in his response caught her attention. ‘Cesare, what aren’t you telling me?’
His glance held a wealth of pain that made her heart lurch. ‘Because both my parents carry the gene, what happened to Roberto could happen to me.’
‘Did your parents know?’
‘I’d like to think they wouldn’t deliberately keep something like this from Roberto and me. I saw what losing him did to my mother. I’m guessing they don’t know. Like I said, most people don’t know they have it until they fall ill.’
For one blazing second she was fiercely glad his parents had been ignorant because they’d not only brought Cesare into her life, they’d also given her Annabelle. Then a thought trickled through, further chilling her blood.
‘So what are the repercussions for Annabelle?’
His eyes took on a haunted look that stilled her heart. ‘It could remain dormant all her life, or...the gene could mutate and she could develop complications,’ he replied starkly.
A dark sound tore from her throat. Horror built, overcoming every other emotion as her insides screamed with disbelief at what he was telling her. Her daughter, her lovely daughter who had survived an earthquake, susceptible to a potentially life-threatening disease...
‘Did you suspect something like this? Is that why you kept Roberto’s illness from me?’ The thought made her heart crack with pain. ‘How long had he been seriously sick?’
‘He’d been deteriorating for a year. It worsened in the last six months.’
Shock made her draw back, tears swiftly following as emotions tumbled through her. ‘You knew all that, knew that something was very wrong and you kept it from me?’
He tried to reach for her. ‘These were all second-hand reports. I didn’t know just how bad he was. And I wanted to protect you—’
‘Don’t you dare say you were trying to protect me! You had no right to keep such a thing from me. What if Annabelle had fallen sick and I didn’t know what was wrong?’ Terror clutched her heart. ‘Dear God, Cesare, what if she’d...’ She couldn’t voice the words. When he gripped her arms, she didn’t move because she couldn’t find the strength. Her insides felt numb and the horrific reality gripped her.
‘Don’t think like that.’
Slowly she raised her head. ‘Why not? It’s what you’ve been doing. At least now I understand the look you get when you look at Annabelle. You’ve been expecting the worst, haven’t you?’
Cesare paled even more and the lines around his mouth compressed. ‘I needed to be sure. It was why I postponed coming back to Bali. Roberto refused my attempts to see him. But six weeks ago, just before we left for Bali, he asked for me.’ He sucked in a shuddering breath. ‘He’d taken a turn for the worse. I think deep down he knew he wasn’t going to make it. When I found out the extent of his illness, I contacted Celine. She tried to make him see a specialist but he refused. It was almost as if he’d given up...which was why we suspected suicide.’
‘Oh God...’ A strangled sob emerged.
His hands tightened on her arms. ‘Cara, I’m sorry—’
She wrenched away from him. ‘You shouldn’t have kept all this from me, Cesare.’
He gave a grim nod. ‘I regret that. But I wanted to spare you the pain.’
‘You had no right to shoulder this alone. We were thousands of miles away. What if something had happened to you?’ The thought brought a fresh bolt of horror.
‘Nothing did. You had enough to deal with after the earthquake. I was not going to add to your distress.’
‘That should’ve been my choice to make.’
Regret bit into his features. ‘I told you, when it comes to you I seem to specialize in making bad situations worse.’
Her daughter—her precious baby girl—had a condition she’d never even known about. A deep shudder wracked her body. She tried to still her trembling but it got worse. A quick glance showed Cesare was caught in his own personal hell.
‘Umm...the Apocalypse thing...I didn’t mean it,’ she muttered through stiff lips.
He gave a raw, pained laugh. ‘But you were right.’ He lifted a hand as if to touch her, then dropped it back down. ‘Roberto shut himself off in Switzerland because of me. He suffered...alone for a long time because I didn’t know how to reach him.’
Ava sucked in a breath. ‘No. He shut himself off because he lost the love of his life, and decided to deal with it his way,’ she said but Cesare wasn’t listening.
‘I keep thinking if I hadn’t met Valentina in New York, hadn’t given her a job, Roberto would’ve known some happiness...had the family he wanted.’
‘Unless you have a direct dial to Fate, I think you can let go of that one. Some things you can control but sometimes things just happen.’
‘The earthquake—’
‘Just happened.’
‘Dio, Ava, our daughter shouldn’t have been there in the first place. You saw that marketplace in Bali. How could I not think she had been taken from us as payback for what I did to my brother?’
‘You can choose to live in guilt for the rest of your life or you can choose to believe that ultimately you weren’t responsible for Roberto. Even though you weren’t close, you tried to look out for him. You took the woman he loved under your wing and tried to help, even when he blamed you for what happened in New York. I think you need to give yourself a break for that.’
He digested that for a while but, even though the pain in his face abated a little, his eyes remained haunted.
‘As for Annabelle, she wasn’t taken from us. We found her,’ she added.
Another harsh laugh. ‘Yeah, we did. And look what I’ve delivered to her fragile life. You have to face the fact that I’m bad for you, I have been since the moment we met. But...’ He shoved a hand through his hair.
‘But...? You’re going to walk away again?’
‘No!’ He lifted his gaze, and Ava’s heart stopped at the gut-wrenching bleakness in his eyes. ‘I can’t. Annabelle is my flesh and blood, the most important thing in my life.’
Ava’s gut tightened until she couldn’t breathe. ‘And since I’ve made us a package deal you’re stuck with me too, right?’
‘I didn’t say that—’ He surged up beside her as she stood. ‘Where are you going?’
She shoved a hand through her hair, unable to stop the terror churning through her belly. ‘I can’t stay here—’
‘You can’t leave!’ He grabbed her arms. ‘We haven’t finished talking.’
‘Why? Is there another bombshell you’re going to hit me with?’
‘No,
