“Please,” he says as he releases my hand, “let’s sit. I took the liberty of ordering us some drinks. Renata, I’ve ordered a selection of fresh juices for you.”
“Thank you,” she says. The moment she’s seated, she rests her hands over her belly. “I know you’ve wanted to meet me for a while,” she starts. “But I… just wasn’t ready.”
“I can understand that, after everything you’ve been through.”
I study the man closely as he and Renata talk. I’m only here to support her. But I’d be lying if I didn’t admit to wanting to get a proper read on the elusive Mariani don.
“I want to know about my mother,” Renata says bluntly.
Mattias smiles softly. There’s a definite paternal glimmer in his eyes. I wonder how much Renata resembles her mother to trigger it.
“It makes sense that you’d want to know about your mother before you yourself become one,” he says slowly. “As an aside, congratulations are in order, I believe.”
She smiles. It’s the first smile I’ve seen from her all day that’s free of nerves and uncertainty. “Thank you.”
“How far along are you?”
“Just past seven months,” she tells him. “Only a couple more to go.”
“You must be excited.”
“Very.”
The silence stretches out a little, so I reach for my drink and take a sip. “Thank you for keeping your word,” I say to him. “The territory disputes are no longer in question.”
He inclines his head. “I’m a man of my word. I’m also a man who’s lost his taste for war. As I told you in our first phone call months ago, I do not wish to challenge the Clan. My only quarrel was when I thought my granddaughter’s interests were better served with the Greeks.”
“Your granddaughter’s interests?” she repeats scornfully. “You’ll forgive me for asking why you even cared. It wasn’t as though you made any attempt to be in my life those first twenty-five years.”
Mattias’s face slackens slightly.
I resist the urge to jump into the conversation. This is about Renata. I don’t want to make it about me.
“Renata, I know it might be hard for you to believe, but up until a year ago, I didn’t know you were still alive.” Renata frowns, but Mattias continues. “Drago made sure your existence was buried. He spread stories to my men confirming that you died as a five-year-old in the same attack as your father. It wasn’t until he had made the deal with Rokiades and arranged your marriage to him that I was made aware that you were still alive.”
“I find that hard to believe.”
He nods, accepting that. “As did I. Many people thought of your brother as a fool. And in many ways, he was. But he could also be strategic. He knew you were valuable; he knew he could use you when the time was right. He didn’t want to risk losing you to a more competent guardian. When he finally approached me, he told me that you had freely and willingly agreed to the marriage. He also told me that the O’Sullivan Clan posed a direct threat to you. Which was why I chose to ally with him in the first place.”
His story explains a lot. I have no reason to doubt it. He made the best choice he could for his family, or so he believed at the time. I can’t fault him for that.
“Okay,” Renata sighs. “Okay, that makes sense. But what doesn’t make sense to me is what I know of my mother. I lived all my life believing she was some random nobody who didn’t really care about me—only to find out that she was a very important somebody who still didn’t really care about me.”
The pain in her voice is evident. I reach out and take her hand.
Mariani’s eyes follow the gesture. “She did care, Renata,” he protests.
But I sense the lie immediately.
Apparently, so does Renata. “Please,” she says. “If you want a relationship with me, with your great-grandchild, I need you to be honest.”
The conflict rages across his face for a moment, and then he comes to a decision. I notice the way he squares his shoulders like he’s walking into a cave fight. “The truth is hard to hear sometimes, Renata.”
“I don’t care. I need to know.”
“Very well,” he says, with a short nod. First, he takes a sip of his whiskey. “The truth is Isabella was a complicated young woman. She was beautiful, wild, spirited, opinionated. She resented the limitations of her life. She resented the security that followed her everywhere on my orders. She resented that she could not simply take charge of her fate, like a man in her position would be able to do.”
“I sympathize with that,” Renata says icily.