or the first fifteen minutes of the ride back to London, the two passengers in the back of the Rolls Royce were completely silent, each lost in their own tormented thoughts.

Then the silence was broken.

“Nathaniel –” Victor began.

“Don’t,” Nate’s voice cracked like a whip.

Victor held his breath for a moment.

There was not a single man on earth he would allow to speak to him that way except Nathaniel.

Especially now.

Victor sighed, looked out the window and instead of seeing the rolling pastureland, his vision filled with Lily.

Jesus, fucking, God, he thought. Laura couldn’t tell him not to curse so blasphemously in his thoughts and more than likely, if she’d witnessed the nightmare in that conference room, she’d have a few curses of her own.

The minute Victor walked in the room, seeing Lily so close and cosy with her lawyer, looking so beautiful, stylish and serene, he’d wanted to tear her head off.

Ten minutes later he’d had the crazy, sudden, unprecedented urge to get down on his knees and beg her forgiveness.

She’d named her child Natasha, for Nathaniel.

She’d named her child after him, Victor, she’d given her baby, Nathaniel’s baby, Victor’s name.

And she’d nearly died doing it.

And after ten minutes more, Victor had been too broken to know what to do and that was a feeling he’d not felt for decades.

He was broken because she was broken. Broken because the bright, vivacious girl who had walked innocently into his home eight years before had been all but destroyed.

That suit she wore was camouflage, making it not so easy to see all that had been the glorious Lily was lost. The longer the attorneys talked the more she retreated, the further she got from them, from anyone and especially from Nate. She was so thin, so pale, she actually looked at the end in physical pain.

All because of Victor’s two, spoiled-rotten, dead-rotten children.

He was to blame for this. Victor.

His past sins had come home to roost.

“Nathaniel, we have to talk,” he tried again.

Nate’s head slowly turned from the window he was staring unseeingly out of and his eyes focussed on Victor. At the look in his son’s eyes, Victor immediately had nothing to say.

Then Nate spoke.

“Eight years,” he said.

Victor closed his eyes in pain.

“They cost us eight years,” Victor heard Nathaniel say.

Victor opened his eyes again. “I’ll take care of Danielle and Jeffrey,” he vowed.

And he most definitely would.

A muscle in Nate’s jaw jumped and he turned his head back to his contemplation of the scenery.

Victor went on. “Son, I swear to you, they’ll wish they were never born.”

And he meant it. They were his children by blood but they were his children no more.

Neither Nate nor Victor for a second questioned that Jeff and Danielle had done exactly what Lily’s attorney had said they’d done. The whole time Laura ranted and raved and Victor cursed and shouted after Lily disappeared, they didn’t say a word.

It wasn’t as if Lily had a great offer to go shopping in Milan that she couldn’t resist and that’s why she left Nate. She was at home in Indiana grieving the loss of both of her parents. Then at twenty-two years of age, grieving, also pregnant, she came back to Nate only to be told he was dead.

And his children knew and neither of them said one single word.

Not only that, they’d participated in this terrible deception. Jeff likely took the note and Danielle…

Victor shook off his thoughts. He’d deal with them later.

“What are you going to do?” Victor asked.

Nate sat silent.

Victor continued. “Nathaniel, you saw her. She’s –”

“I saw her,” Nate bit off, his voice eloquently stating, without a great many words, exactly what he’d seen and exactly how it affected him.

“You have to…” Victor started but didn’t finish. How did one go about piecing together a shattered person?

Victor thought that Nathaniel could do anything he put his mind to doing. He believed this with everything he was.

However, this was going to be his son’s mightiest challenge.

“What are you going to do?” Victor asked again.

Nate took in a deep breath and then slowly let it out.

He turned to Victor and looked him directly in the eyes.

“I’m going to put my family back together.”

Nate stood at the floor to ceiling windows that made up the entire wall to the vast living room in his penthouse apartment.

As he drank from a tumbler that was filled with two cubes of ice and a lot of vodka and smoked what would be one of his final cigarettes (Lily didn’t like his smoking and he was not about to smoke in front of his seven year old daughter), he watched the sun set on London.

Lily had come back to him.

He tried to make this his only thought. Any of the others that were determined to crowd in his head were too painful to bear.

Like her pale, lifeless face, her fidgeting hands, her once-curvaceous, now nearly-too-thin body.

Like the fact that his brother and sister had connived, lied and stole away eight years of their happiness.

Like her horrible voice saying, “Let’s just get this over with.”

Like her haunted look when Nate’s attorney had suggested that the news of her parent’s death would be “entertaining”.

Like her flinching at feeling his hand on her arm.

Like her once expressive eyes now blank and looking through him like he wasn’t there.

Like the fact that he’d purposefully, with great relish, got her pregnant which nearly caused her to die.

Like her telling him, “You told me you’d always take care of me.”

Like the fact that he made promises to her, promises he didn’t keep, promises he didn’t even attempt to keep.

