When She Fell for the Billionaire(70)

Mrs. Konstantinos spoke in a thready voice. Her dark eyes were fixed on Sabrina. Markos interpreted for her.

“Your mother worked for my husband as an interpreter in his dealings with the international market for several months. She was very young and beautiful. She looked just like you.” Mrs. Konstantinos tugged on her blanket, pulling it higher around her waist. “I should have sent her on her way immediately, but at that time translators were rare.”

Sabrina’s heart started to pound. Her skin felt clammy. She had a feeling she wouldn’t like what she was going to hear.

“One day she came to me, crying.” Markos appeared determined to continue his interpretation without a glimmer of emotion, but at his mother’s next sentence, he paused and whitened around the mouth.

“Go on,” Luca urged his friend. He squeezed Sabrina’s hand tighter.

“She said my husband forced himself on her. I refused to believe her story. I sent her away and told her never to come back to Greece or I’ll have charges made up and send her to jail. I asked the company to erase all records she ever worked for us.” She gripped the blanket tighter, her knuckles pale and bony. “When Markos told me about your letter, claiming that your mother had worked for our company, I denied ever hearing her name.”

Markos looked at his mother, wrestling with some deep-seated emotion Sabrina couldn’t define. Anger, shock, horror…

“Forgive me, child. I knew what my husband was capable of, but in my desire to preserve the family, I did your mother wrong. And I’ve been paying for it ever since.”

Her mother had been raped.

By her father.

Oh God. Sabrina felt like throwing up. She was the product of an act of violence committed against her mother. All of a sudden, everything slotted into place.

Her grandmother’s warning against men who would take advantage. She had mistakenly thought, much later on, after finding out the identity of her father, that it was because he had been married and had chosen to have an affair with her mother. But her grandmother had been warning her against something much worse.

“She has his eyes.” She had heard her mother say once when she was talking to her grandmother, not realizing that she was eavesdropping. And Sabrina knew without knowing why that it was the reason her mother sometimes could not bear to look at her. She had naively thought when she was little it was because she missed her father so much and she was a reminder of what she had lost. Now it sickened her to think that whenever her mother gazed at her, she was a reminder of that terrible time in her past.

Markos looked like it, too. The arrogance had been wiped off his handsome face. He strode out of the hospital suite without a backward glance.

Sabrina looked at Mrs. Konstantinos’ face, registering the deep grooves bracketing her mouth, her sunken eyes, the tight pull of her lips. It was all there. The signs of her unhappiness.

This was what she had come to Seirenada for. Answers, closure, new beginnings. And now she had them.

So she said the only thing she could say. “I know my mother would’ve forgiven you, were she alive.”

Luca’s voice rumbled in his translation. Mrs. Konstantinos started weeping.

Sabrina shook off Luca’s hand and ran out of the room. Like a wounded animal, she’d find a corner to curl up and cry.







Luca found her in the empty chapel. He was afraid she had left without him.

“We’ve never exchanged phone numbers.” He slid beside her on the pew, keeping his distance. She just kept staring at the altar. “I’ll leave you alone to your thoughts if you promise to meet me at the lobby once you’re ready to leave.”

She didn’t give any sign of having heard him. He motioned to rise.

“Stay.”

He did as told. How could he not? He longed to take her in his arms and offer her a shoulder to cry on but was unsure where he stood with her.

She turned mismatched, bleak eyes to him. “Talk,” she said hoarsely.

He cleared the lump that had formed in his throat at the desolation on her face. “What do I talk about?”

“You.”

He nodded, sensing she needed a distraction. “My name is Luca Ligueria Argenti.” He swung his gaze to the crucifix on the altar. “I was born in Milan. My parents doted on me and my brothers and sister. We were allowed to be children as long as we wanted. Circumstances had not forced us to grow up too soon. I grew up believing there was good in the world. I believed that prayers were answered. That evil never goes unpunished. That truth is sacred. I believed that superheroes would always save the day.” He was amazed at how naïve he had been. “Until the day my real life hero walked out of the door and took up with a woman half his age.” He laughed grimly. “A woman I had dated once.”