A Forever Family Collection

“To tell you the truth, I liked going to other people’s houses to get away from Cliff and his father, who were so mean-spirited. He constantly asked me for money, telling me he’d pay me back, but he never did. I didn’t tell on him for fear Ben would take out his anger on me.”

With each revelation Leon’s hands curled into tighter fists.

“Finally Cliff got a job in a garage after school, and in time bought himself a motorcycle. That kept him away from me, but from then on it seemed he was always in trouble with traffic tickets and accidents.

“He was often at odds with both his parents because of the hours he kept with girls they didn’t know. Sometimes he barged into my room, to take out his frustration on me by bullying me. He never lost an opportunity to let me know I’d ruined his life,” she whispered.

“I can’t begin to imagine how you made it through those hellish years, Belle.”

“When I look back on it neither can I. The day I turned eighteen, I got a job in a cell phone store and moved in with three others girls, sharing an apartment. It saved my life to get away from my nightmarish situation.”

“Did Cliff follow you?”

“No. I left while he was gone. He had no idea where I went, and could no longer come after me for money and badger me. The few times I went to see Nadine, I went by her work at the dry cleaners so Cliff never saw me. She knew things were out of control with him and never pushed for me to come home again, because I was over the legal age.”

Certain things Belle had just said brought home to Leon how mean-spirited he’d been to Luciana when she’d first come to live at the palazzo. He’d been an adolescent and had ignored any overtures on her part. Dante had done the same thing to her, following in his big brother’s footsteps.

“I only ever saw him at the church funeral and the attorney’s office after that,” Belle explained. “When he told me my last name, I didn’t know if it was the truth. But I wanted it to be true, so badly that I flew to Rimini on a prayer, knowing I’d seen the last of him, and was thankful.”

Shaken by her revelations, Leon wiped the corner of his mouth with a napkin. “You didn’t learn anything about your birth father through Cliff?”

She drank the last of her tea. “No. I decided he must have disappeared before my mother took me to the orphanage. What other explanation could there be…unless something horrendous had happened and she’d been raped? I shudder to think that might have been the case, and would rather not talk about it.”

“Then we won’t.” If Luciana had been raped, and Leon’s father knew about it, how would he feel about Belle, the innocent second victim? The more Leon thought about it, the more it was like a bomb exploding, the resulting shock waves wreaking devastation. “What’s the name of the orphanage?”

“The Newburgh Church Orphanage. Why do you ask?”

He put down his fork. “Despite the public’s opinion of the Malatesta family, we give to a number of charities. Your story has decided me to send an anonymous donation to the orphanage where you were raised. That’s something I intend to take care of right away.”

A gift no matter how large wouldn’t take away his guilt over his treatment of Luciana, but he realized the only reason Belle was still alive was due to the generosity of others who gave to charity.

“If you did that, the sisters would consider it heaven sent, but you don’t need to do it.”

“I want to. They gave you a spiritual and physical start in life. No payment would be enough.”

“You’re right,” she said in a quiet voice. “One of the sisters in charge reminded us that we were lucky to be there where we could get the help we needed, so we shouldn’t complain. The priest at the church where Nadine took me told me I was blessed to have a birth mother who loved me enough to put me in God’s keeping.”

Hard words for a child to accept, but Leon could only agree. Whatever Luciana’s circumstances at the time, she’d at least had the courage to make certain her baby would be looked after. His admiration for her choice when she could have done something else changed his perception of her. But why had she given up her baby?

Had Luciana loved that baby with all her heart, the way he’d loved Concetta from the moment he’d learned they were expecting? He knew enough about Luciana’s strict upbringing to realize she would have been afraid of letting anyone find out about her baby, causing a scandal that would tarnish the Donatello family name.

Unbelievable that her offspring had grown up into a beautiful, intelligent woman eating lunch with him, no less! You’re enjoying it far too much, Malatesta.

Luciana had lived through a nightmare, and had gone on to make a home for his father and the boys despite Leon’s antipathy. An unfamiliar sense of shame for his behavior over those early years crept into his psyche. He was now paying the price.

“Their goodness to you needs to be rewarded,” he murmured, still trying to digest everything.

