The Fiancé by Stefanie London
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Daniel
Three weeks later...
EVERSINCEAVA walked out of my apartment, I’ve been in a fog. And by fog, I mean a state where I have lost interest in all things that previously gave me pleasure—eating, drinking, negotiating deals, seeing my team achieve great things. I’m reaching into my bag of fucks and coming up empty.
Life after Ava is like stale bread.
I’ve been keeping tabs on her, torturing myself with it. She got the job she wanted at her dream school. It had nothing to do with me—I only made the introduction. From all accounts, the kids love her already. I’m not at all surprised.
But she refused my offer of an apartment in the Cielo, instead wanting to find something on her own. She refused my money as well, and every cheque has come back return to sender. Our arrangement, in the end, left us both with half-measures. My brother doesn’t believe me, and she’s still looking for somewhere to live.
The deal with Henry Livingstone is hanging on by a thread—true to his word, Marc has stayed out of my way. But there’s been delay after delay. I know cold feet when I see it, but I can’t find the energy to properly reel him in. And truthfully, without Marc, the financial side of our business is sluggish. But I can’t pull the trigger on a replacement, either. Our head of accounts is acting in the CFO role, but the guy is no Marc.
Not even close.
The fact is, I want my family beside me. Even after everything that’s happened. But relationships are the downfall of good men...even familial relationships, because they can be tinged with as much animosity and jealousy as romantic relationships.
A sharp knock at the door startles me. I’ve been thinking aimlessly for over an hour—neglecting emails and board papers and the speech I’m supposed to run through for some charity event. None of it seems to matter now.
“Daniel?” My assistant pokes her head through the door. “Your brother is here to speak to you.”
If she registers the shock on my face, she doesn’t say anything, and a second later Marc walks into my office. He looks stylish as ever—his signature light grey suit a stark contrast against his overlong brown hair and full but neat beard. The facial hair is new, and when I look closer, I spot the hollows under his eyes. He looks rough. Ragged, even.
“What are you doing here?”
“We need to talk.”
Lord knows what kind of speculation is flying around the office now—I announced Marc’s departure in a short, undetailed statement last week that led to much office chatter. No one has dared breathe a word of it to me directly. Still, it hasn’t stopped the whispers or conversation that halts abruptly when I walk into a meeting room.
Marc takes a seat, popping the button on his suit jacket and folding his long-limbed body into a leather chair on the other side of my desk. How many times have we sat here, tension thickening the air as our relationship slowly disintegrated before my eyes?
“I thought you’d said everything there was to say,” I respond coolly. I have no idea where this conversation might go, but I’m done trying to placate my brother. Done trying to be the glue in this family.
“I know what happened,” Marc says. “I finally got to the truth.”
Great. Now what fresh, new bullshit does my brother believe? “I won’t keep defending myself—”
“I know you didn’t sleep with her.”
For a moment, I can only sit in stunned silence. “That’s what I’ve been telling you this whole time.”
I’ve never seen Marc look so broken before—he’s like a man who’s watched the world burn to the ground. Like a man who’s lost the only thing he’d ever cared about. He pulls out the photo—the one supposedly depicting Lily and me in a close embrace.
“You said the photo was doctored, and you were right.” Marc points to a small detail—the cuff link on “my” shirt, which pokes out from the sleeve of my suit jacket. It’s tough to make out the design, but they appear to be round with a dark stone in the middle. I squint, but they don’t look familiar to me. “Nonno gave me those cuff links before he passed away—he hardly ever wore them because he hated how he fumbled putting them on. But they were a gift from his big brother and he thought they should remain with the youngest Moretti.”
“Okay.”
“I could have put it down to you borrowing them, even if that does seem unlikely. But I know it can’t be true,” Marc continues. “Something about the date didn’t seem right. I’ve had them in for repair for months. The gemstone fell out and they’ve been waiting for a replacement to come in because I was adamant about having them colour matched. They would have been in the shop at the time this picture was supposedly taken.”
Such a small detail, but so significant.
“It only clicked when I got the call to pick them up a few days ago,” Marc continues. “It triggered something in my memory, and I went back to look at the photo. If the date was fake, then how could I believe any of it?”
