‘Rocco Silvestri…’ Leo almost spat out the name like it was poison on his lips, ‘…is my half-brother.’
Simone sat up, almost wrenching from his grasp in her rush to do so. Heart pounding.
‘What? But I thought you didn’t know who your father was?’
‘I’vealwaysknown who my father was. I simply never acknowledged him as such and nobody ever asked.’
‘And does he know who y—’
‘Whilst I took my mother’s name, he knowsexactlywho I am.’
She had trouble believing what she’d just heard. Everything written about Leo’s life…where did the fiction end and the truth begin?
‘But the story of you on the streets…’
‘All true. My mother and I weren’t wanted. He started another family and left my mother destitute. Vito Silvestri is a liar, a cheat and a thief.’
Simone couldn’t comprehend what she was hearing and yet she was sure Leo spoke the truth. All of him was so tense. His lips a thin, hard line. He wouldn’t look at her, his gaze somehow distant, lost in a past where the memories were clearly unhappy ones. This was a secret that he’d carried, clearly weighing on him. She wanted to purge him of it, ease that burden somehow, if she could.
Heaven knew how her own had weighed on her.
‘Does Rocco know?’
A dark look cast over Leo’s face, like a thundercloud passing over the sun.
‘That name isneverto enter our bedroom again.’
The words were a growl and she shivered at the possession threaded through them. At the suggestion thattheyhada bedroom, and they’d be in it together once more.
‘Of course he knows. Hemust.’
Simone guessed what Leo said made sense, even though she wasn’t so sure what with the conversation she’d had with the man last night. But she wasn’t on the Silvestri side, she was all on Leo’s. Simone reached out her hand, stroking the soft whorls of dark hair on his chest.
‘You want to know the story,’ Leo said. It wasn’t a question. The words were almost a capitulation, although uttered with a hardness that coloured them with a hint of defiance. She glimpsed in that moment what a proud man he really was.
‘If you want to tell it…’ She didn’t say she believed he needed someone to hear it, even though that’s exactly what she thought.
He turned to look at her, his gaze boring deep. Almost to her soul.
‘I’ll have questions of my own for you.’
Simone had little doubt but if he was giving her some of his truths, then Leo deserved some of hers, no matter how little she might want to tell them.
‘Sounds fair.’
‘So magnanimous,’ he said, his voice droll. ‘Yet it’s a simple enough story. My mother and father were furniture makers and designers. They were in business together. They weren’t married, something I didn’t know till much later. I believed that we were a family. That’s how it seemed to me, as a child.’
‘Did you get your interest in design from them?’
‘From my mother.’ Leo’s jaw clenched. ‘I liked seeing how something plain, with what appeared to have little potential, could be turned into something beautiful.’
‘What happened?’
‘A tale as old as time. My father had an affair with a client who was, by all accounts beautiful, but also extremely wealthy. She convinced him, or perhaps he convinced her, that he’d be better in business on his own and that she could fund it. One day, he packed up and left. Took everything. Left us destitute.’
‘How old were you?’
‘Seven.’
