  him with a swell of pride. His father had ensured Isidora had something  she desperately needed, that she deserved, and he, Ramon, had come  along years later, grabbed it roughly and used it without remorse.

"I love him so much." Her voice cracked. "I knew Mama was...not like  other mothers. I used to lie to him about the men in the house, about  where she had been. I lied to people all over the city, trying to cover  up for her. I was so afraid he would find out and leave us. Leave me."  She bit her lips together to still their tremble.

He drew a measured breath into lungs that burned.

"When your father died..." Her lashes came up and sent empathy to him  that compressed his chest even further. "It hit Papa hard. He reassessed  his own life, the sacrifices he was making in staying married. I think  he thought if he divorced my mother, he would stop loving her, but that  never happened. He told me everything once they started their  proceedings, in case it came up. He didn't want me to be blindsided by  it."

"But if you all knew at that point, why didn't you take it up with Francisca?"

She shook her head in a hopeless little gesture.

"Mama doesn't process relationships the way other people do. She didn't  have parents who loved her so she doesn't know how to be a parent,  doesn't understand how love works. That's why I needed Papa so badly. If  I could have, I would have gone to live with him after they divorced.  It was so disruptive to live with her. But if she had known that I knew  he wasn't my father yet preferred him over her...? It would have killed  her. I mean that almost literally. She's a broken person. She's  desperate to feel loved and counts on me to love her no matter what.  It's something that keeps her from completely self-destructing. To take  that away from her, and reveal that I know she did this awful thing to  my father... And what is the next step? Ask her about my biological  father? Make her admit she doesn't know? She would expect that I would  never forgive her. Maybe I wouldn't. I would lose her, that's for sure.  One way or another she would disappear from my life. I can't risk that."