He tells me the story—admitting the source of the photo is someone close to us. A confidant. A friend of our uncle’s and a board member of Moretti Enterprises. He’d stood next to me at my grandfather’s funeral, hand on my shoulder.
A board member who’s been quietly objecting to me stepping into the CEO role.
“Turns out the photo is old,” Marc adds. “I found the original online. It was from a charity event about four years ago that I don’t even remember. I’ve attended so many of the damn things they all blur into one in my head.”
White-hot burning rage filters through my system as I listen to the betrayal, to this morally corrupt board member’s plans to oust me. Apparently the “affair” was step one of his wider plans to degrade trust in my ability to lead the company. Marc had been a puppet, blinded by his own jealousy.
“He used me,” Marc says simply. For once, his emotionally charged communication style is dampened. Muted. I’ve never seen him like this before. “He knew that we were at odds over your promotion, and he used it to his advantage. Because he knew you wouldn’t let him run the show here, like our uncle did. He knew you couldn’t be bought or manipulated.”
The underlying message is there: this man thought Marc could be manipulated. And he was right.
This must be painful for him. Marc is headstrong, with an aptitude for numbers and an ego the size of a continent. To find out he was tricked...
“He fed off problems that were already there,” I point out. “We’ve been at odds for longer than that.”
“Ever since I married Lily.”
“I was never jealous of you two—I wanted you to be happy.”
“You told me I was crazy to get married.” Marc throws his hands up in the air. “The night before my wedding you told me I had to protect myself and that I could always get out if things started to go bad.”
It was true, I had said that.
I remember the conversation now. I was genuinely worried for Marc and Lily—genuinely worried, because I care for them both. And the thought of them going down the same dark path that my parents did... I was panicked. Furious that they were so blinded by love as to risk themselves like that.
“I shouldn’t have said that,” I admit, shaking my head. “I didn’t want you two to end up hating one another. I didn’t want to lose either one of you over it.”
“I thought you were in love with her.” Marc’s face is pure fire—not anger directed at me, but shame. Regret. Disbelief. “And then when I heard these whispers that you were sleeping together, my brain joined the dots. I thought that whole conversation was because you were already with her behind my back.”
“Never.”The word comes from down deep; from a dark place packed to the walls with bad memories. “I don’t know how much you remember about Mum and Dad’s divorce...”
Marc’s lip curls. “I remember enough.”
“Do you remember that I used to herd you out into the street at all hours to play soccer? Didn’t matter if it was midnight and we should have been in bed hours ago.”
“We used to throw rocks at Lily’s windows to get her to come and play with us.” A ghost of a smile slips over my brother’s lips.
“It was never about the soccer.” I tilt my head up to the ceiling, trying not to drown in remembering. “I did that so you wouldn’t have to listen to Mum and Dad screaming at each other. So you wouldn’t have to listen to Mum crying that Dad was screwing another one of his assistants. So you wouldn’t accidentally walk in on him with another woman in our mother’s bed like I did.”
Marc’s eyes widened. “You’re kidding me.”
“I’m not. I couldn’t shield you from the fact that they were going to split up—nobody could. But I damn well didn’t want you to see what was going on between them. I didn’t want you to be totally messed up by it.”
Silence settles over us and I take in a slow breath to calm the rapid drumbeat of my heart. I’ve never told Marc half the things I witnessed. We were young at the time and much of the conversation and subtext had flown over my head. But I heard it all. Absorbed it all.
“I never wanted you to see that Mum knew about all the affairs and yet she did nothing. It was almost like a game for him, to see how far he could push her.” I hate my father, for the cruelty he exacted on my mother, and indirectly on us. “I think he wanted to see what it took to break her.”
“And he did, didn’t he?” Marc’s gaze drifts to the window behind me, where hazy Melbourne sunshine floods into the office. “I remember that she didn’t leave her bed for weeks at a time. She wouldn’t let us answer the front door and the phone was always off the hook.”
