Claiming His Secret Son(57)

Richard only nodded so Numair would let this go. He couldn’t bear one more word on the subject.

Satisfied that he’d talked him down, Numair let Richard divert their conversation to their own shattered relationship. Numair did more than wipe the slate clean. He pushed a restart button where they’d left off as teenagers.

Numair finally let him go two hours later, and only one thing he’d said looped in his mind until it almost pulped it.

When she realizes the best thing for her is to open her heart to you again, she will.

What Numair thought would bolster his hope for a future with Isabella had only pulverized it, since she undoubtedly realized the best thing for her would be to never open her heart to him again, to stay as far away from him as possible.

* * *

When he finally worked up enough nerve to go back to Isabella’s home, it was she who let him in. She’d sent Mauri out with Rose’s family and stayed behind to talk to him.

With foreboding descending on him like a suffocating shroud, he followed her into the living room.

Once they sat, the voice he now lived to hear washed over him, a tremor traversing it.

“I overheard you and Mauri...and Rico...earlier today.”

So she’d heard their son’s desire to be called Rico again. And his demand for Richard to admit that he was his father.

Would she forbid him to do so, revoke his privilege to come to her home and spend time with Rico? Would she cast him out?

Isabella’s hushed words doused his panic. “If you need my blessing to tell Rico the truth, you have it, Richard. I will accommodate your every desire to be with him.”

The delight that detonated within him almost blanked out the world.

She wasn’t casting him out but letting him further in. As Numair had said, she’d grown to trust him with Rico, was giving him the ultimate privilege of claiming his son.

But...was she telling him that was the extent of their relationship? He’d only be Rico’s father, but...nothing to her?

In the past he’d been worse than nothing, her bane, steeping everything between them in deceit and manipulation, then in lust and degradation. If he’d intentionally set out to destroy her feelings for him, he couldn’t have done a more complete job. If she wanted something real and lasting with a man, she’d look for it anywhere else but with him. She deserved the real thing. The best there was. And he wasn’t it. He had sinned against her beyond forgiveness, was tainted beyond retrieval.

But since he was, what right did he have to Rico? Wouldn’t he be better off without a father like him? It was even worse now that his turmoil over them could have gotten him killed today. What would that have done to Rico if he’d already known Richard was his father?

Why had he invaded their lives? What had he been searching for? Redemption? When he’d long known he was beyond that? Love? When he knew he didn’t deserve it?

If he loved them, and he loved them far beyond anything he’d thought possible, he had to make them happy. To keep them safe. There was only one way he could do that.

He rose, in an agony worse than when multiple bullets had torn through his flesh, looked down into Isabella’s searching gaze and dealt himself a fatal injury. That of saying goodbye. Forever this time.

“Actually, I think you were right not to want me near your family. I’m glad that interruption stopped me from making an irretrievable statement, gave me time to realize it’s not in Rico’s best interests to have me in his life. Nor is it in Rose’s and her family’s. I’m sorry I forced myself into your lives and disrupted your peace, but I promise to leave all of you alone from now on. Once you tell Mauricio I’m not his father, he’ll reconsider being called Rico, and there won’t be any irreversible damage when I disappear from his life.”

* * *

Shocked to her core, Isabella watched Richard walk away, feeling as if he was drawing her life force out with him.

Then the front door clicked shut behind him and everything holding her up snapped. She collapsed on the couch in an enervated mass.

She’d thought he’d be delighted with her blessing, had been about to follow it with a carte blanche of herself, if he’d consider her as a lover again.

She’d been ready with assurances that whether or not it worked out between them, it wouldn’t impact the lifelong relationship she’d been sure he’d wanted with his son. The worst she’d thought would happen was his rejection of her, had been prepared to put up with anything, even watching him find love with another woman, so Rico would have his father, and she’d have him in her life at all.

She hadn’t even factored in the possibility that within hours he’d decide he didn’t want Rico, either.