Page 33 of Ruthless Secrets
She must have chosen not to tell me for a reason because she could have found me if she really wanted to.
I know I left her that night without telling her my nameor a way to contact me, but all it would have taken was for her to pick up a newspaper, and my face would have likely been on the front page.
Maybe she did, and that only made her want to keep our child a secret even more.
Whatever her reasoning, I had a right to know.
And even if she hadn’t known who I was before, she has known since she came to Nox.
She’s had days to tell me the truth, and yet shestillkept it from me, and that hurts like hell.
If there was any chance of something happening between us, it’s gone, because I don’t know how I’m going to be able to look past a betrayal like this.
Chapter Eight
CLARA
I screwed up big time.
Marco was bound to find out about Zoe eventually, but I should not have been like this.
I had planned on sitting him down and introducing them in the hopes that he would be so enamored by her that it would soften the blow of my betrayal.
He doesn’t even know hername.
For some reason, that fact tips me over the edge, and my legs buckle.
I sink to the floor right there in my doorway as I’m overcome with emotion.
I knew he would be pissed, and yet watching him storm away is like a punch to the gut.
Is he going to come back? Or is he done with me for good?
“Oh god,” I sob.
If I were smart, I would have told Marco the truth the moment I first saw him at Nox, when I realized who he was. He would likely still have been angry, but the fact that Ididn’t even know his name when we slept together would have worked in my favor.
Instead, I kept my mouth shut in the days that followed that first meeting, and my only excuse for not telling him then is my own cowardice.
That and the fact that I was enjoying the way he was looking at me today.
For the first time since the night we slept together, I felt desirable, and I didn’t want him to stop. Part of me was convinced he would try something with me in the office, and I would have willingly let him.
It was selfish of me to put my own desire for Marco above my own baby, and now any chance I had at giving Zoe a better life is likely gone, and I only have myself to blame.
The sound of Zoe crying is the only reason I get up off the floor.
I’ve already ignored her cries for long enough, so I head back into my bedroom to tend to her. But when I look down at her tear-stained face, I’m hit so hard by another wave of emotion that I can barely take a breath.
She has so much of Marco in her, and he has no idea.
She might be my daughter, but she’s his too. And he has a right to know her.
If I truly wanted to find him, maybe I could have, but I was too busy trying to survive, working myself into oblivion so I could never stop and think about my mess of a life.
And deep down, maybe the truth is, I chose not to find out.
Now I understand it was wrong, but at the time, it made the most sense. If he wanted me to find him, he’d have left me some way to contact him or even just his name.