“I never wanted you and Lily to go through that.” I sigh. “But I managed to put a hand into your relationship when I should have given you a chance to survive without my baggage. I was worried I’d have to choose between you.”
“And who would you have chosen?” Marc asks.
Pain spears my heart so sharply it feels like an actual blade.
“Of course I would have chosen you, Marc. Christ.” I put my words together carefully. “I love Lily dearly. Platonically. She’s like a sister. But you are my brother. You’re my blood. Of course I would choose you.”
Tension clogs the room like a thick soup. My hand twitches and I have to fight the urge to snatch up the letter opener on my desk and slash through the air just to break it up.
“I know you think I don’t care about this family,” Marc says. “But I do. I also wanted to feel like I had a role here, that I wasn’t simply playing your understudy.”
“I can’t change being born first.”
“I know. That’s my issue, not yours.” Marc looks at the desk. “I should have believed you.”
It strikes me then that even though I’ve wanted to hear those words, I had no idea just how much I needed it. “Does this mean you’re coming back to the company?”
Marc shakes his head. “I need to do my own thing. Build something for myself, for my own family.”
“And Lily?”
“I’ve been terrible to her...” He shakes his head. “If I was her, I wouldn’t take me back, but...”
“But?”
“She’s pregnant.”
I blink. For a moment it’s like I can’t breathe, can’t even think. “You’re having a baby.”
“Yeah, she told me the night of the Cielo opening.”
Everything falls into place. This wasn’t just the fact that he believed I was having an affair with Lily... He thought I might be the father of her child. A child he had desperately wanted since they started trying as soon as they were married.
And he’d seen it as one more thing I’d taken from him.
“Congratulations,” I say, finding my throat tight.
“I’m going to be a dad.” In spite of everything, Marc smiles. “And you’re going to be an uncle.”
“Zio Daniel has quite a ring to it.” I shake my head. Marc made a huge error by believing the wrong person, but I know his coming here now to admit his mistakes must have taken a lot of courage.
“I...” He rakes a hand through his hair and swears under his breath. “I know I’ve messed up, okay? But I want you to be part of my kid’s life. I’m going to fix things with Lily and I’m going to be a better dad than what we had growing up.”
All I’d ever wanted was for us to be a real family. But I’d never considered how my taking over the company might affect Marc, and I’d meddled in his relationship by pushing my baggage onto him. Those were my mistakes to own.
“I’d like that,” I say. “And I know you’ll be a far better dad than him.”
For a second, I catch a fleeting glimpse of the cheeky boy I knew from my childhood. “It’s a low bar and you know I always liked a gimme.”
I shake my head, laughing and feeling like my old self again.
“I don’t know where we go from here,” Marc says, rubbing his hands up and down his thighs.
“Forward.”
Marc and I finish our conversation and as he leaves my office, realisation settles over me, like dust finding the earth after a storm. In every other part of my life—with the company and my dreams—I look forward. Move forward. But when it comes to my personal life, I’m firmly rooted in the past. In the hurt my parents inflicted on us, in the baggage I’ve shouldered trying to care for Marc.
I’ve let the past dictate my choices in the here and now. And I planted a seed that might very well have killed my brother’s marriage and our sibling relationship. I pushed Ava away at a time when I needed someone like her in my life. Someone who communicates openly, who wears their heart on their sleeve.
I need to stop letting the past control me. And, most of all, I need to trust myself.
I am not my parents. The same as Marc and Lily are not my parents.
Even when it hurts, family is the most important thing in my life. Only I’ve been stubbornly looking back at the mistakes my parents left behind, thinking my role was to make up for their deficits. But this conversation with Marc has proved one thing: it’s possible to forgive and move forward.
But would Ava forgive me for being pigheaded and blind? For being so stuck in the past I wouldn’t allow myself to see a future with her in it? She was the catalyst for me to break out of my old ways. A woman who loves so hard and so fearlessly she makes me reconsider everything. She’s changed me, irrevocably.
I can’t fix my father’s mistakes, but I can learn from them.
I can be the man who builds others up, instead of tearing them down. Who loves with everything he has. Who could be worthy of love. Her love.
But first I have to tell her the truth.