Like her whispering, “You told me you’d never let me go.”

On this final thought, he turned swiftly from the window and threw the tumbler of vodka across the room so savagely his arm was a blur. The tumbler exploded on the wall well across the room, dead centre of an exorbitantly expensive painting.

And then he heard a small, fearful noise and his head came around.

Laura was standing just inside the front door.

She was wearing a stylish dove grey skirt and a soft blue blouse. Both of these were crinkled and in disarray. Her face showed she’d been crying, it was mottled and red, her makeup smudged and worn.

She looked ravaged.

Nate turned fully to her. “How did you get here?”

“I have a key,” she explained unnecessarily for of course he knew she had a key.

“That’s not what I meant, tell me you didn’t drive in that state.”

She didn’t answer for a moment and they stood there, mother and son, the colossal expanse of his living room separating them physically; something else entirely separating them emotionally.

Then she smiled but it was a terrible, sad smile.

“Of course, my Nathaniel, after what happened to you today, you’d worry about me driving.” She shook her head. “I took a taxi.”

Nathaniel made no response; instead he leaned toward a table near him and put out his cigarette in a crystal ashtray.

Laura kept watching him then she said softly, “Victor called the children to the house. He’s disowned them. He sacked Jeffrey. He cut off Danielle’s allowance. They both only have their trust funds of which, Victor tells me, they’ve already used a significant portion.”

Nathaniel kept his silence. There was nothing to say except that it was all too late and everyone knew that fact quite painfully well enough already.

“He did this with my blessing,” she whispered. “I can’t say, I can’t explain how sorry…”

She didn’t finish and he watched her swallow convulsively, fighting back the tears.

“I now have only one son,” she finished, her voice aching.

The pain on her face was wretched, unlike anything Nate had ever seen before. She was watching him closely, waiting for a reaction but he didn’t move.

She seemed to come to some conclusion. She nodded slowly and then started to turn to leave.

That was when Nate spoke. “And a granddaughter.”

Her head snapped around and she stared at her son.

Nate went on. “And, if I can convince her, a daughter-in-law.”

“Oh Nate.” She used his shortened name for the first time in their acquaintance and flew across the room, throwing herself at him and bursting into tears. “I’m a terrible mother,” she wailed as his arms closed around her, “terrible.”

Nate’s held her more tightly.

“You aren’t a terrible mother,” he murmured.

“I lost the first one, my first baby boy.” She raised her tearful eyes to him. “I promised God if I had any babies, I’d do anything. I’d make them so happy. I’d give them everything they wanted. And look! Look what I created!”

She buried her face in his chest and Nate dropped his cheek to rest on the top of her head.

There was nothing to say to take away her pain, no words which would assuage her guilt. So he offered her none.

Against his chest, she muttered, “I knew it when it was too late. I knew I’d ruined them but there was nothing I could do. Then God gave me a second chance,” she lifted her head, dislodging his and he stared down at her, “you.”

“Laura…” At that, he didn’t know what to say.

“I want to come with you tomorrow.”

Nate knew exactly what he was going to say to that. “Laura, no.”

Her arms squeezed him tightly. “You can’t go there alone. I won’t let you go alone. And I have to face Lily, I have to…” she stopped then immediately started again, “I want to meet my granddaughter.”

Nate shook his head. “Lily isn’t –”

“I know,” she interrupted, her warm eyes beginning to fill with fresh tears, “Victor told me. Nathaniel, she has to know we…” Laura hesitated and then went on, “she has to know she isn’t alone anymore.”

“I don’t think –”

“Please,” she begged, “I have to do something.” She said this last with desperation.

Nate started to relent because he knew that feeling. He felt that feeling himself when he’d heard she’d died while having his child. The child he’d intentionally planted inside her and then left her to bear on her own.

Without thinking, Nate had come out of his chair and his intention had been to pick Lily up and carry her out of the room. Carry her someplace safe where he could spend every ounce of energy, every pound he’d earned, every day of the rest of his life if it was required to bring back her joy, bring back the girl who’d clapped and shouted her delight at a ride on a motorcycle, the girl who’d trusted him so easily with her body and her heart, the girl who’d looked at him with awe.

“Please,” Laura asked, taking him out of his dark thoughts.

Nate used his thumb to wipe away a tear on his mother’s cheek.

“She’s not the same,” he warned.

Her face lit, it wasn’t a glowing light but there was hope.

It was the first hopeful thing he’d seen that day. Perhaps the first hopeful thing he’d seen in eight years.

“You have to be prepared, Laura, she’s not the Lily you knew.” Nate felt it necessary to make certain she understood what she’d be facing the next day.

Laura nodded. “She will be. I know she will. You’ll make it better, Nathaniel. You can sort anything out, I know you can. You’ll sort this out too.”

At her words, he felt an odd stirring in his chest that he ignored.

And he hoped his mother was right.