“We had fun.” I smile. Draven says nothing. His face remains impassive. “Vito was so different from the men I had known before him.”
“Italian. I bet your father loved that.”
“He didn't know.” I smile slightly. “That wasn't a conversation I wanted to have anytime soon with him. What would I have said to him? ‘Dad, I'd like you to meet my new boyfriend. This is Vito. Vito DeMarco. Sorry, you hate Italian's, but at least he's not black.’? He would've killed me, and I kinda wanted to see where things with Vito were going.” I shrug.
“I fell in love with Vito so fast, and he loved me just as much. It wasn't even two weeks before he told me loved me. It was just a month, and he said he wanted to marry me. I wanted that so much. I could see it all. Our wedding day, our first dance, the day we became parents, all the special times we'd have shared. However, I knew deep down it would never happen; my father would've killed me first.
“Vito told me that we could leave, he'd take me to Italy with him, I would be safe there with him. He was due to go back anytime, and he didn't want to leave me behind with a racist family. I was too scared to leave Brooke behind. I didn't want her to suffer the way I did at the hands of my father. My mother used to beat me when I was a kid, but she never touched Brooke. My dad, however, hated both of us. I didn't want him ever to hurt her. I was older, and it was my place to protect her.
“Anyway, I told Vito that I couldn't leave, that I wouldn't leave my sister. He got angry, started yelling about stuff that just wasn't true. I wasn't staying because of my father, not in the way he thought.” I concentrate on Draven's thumb stroking rhythmically over my hand. It's comforting, that silly little thing that probably means nothing much at all to him. “He walked away from me, and I never saw him again.”
“Never?”
I shake my head. “He jumped in his hire car, drove away from me, and he didn't look back. I never even had the chance to tell him that I was pregnant. I needed him to help me, to understand. I wasn't ready to be anyone's mother. I was still in school. I was scared, confused. What I didn't need was for him to leave me like that, and that's what I thought, that he'd left me. I heard from his brother the very next day that when he'd driven away from me...” I swallow back my emotions.
Vito and I may have only been together four months, but I knew then that he was the love of my life. I had hoped that even though we'd argued, even though he drove off in anger, he would come back to me, to tell me that we could work it all out, that we'd be okay.
“What happened?” Draven's voice is so calming. How can a man as violent and dangerous as Draven Vidal be so damn sweet when it's needed the most?
“Vito crashed the car and drove over a bridge. He was killed before the car even hit the water.”
“Oh, Marnie.” I shake my head, shaking off his need to hold me. I don't want him to hold me right now. I don't want him to say anything, I just want him to listen to me.
“Brooke was the only one who knew inside my family what Vito meant to me. I'd kept it a secret without my brother's or my father finding out. How? I don't know, but I couldn't hide my pain as much as I tried. I couldn't attend Vito's funeral because his family flew his body home to Italy. Brooke helped me with a small memorial for him. That's when my dad found us. He beat the shit out of me.”
Yeah, he did. I had to protect Brooke. I made sure she ran home and didn't look back. I even yelled at my dad that I was pregnant. Yes, he was beyond angry that I was pregnant with an Italian's baby. He shouted how I should be grateful that Vito was already dead because he would've killed him, but he didn't force me to have an abortion.
“My dad made me keep my pregnancy a secret. He didn't believe in abortion no matter who the father was. He sent me away and told my mom that I'd gotten a summer job on a ranch ten miles away and I'd be staying there. She never questioned it. My mother never questioned anything. I was sent to stay with Peter; he was the only other person who knew.
“I never saw a doctor, and I never had an ultrasound. I gave birth six weeks prematurely, with no one to help me give birth but my brother's wife.” I breathe deeply through my nose.
I have never spoken about them, not to anyone. It's not as easy as I thought it would be. However, I'll press on. Draven needs to hear this, and I need to get it out. “They were so beautiful,” I smile as I remember what it was like to hold them, to breathe them in as I kissed their heads, to tell them how much I loved them — my tiny little girls.
“I named them Lydia and Amber. They each had tufts of dark hair like their daddy, and I knew they'd be more like him than me.” I wipe a tear from my cheek. A tear from what I've lost. “Amber was born with...” I swallow hard and blink, letting the tears fall from my eyes.
