“Ms. Rossi, we’re ready for you.”
The voice tugged at the edge of my consciousness.
“That’s you,” a voice reminded me.
I jerked my head up and focused on the nurse standing in the doorway.
Right. Sophie Rossi. That was my name. That was me. Sometimes, it was hard to remember.
I stood on shaky legs. “Yes, that’s me.”
“The doctor is ready to see you now.” The nurse turned around and bustled up the hallway, leaving the door to the consultant’s room gaping wide behind her. Everything would change when I walked through that door. Every single thing.
“Come on, we’ve got this,” Chiara muttered in my ear and tugged me forward.
“Miss Rossi, please come in.”
Inside was a regular old doctor’s office, and yet, it had been the scene of some of the most terrifying events of my life. Considering the life I’d led, that was an impressive feat.
Chiara pulled me forward, and I sank into a chair, feeling numb.
I stared at the same poster over the doctor’s head that I’d looked at three years ago, when I’d first sat in this office, and my little, hard-won life had fallen apart.
“Good morning, Dr. Evans. We’re a little nervous today,” Chiara said, still gripping my hand hard.
Dr. Evans was a beautiful older woman. She had that motherly energy that was entirely comforting, even when delivering the hardest news.
It’s renal failure, I’m afraid. A transplant is the only long-term fix.
I shook the voices from the past from my head and tried to focus on the present. My mind often drifted, too burned out and traumatized from the way life had thrown me back and forth.
“I understand.” Dr. Evans smiled. “But I think today will be a better meeting than you expect.”
Hope, too huge to contain, blossomed in my chest.
“Better than we expect? You know what we expect, Doctor.”
She smiled again and nodded. “I know, so I don’t take that lightly. There’s good news and bad news.”
“We’ll take the bad news first, on the chin,” Chiara declared. She might sound breezier than me, but she had my hand in a death grip.
“The bad news is that you’re going to be seeing a lot more of me, and a lot more of this place.”
I couldn’t speak. Tears burned behind my eyes.
“The good news is that we have a potential donor. A donor has been found who might be a perfect match. Subject to tests and checks, of course. We’ll need to start the admittance procedure shortly to carry out the tests and observe for a few weeks before we make the final call.”
“Holy shit.” Chiara breathed into the silence that the doctor’s words left.
Dr. Evans laughed. “Holy shit indeed.”
“Say something,” Chiara said, and nudged me.
I opened my mouth, trying to scrape my scrambled brains together enough to say thank you or ask follow-up questions. Something, really, anything.
“You… I…” I trailed off, those damn tears burning behind my eyes. “Per questo, ti devo la vita.”
Chiara wrapped her arm around me. “For this, I owe you my life,” she translated for the doctor.
I never heard her answer.
The side door to the consultation room opened, and a tiny figure appeared, ushered in by the nurse.
“Mom! I didn’t cry at all this time!”
I turned and stared at the small boy who had changed my life completely. I still couldn’t speak, so I simply held my arms open.
Leo started forward, throwing himself into my embrace. I breathed in the smell of his hair, and the raging storm of emotion quieted for a moment.
He was small for his age. I held him tightly.
He was speaking to the doctor, but I couldn’t focus on what he was saying.
“Mom, why are you crying?” Leo asked, and leaned back to look up at me.
His silver-gray eyes stared into my soul.
“I’m just happy, Leo Lion. I’m just really happy.”
“You shouldn’t cry when you’re happy, silly!” Leo dissolved into giggles as Chiara tickled him.
“I know, right! Silly Mommy,” Chiara laughed.
“Leo, do you want to come and stay in the children’s ward for a few weeks?” Dr. Evans asked.
Leo shrugged and screwed up his little nose. “Does that mean I’m having my operation?”
“Possibly.”
“After, will I be able to go ice skating?” He turned his excited eyes to me, making me laugh.
“Maybe one day, when you’re all recovered.” I patted his hand.
“Yes!” Leo turned to Dr. Evans. “One day, I’m going to play for the high school team, where my mom works.”
“Are you?”
“Yes. I’ll be good at skating when I finally get to do it.” Leo stretched out the word finally. The room filled with laughter.
