“Mina.” I touch her shoulder gently. “He’d want to know. He’d want the chance to save his son.”
She flinches at my touch. Still doesn’t speak.
“Mina.” I keep my voice low, coaxing. “Whoever he is, whatever happened between you, none of that matters now. What matters is Leon.”
Pain and fear flicker over her face as she stares at me. For a moment, she sways on her feet, and I reach out to steady her, but she steps away from me, closer to Leon’s bedside.
After taking a deep, shuddering breath, she sits down on the chair and strokes his hair, careful not to disturb the wires and tubes.
“Leon, baby.” Her voice is soft and tender. “Can you wake up for Mama? I need you to open your eyes.”
I frown, confused. The doctor looks equally puzzled.
“Leon.” Mina’s fingers are gentle against his damp curls, but her hand shakes. “Wake up, sweetheart. Just for a moment. Open your eyes.”
The boy stirs. A small sound escapes his lips, something between a whimper and a sigh. His eyelids flutter.
“That’s it, baby. Open your eyes. Look at Mama.”
Slowly, Leon’s eyes open.
The first thing I notice is the yellow. The whites of his eyes are stained gold, a symptom of the liver failure that’s ravaging his small body. It makes my chest ache, seeing this bright, beautiful child so sick.
Then I see his irises.
And the world stops.
They’re not brown. Leon’s eyes have always been brown. Every time I’ve seen him, his eyes have been a warm, ordinary brown.
But the eyes looking up at me now are amber.
Golden amber, bright even through the haze of illness. The same shade I see every morning in the mirror. The same shade my father had, and his father before him, and every Montoni man stretching back generations.
My eyes.
Leon has my eyes.
I can’t breathe. I can’t think. The room is spinning, tilting, the floor dropping away beneath my feet.
But I did the math, and he was conceived five months after I left for Italy.
I look at Mina. She’s watching me, her face pale and drawn, her eyes filled with a fear I’ve never seen before. Not when I locked her in the wardrobe. Not even when I tied her up with my belt.
“I didn’t know what else to do,” she whispers, tears running down her cheeks. “Please don’t punish Leon because of me.”
16
Mina
Cristiano is looking at Leon like he’s never seen him before. He’s rooted to the spot, staring into my son’s amber eyes like he can’t make sense of what he’s seeing.
I can’t breathe.
This is the moment I’ve been dreading since I first saw those two pink lines on the pregnancy test. The moment I’ve lied and schemed and run from for half a decade. I’ve imagined it in my nightmares a thousand times. Cristiano finding out. Cristiano’s face when he realizes what I’ve done. Cristiano’s anger.
But nothing prepared me for the reality of it.
The silence stretches between us, thick and suffocating. Someone has pressed a call button, and it’s beeping and beeping. The toddler in the corner wails. A nurse’s shoes squeak past on the linoleum outside.
