Marco nodded. He pulled out his phone, the screen glowing bright in the darkness. Sent the text.
Something’s happened. I need to tell you before you hear it from anyone else. Can you come to Blueberry Hill?
Sophia’s response came almost immediately.
Where is that?
North Carolina.
On my way.
He pocketed the phone and stood, his legs stiff from the cold. Tomorrow he’d meet Christina’s family—really meet them, without the shield of not knowing. He’d already met most of them at the opening, but none of them knew what they knew now. Tomorrow he’d start figuring out how to be a father. Tomorrow Sophia would arrive with all her sharp edges and protective fury, and he’d have to explain how the brother she’d spent her whole life cleaning up after had finally done something that couldn’t be undone.
The front door was unlocked. He slipped inside, past the dying embers in the great room fireplace, past the kitchen that still smelled of pot roast and apple cider. The stairs creaked under his feet as he made his way to his room.
Sleep wouldn’t come easily tonight. But for the first time in longer than he could remember, that felt okay. He had too much to think about, too much to plan.
CHAPTER 26
SOPHIA
The gravel drive swallowed her Louboutins. Sophia felt the heel sink, caught herself on the car door, and stared down at the red-soled perfection buried in the dirt. The driver from the airstrip—a weathered man in a flannel shirt who’d barely spoken three words the entire ride—waited with her Louis Vuitton rolling bag, his expression somewhere between amused and pitying.
“Careful there.” He shifted the bag from one hand to the other. “Ground’s soft from last night’s rain.”
She yanked her foot free, leaving a divot in the drive, and surveyed the building in front of her. The Blueberry Inn sat in the late September sunshine, its white clapboard siding and wraparound porch looking like something from a tourism brochure. Bronze chrysanthemums spilled from planters along the railing.
This was where Marco had lost his mind. This quaint little inn in a town that didn’t appear on most maps. Four days since his cryptic text—Something’s happened. I need to tell you before you hear it from anyone else—and she’d spent every one of them canceling meetings and demanding answers from Colton, who’d finally broken last night after her third call in two hours.
A baby. Marco’s baby. With some American woman.
“You can leave the bag on the porch.” She fished cash from her structured Hermès handbag. “I’ll manage from here.”
The driver pocketed the money, tipped his cap, and drove away without comment. Sophia stood alone, the crunch of his retreating tires fading into birdsong and the whisper of wind through trees just beginning to turn gold at their edges. Smoke curled from the inn’s chimney, carrying the scent of smoke and something sweeter—apple, maybe—across the cool air.
She smoothed her black cashmere coat and walked toward the door, each step threatening to drive her remaining heel into the soft ground. By the time she reached the porch, her shoes were splattered with mud and her jaw ached from clenching.
The front door opened before she could reach for the handle.
Marco stood in the doorway, looking nothing like the brother she’d last seen in Milan. No tailored suit, no artfully tousled hair. He wore a flannel shirt—flannel, like some kind of lumberjack—and jeans. His face had changed too. Something softer around the eyes. Something almost peaceful.
It made her want to shake him.
“Sophia.” He stepped back to let her in. “You came.”
“You asked me to.” She swept past him into a foyer that smelled of wood polish and warm cinnamon. Exposed beams crossed the ceiling. A stone fireplace crackled with a small fire. Charming, she admitted grudgingly. Tasteful. “Though your explanation left something to be desired. ‘Something’s happened’ could mean anything from a business crisis to?—”
“To finding out I have a daughter?”
The words hung in the air between them. Sophia set her handbag on the front desk.
“Colton told me. Eventually.” She turned to face him, keeping her expression neutral despite the chaos churning beneath it. “A baby, Marco. You have a baby with some woman I’ve never heard of, and you’ve been here for—what? Almost a week? Playing house while I’ve been fielding calls from Brioni and making excuses to our parents?”
“I didn’t know.” His voice was quiet but steady. “Not until a few days ago. Christina—the mother—she never told me. She didn’t even know who I was when we...” He rubbed a hand over his face. “It was one night, Sophia. In Miami, almost a year ago. Neither of us wanted names or stories. And then she found out she was pregnant, and she looked me up, and she decided her daughter was better off without the Castellano circus.”
“Without—” Sophia stopped, recalibrating. “She knew who you were and chose not to contact you?”
“She saw the tabloids. The yacht parties, the models, the scandals you’ve spent years cleaning up.” Marco’s mouth twisted. “Can you blame her? If you read about me in a magazine, would you want me anywhere near your child?”
