Page 44 of Hidden Heir, Italian Wife

“What?” she asked apprehensively.

“I reached out to your father.”

She sat back, taking his words like a cold knife into the chest. “Talk about making it hard to trust. Why would you go behind my back like that?”

“That’s not what I was doing.” He frowned. “When you said he couldn’t come to the wedding, I thought we could go through DC on the way to Italy, so I could meet him.”

Against her will, and a lengthy history of endless disappointment, a tiny ray of hope lit inside her.

“What did he say?” she asked timidly.

“This is his wife. She said they’re leaving on vacation today.”

The lightness inside Bree dropped like a stone. She swallowed the bitterness that arrived in her throat. “I told you they weren’t available.”

“I presumed he had surgery. It sounds like he has the day off. Does he not want to meet me?” he asked with incomprehension.

“He treats presidents, Jax. He’s not impressed by you.”

“That’s not what I mean. I’m about to become your husband. I’m the father of his grandchild. He doesn’t care?”

And there it was: the coldest, most shameful fact of her life. The one she’d spent years trying to come to terms with.

“No,” she said, pushing away food that she no longer wanted. “He doesn’t.”

His brows came together in a dark line.

She drew a breath that felt loaded with noxious gas.

“When I was very young, I thought it was the demands of his work that kept him from coming home. He’s a brilliant surgeon. Everyone says so.” She wet her dry mouth with a sip of coffee, but it tasted sour. “I understood the importance of his work, so I patiently waited for the day when it would be my turn to hold his attention, but it never came. Instead, shortly after I turned eight, he told Mom he was taking a position in DC. We weren’t invited. He wanted a divorce so he could marry Laura. He had found time to have an affair, but not to come to my recital.”

“What an ass.”

“That’s not even the worst of it. He was already a surgeon when Mom met him, but he was up to his eyeballs in tuition debt. She didn’t mean to get pregnant, but she did, so they married. She sold the house her parents had left her to pay off his loans. Eight years later, he was making big money so she rightfully asked for substantial alimony. Dad retaliated by demanding shared custody. He was trying to push her to lower the support payments. She thought if she wasn’t in the picture, he’d make more effort to connect with me. Spoiler alert, he didn’t.”

And it still hurt. It made her feel inadequate. Unwanted.

“I was old enough to understand the animosity between them, if not the nuance of it. Ifeltit when I went to see him and he worked the whole time, never making time for me. Laura had three children of her own, all younger than me. She didn’t need another child underfoot.”

“He divorced your mother to marry a woman with three children?”

“Yes.” It wasn’t parenting he didn’t like. It was parentingherthat had repelled him. “I don’t know how he met her. A convention or something. Her father is in politics, which is why they moved to DC, to be closer to her family. She resented having me foisted on her, but Dad insisted I be there every second weekend because of the support payments.”

“Your mother couldn’t do anything?”

“Like what?Makehim want to spend time with me? No, but she could see I was miserable. When I started high school, she renegotiated so I only had to see him twice a year if he matched her contributions to my college fund. I got a part-time job purely to boost the amount,” she said with spiteful humor.

“Why did you invite him to the wedding? Why do you have any relationship with him at all?”

“Because it’s nice to have access to good doctors. When Sofia had that ear infection, Dad made a call, got us seen right away. Also…” She winced, embarrassed. “I thought marrying someone as illustrious as a Visconti might catch his notice. Or Laura’s. I was using you. It didn’t work.”

“This is why you asked me if I wanted a meaningful relationship with Sofia.”

“Yes.” She kept her eyes on the food she wasn’t eating, not wanting him to see the gaping canyon of emptiness she had kept available for her father that he had always declined to fill. “It would have been easier for me if I’d never had any expectations of him. I didn’t want Sofia to suffer the same disappointment.”

“And it’s easier foryounot to have any expectations ofme. That’s why you didn’t want my number four years ago.”

Ouch. That landed very squarely on target. “Correct.”

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