“Sometimes I felt guilty for wanting to know about my parents when the sisters tried so hard to keep our spirits up. When Cliff asked me why I wanted to find someone who didn’t want me, I told him it wasn’t important if they didn’t want me. I just needed to know who I am and where I came from. But I’m not your responsibility, and I’ve taken up too much of your time as it is.”

She pushed herself away from the table and stood up. “Now that I have answers to those questions, I can go back to New York. Needless to say, I’ll be indebted to you for the rest of my life. Thank you for bringing me to your villa, and please thank the cook for the wonderful food. If you’ll drive me back to the library, I’d be very grateful.”

Leon got to his feet. “We haven’t even scratched the surface yet.”

“Yes, we have. You and I both know there are reasons why she gave me up. I would never want to cause her pain by showing up uninvited and unwanted.”

“You could never be unwanted!” he declared. He refused to believe it, but that was the father in him speaking, the father who idolized his little girl. Ever since Belle was born, she’d never known the love of her own parents. He couldn’t fathom it.

CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_93cd7d93-9f38-5040-b1f4-3d4368abbddc)

“YOU SAY THAT with such fervency, Leon, but we know the facts, don’t we. My mother came back to Italy and married your father. Unless you’re aware of other information, I’m sure she has never tried to find me.”

“I have no idea and neither do you. Nevertheless—”

“Nevertheless, she and your father have made a life for themselves,” Belle interrupted. “Last year I went to the orphanage for a final time to beg them to tell me something about my roots. I had a talk with the sister in charge.” The tremor in Belle’s voice penetrated to Leon’s insides.

“What did she say to you?”

“She told me she wasn’t at liberty to tell me anything, because my adoption was a closed case. Then she handed me a pamphlet to read. It was called ‘A Practical Guide for the Adopted Child.’ The material was based on research gathered by the psychiatric community. She said we’d discuss it after I’d finished it.”

“And did you?”

“Yes!” she cried. “The whole brochure described me so perfectly, I went into shock.”

“Explain what you mean.”

She moistened her lips nervously. “I’ve always had issues of self-esteem. Not to know who you are because you were given up for adoption means you don’t have an identity. All my life I’ve wanted to know if I looked like my birth parents, or acted like them.

“What if I had sisters and brothers I knew nothing about? What if I came from a large family with half siblings or extended family I would never meet or get to know? It used to drive me crazy, wondering.”

“Belle…at least now you know you have a mother and a stepfamily who are very much alive.”

“Yes,” she whispered, staring blindly out to sea. “If I do meet her I’ll be able to learn about my birth father. I longed for a father, too, and spent many hours daydreaming about him. But I’m terrified, Leon, because I was abandoned. Being abandonable meant I wasn’t good enough to be kept and loved. That’s a very hard thing to accept.”

What she was telling Leon made him sick inside. “Since you don’t know the circumstances of being left at the orphanage, don’t you realize your adoptive father and brother have contributed to a lot of those negative feelings?”

“Of course.” She took a shaky breath. “But to meet my own birth mother after all this time and find out from her own lips I hadn’t been loved or wanted would shatter me. I don’t know if I could handle it. The risk is too great.”

Leon shook his head. “That’s not going to happen to you. If you could see the loving way Luciana treats people…” Luciana was very loving to his daughter when he took Concetta over for visits. “You would see that your mother has an innate tenderness that goes soul deep.” Leon had seen and felt it, but in the beginning he hadn’t wanted to acknowledge it.

“Even so, I know I’m setting myself up to learn that everything I’ve ever thought or dreamed of about her and my father won’t be as I assumed. You’ve told me she hasn’t had other children, but she’s a princess who has lived a life completely different from mine in every way, shape and form. The chances of her even wanting to meet the daughter she gave up are astronomical.”

“That’s not true. You don’t know her as I do.”

“I know you want to believe she’ll be happy to see me, but you can’t know what’s deep in her heart. And there’s your father to consider. The more I know about her and their life, the more I fear a permanent reunion could never be realized.”

“It’s true I don’t know her inner thoughts.” Leon’s mind reeled when he compared the two women’s worlds. And he had no idea how his father would react upon hearing the news that Luciana’s daughter was in Rimini.

“Even if she’s willing to meet me, how will she handle it? She thought she gave me up and would never see me again. Even if meeting me could satisfy the question of what happened to me, it wouldn’t solve the issues she had for giving me up in the first place.