It hurts me so much to think about the things Peter and my father said to me about my little girl. It wasn't her fault that she wasn't born like Lydia, I didn't love that baby any less, and I knew if Vito were still alive, he'd love her just as much as I did.
“With what, sweetheart?”
“With Down Syndrome.” I look at Draven, waiting for his expression to change, to see the pity or disgust in his eyes. Believe me, that's all I saw from those around me when they looked at my little girl. However, I don't see any of that in Draven's eyes. All I see is love, and it makes my heart beat faster inside my chest.
“My father and my brother took one look at my little girls before they yelled at me because they weren't the same. I couldn't even give birth to normal babies. My dad was so angry with me. He told me that it was bad enough I'd shacked up and got pregnant by a filthy...” I stop and swallow back the word. I'm not a racist person, and I won't use the word my father used, especially not in front of the man I love. “But now I'd saddled his family with a mongol.”
My heart aches inside my chest. My beautiful little girl didn't deserve to have her own grandfather calling her such names. She was perfect in my eyes, she is perfect, and she always will be.
“She's not that, Draven, she's perfect. She's beautiful.”
“I know, baby.” He clutches my hand tighter, his way of telling me that's exactly how he sees her too.
“Peter told me it would be best if I nursed the babies because they might not be strong enough to survive, especially Amber, and that dad had told him that he was not to take me to the hospital for any reason. Not even if one of us was dying. If we were, he was to let us.”
“Jesus Christ!”
“I was scared that something would be wrong with them, terrified for Amber especially because I'd read about babies with Down's having all sorts of problems and needing extra help. They were premature, and my father wouldn't allow me to take them to the hospital to get checked out. God must have been looking out for us because they were perfect, and Amber was so strong, Draven, they both were. Every day they grew more beautiful. Until the day my dad arrived with a woman I had never seen before.
“I'd just finished bathing Lydia and Amber when I came out of the bedroom holding them, and there they were. Dad said the woman's name was Ada and she was there to take my babies. I clutched them to my chest and refused, but he ripped them from my arms one by one. I couldn't hold on as hard as I tried.” I clasp my hand over my mouth and sob.
It hurts so much. I've tried so hard not to think about this, so damn hard. However, my father was an even crueler man when it came to my babies.
“It's okay, Marnie.”
“It's not okay, Draven. I was weak and pathetic, and I had to watch that woman walk away with my baby girls. They were just a week old, and they needed me. I needed to get Amber checked out to make sure her heart was healthy. I begged, pleaded, and cried my eyes out to a man who cared nothing for what he was doing to me. He told me that Lydia and Amber were going to live with Ada, that there would be no trace of their existence, nothing written legally, and if I ever told anybody about them, he'd kill them. He also said that I should be grateful that he was paying someone to take care of my mistake, especially the little mo
ngol whom he'd rather just drop in the river to drown.
“Then Hank softened a little, and told me if I was a good girl, never spoke of this and did everything he told me, he'd allow me to see Lydia and Amber twice a year. Once on their birthday and then again on Christmas Eve, but I would be blindfolded when Peter drove me to where they'd be. He would never allow to me to know where Lydia and Amber were living. He didn't want me to get any ideas...”
I lean into the contact of Draven's hand on my face. “And did he keep that promise?”
“Yes,” I nod. “But then Hank was killed, and Peter refused to take me to see them.” I shrug. “If I had stayed with Paul, I would have been able to persuade Peter to take me. But I couldn't stay with him any longer. I knew the day was coming where Paul would kill me, and I had to think of our baby. I just feel like I had to make an impossible choice, our baby or my girls, but I knew I couldn't have both. I missed their fifth birthday after I promised them that I would never miss their birthday, and one day I would take them away from that place and bring them home with me.”
“Why didn't you just take them, Marnie? There was no reason you couldn't.”
“Paul was the reason I couldn't. It was only two weeks after I had Lydia and Amber that my father arranged my marriage to Paul. Three weeks after their birth, we were married. I didn't even know him, not really, but my dad said it would do me good, would stop me speaking to those beneath me. He meant people of color.”
Draven grunts and rolls his eyes.