I smoothed his hair back. “I’m sure you will be. First, though, let’s work on getting better. Second, world ice-hockey domination.”
“Mom, can we have burgers for dinner?” Leo was holding my hand as we walked through the parking lot half an hour later. The late fall afternoon was crisp. Maine weather was best described in those kinds of terms I’d found over the years. Crisp, bracing, mysterious. In the seven years I’d lived in Maine, I’d gotten familiar with all its faces.
“I’ll see if we have the ingredients at home.”
“Or, we could go to a diner, like everyone else does?”
I gripped his little hand. “Are you telling me you don’t like my cooking, mister?”
Leo shook his head adamantly. “No. You just look tired, that’s all.”
My heart swelled for the little boy who always thought of me before himself. I didn’t deserve him. No one did.
“I’m never too tired to cook for my best boy.”
“Okay.”
I pulled Leo tightly to my side as a fancy car swung into the lot right before us. It was a small hospital and one our insurance barely stretched to. For that reason, our car was always the most beat-up one in the lot. I didn’t care if the high society of Hade Harbor thought I was a charity case. When it came to Leo, I had no pride. There was nothing I wouldn’t do for him. If I had to, I’d crawl on my hands and knees and beg.
Thankfully, my job as an art teacher at the local high school got me medical care for Leo. It could be a lot better, but it was the most I could hope for. I’d been lucky to get the job when I’d escaped to the tiny coastal town, six months pregnant and terrified, nearly seven years ago now.
“Here, strap in,” I instructed as he got into his car seat in the back.
The sound of a car door slamming shut behind me raked along my nerves, and I twisted to look over my shoulder. No matter how long I lived a normal life, far away from the dark and dangerous lifestyle of my childhood, I couldn’t lose the instinct that an attack might come from anywhere, at any time.
“Sophie! Nice to see you,” a deep voice called to me.
I spied the luxury car that had pulled in and the man now striding away from it toward me.
Ugh. Edward Sloane. Local golden boy, billionaire playboy. Since he’d fucked his way through the entire eligible female population of Hade Harbor, excluding Chiara and me, he’d seemed to have set his sights on me. Of course, I didn’t have a terrifying husband like Angelo threatening to crack his skull if he looked at his wife a second too long.
I was alone, and painfully aware of it.
“Mr. Sloane, good morning.”
“How many times have I asked you to call me Edward?”
“You’re paying me to do a job for you, so I’d really prefer not to.”
He leaned his hip against my car, crinkling his thousand-dollar suit.
He had commissioned me for a custom art piece a month ago, and I was slogging my way through it. It wasn’t a labor of love. I was doing it purely for the cash. He had adored his recently deceased mother, his only redeeming feature, and was having me paint her portrait from a photograph.
In my free time, I painted, but rarely portraits. Well, that was a lie. I had plenty of portraits, but they were of one person. No one had ever seen them. He was my ghost with the silver eyes.
The man who I had betrayed. The one who’d never forgive me.
Nikolai Chernov.
The rest of my paintings were landscapes. They were unfailingly dark and ominous. Why, exactly, Edward had chosen me to paint his mother’s portrait, I had no idea, and didn’t want to look too closely at. If he was doing it to get in my pants, he’d be sorely disappointed.
“If I’d known that we couldn’t even be on a first-name basis while you were working for me, I’d have asked you out before starting the painting.”
I smiled uncomfortably, grateful that Leo was already in the car. “And I’d have had to say no. I don’t date, and I’m not interested in starting.”
“You have your hands full with Leo.” Edward nodded, like that could be the only reason I wasn’t interested in going on a date with him.
“Yes, and I’m just not interested in meeting anyone.”
Edward’s eyes flickered down to the simple silver band on my ring finger. “Even widows have to move on sometime, Sophie.”
“Not this one.”
My absolute tone only made Edward smirk. Declaring myself a widow had seemed the fastest way to avoid awkward conversations, I’d decided early on. Even more, there was a piece of my heart, deep down and secret, that felt like one. I’d lost the love of my life and could never see him again. I felt like a widow.
“I won’t stop trying to change your mind. I think we could be great together. One day, you’ll agree,” he said. It sounded like a threat.
“I should have the next stage of the painting by the weekend, if you want to look at it,” I said firmly, crossing my arms over my chest.
A slight tic of irritation in Edward’s jaw was the only sign that I’d pissed him off. He was one of those men whose fragile egos couldn’t take the slightest knock, like being interrupted or refused. He reminded me of my father and Silvio.
“Sure, that would be good. I’m not paying you the big bucks for nothing, am I? Can you bring it by the house? I want to see it in the right light, in the place where it would hang.”
“It’s not at that stage yet,” I protested mildly.
He grinned. “What about the customer always being right? I’m sure you’ll indulge me.” There was something slimy about the way he lingered on the words.
“Mom?” Leo asked from inside the car.
“Hi there, buddy.” Edward poked his head just inside the door.
I fought the urge to pull him back. I didn’t like anyone except myself, Chiara, and Angelo getting too close to Leo. Even a simple cold was hard for him to fight off sometimes.
Leo stared at him. “Hi.” He sounded as enthusiastic as I was when dealing with the local hotshot.
“Wouldn’t it be nice for your mommy to get dressed up and go out with a grown-up and have fun sometimes? I bet if you told her that, she’d stop feeling guilty about wanting to do grown-up mommy things.”
Leo looked at me, confusion etched on his little face. Anger filled me, white-hot. These days, I had a hairlike trigger and was hotheaded as hell. I was always walking a fine line between being okay and completely losing my shit. Angelo told me it was anger. A deep-down fury at the way my life had turned out. Resentment at my father, rage at how everything in my life had only trapped me and hurt the few people I cared about. He was probably right. Maybe one day it would overflow my tired heart, and I’d knife Edward Sloane to death on the hood of his fancy damn car and cackle maniacally while they arrested me.
Sometimes, it felt like the only thing stopping me from that fate was Leo.
I had to hold it together for him.
He needed me.
I shoved between Edward and Leo’s open window.
“Please don’t speak to my son like that. You can’t manipulate me into dating you. I’m not interested. If that’s a problem, I can stop work on your mother’s portrait, and we can go our separate ways.”
Edward raised an eyebrow at me, looking amused at how I’d pushed myself against him to stop him from talking to Leo.
“You misunderstand me, Sophie. I’m not interested in seeing less of you, only more, and I’m a man who always gets my way.”
He reached out and attempted to tuck a stray lock of my dark hair behind my ear. I knocked his hand away before he made contact.
He rocked back on his heels, his eyes narrowing. I knew exactly what his problem was. He was good-looking and rich, and no one in Hade Harbor said no to him. I was just a poor high school teacher, and the single mother of a sick kid at that. I should fawn over him, gobbling up scraps of his attention and begging for more. It drove him crazy that I didn’t care about him. Truthfully, I found his all-American blond Ken-doll looks boring and generic. He was the kind of man who looked like a hero but was cruel and selfish beneath it. He had mean eyes. I was familiar with them. I’d grown up with those eyes, watching my every move. He had Silvio’s eyes.
I turned to check on Leo and met his gray stare. I always found solace, and pain, a double-edged knife, in those steady gray orbs. They reminded me of his father, a man who had been the opposite of Edward Sloane. Nikolai Chernov had looked like a walking nightmare and yet had only ever protected me. A demon with a code. My villainous savior. Go figure.
“You’re making me uncomfortable.”
Edward sighed. “Don’t be dramatic. Come by the house with the painting, and let’s see how it’s getting on.”
He turned away and took two steps before turning back to me. “Do you know what wing of the hospital Leo is being treated in? It’s the Sloane wing. You might not like me, but you’ll make use of the advantages I’ve given this town, won’t you?”
I didn’t know what to say to that. Was it a threat? Maybe it was. I was well versed in the power dynamics of men who liked to throw their weight around. He didn’t want an answer from me, so I didn’t give him one. If it was a threat, with a donor in the works for Leo, I couldn’t afford to piss him off.
“I’ll see you this weekend, Mr. Sloane.”
He smirked. Maybe he thought he looked roguish. He looked like an ass.
“Yes, you will.”
