Magic (7 page)

“You won't have to. I'm just asking for your compassion until we know what will happen with the twins.”

“That could take months.” And he knew it too. She had been reading about premature babies on the Internet, and knew a lot more than she had previously, about the risks and what they faced once they were born. And she knew just how damaged they might be if they lived. And how was he going to leave them and Anya then?

“I'll come home as soon as I can. I promise,” he said, sounding sobered by what she had said. “Go to Sardinia. I'll come home after that, even if I can't stay long.”

She stunned herself by what she said next. “If you can't stay, or don't intend to, don't come home.” And then she surprised him again by hanging up. The pass she had given him till then was over. It was time to clean up his act. In Paris, Gregorio sat staring at the phone, and then he went back to intensive care where Anya was watching their babies. She turned to look at Gregorio when he walked in.

“Did you call her?” He knew who she meant, and he nodded. “How was it?” Anya treated Benedetta like the enemy now. She was a threat to her life with him, and the future she wanted for their twins. And she knew that Benedetta had a powerful hold on him.

“The same as always. She's very upset. And she's running the business alone.” Anya had no concept of how vast their empire was, and he had no desire to share that information with her. He looked nervous when he talked about his wife, and even more so when Anya did. Neither woman was willing to tolerate the other for much longer, and he was caught in the middle and being torn in two.

“Did you tell her?” Anya asked with a hard look in her eyes.

“Not yet.” Anya wanted Gregorio to leave Benedetta for good. “I can't tell her something like that over the phone. I have to go to Milan.” And Anya didn't want him to leave her for five minutes. She was terrified that something terrible would happen while he was gone. And they both knew it could, so he stayed. In some ways, she was like a child and had become totally dependent on him.

“You should go as soon as the babies are stronger. I want her to know that you're not hers anymore. You belong to us.” He didn't answer. He might be falling more in love with her every day, but he didn't want to belong to her either. He wasn't ready to make that kind of commitment to her yet, and he wasn't sure he wanted to leave Benedetta, which was why he hadn't mentioned it to her. He was on the fence, pulled by agonizing decisions, with both women making demands of him and thinking they had that right. The only people he was ready to fully commit to at this point were the two infants struggling for their lives. What he felt for them was overwhelming and had come as a surprise.

Benedetta called their friends in Rome the next morning and told them she would come to visit them in Porto Cervo as planned, but alone.

“Gregorio can't come?” Flavia asked her in a solemn voice.

“No, he can't.” They both knew why, and Flavia didn't question her further. “Unless you'd rather not have me alone. I don't have to come.” She offered to let them off the hook.

“Don't be silly, we'd love to have you. I'm just sorry…you know…I know this is a hard time. It must be difficult for him too.” She felt sorry for both of them. They had been friends for twenty years.

“I'm sure it is,” Benedetta said coldly, annoyed by the sympathy for Gregorio, who was ruining so many lives, particularly hers. They agreed that she would come in a week and stay for ten days. They had a beautiful yacht and went out on it every day, and a lovely home where she and Gregorio stayed every year. This would be the first time she would go alone.

Dharam called her two days later, and told her he had business in Rome. He was hoping to come to Milan, and he was disappointed when she said she wouldn't be there, and that she was going to Sardinia to visit friends. He hesitated for a moment and then made a suggestion.

“Could I come to see you there? I could stay at a hotel. It seems a shame to be so close and not see you, but of course if it would be awkward, I'll see you another time.” And as she thought about it, it sounded like fun. As long as he stayed in a hotel, it wouldn't inconvenience Flavia and Francesco, and he could come out on the boat with them in the daytime. He said he could only stay a few days.

“If you don't mind, I think it would be great. They have a wonderful sailboat, you could come sailing with us in the daytime, and we usually go out in the port at night. They're very nice people and old friends.” Francesco was from an important family of bankers and about Dharam's age, and she thought the two men would get along. And Flavia was a well-known jeweler. They both had a lot of style.

She gave Dharam her dates for Sardinia, and he sent her an email the next day, confirming that he would come to Porto Cervo for a weekend, and he had gotten a room at a hotel, the Cala di Volpe. He had asked her how things were going with Gregorio, and she told him nothing had changed. She didn't really want to talk about it. The situation between them was too depressing, and there was no resolution yet.

As she had hoped, the time in Sardinia did her a lot of good. Flavia and Francesco were wonderful to her, and she loved staying at their home and going out on the boat every day. It didn't change the situation with Gregorio, but it gave her some respite and perspective, and when Dharam came, they had a terrific time together. He and Francesco got along just as she thought they would, and it was only on the last night of his stay, sitting on the terrace of her friends' home after Francesco and Flavia went to bed, that Dharam asked her what she thought she was going to do about Gregorio. She could sense his attraction to her, but he had done nothing to put their friendship in jeopardy, or to create an awkward situation for her. He could tell how fragile she still was.

“I don't know,” she told him honestly. “I haven't seen him in over a month. I don't know what he feels for that girl. I suspect more than he did in the beginning. I can hear it in his voice. And he seems to be taking his fatherhood seriously. Maybe he'll stay with her, and perhaps he should,” she said sadly, trying to be philosophical about it.

“What do you want?” Dharam asked her gently.

“I wish none of it had ever happened, but it did. I'm not sure we can recover from it this time, or if either of us will want to. I'll know more when I see him. At least I hope I will. He said he'd come home after I get back from Sardinia. I'm not sure if our marriage is still salvageable. I don't even know if I love him the way I did. I love him, but everything is changed.”

“My wife wanted to come back to me after her romance fell apart with the actor, but it was too late for me,” he said quietly. “Only you can know how you feel. And maybe it's still too soon. This has been quite a shock.” He felt deep compassion for her.

“Yes, it has,” she agreed as their eyes met, and he held a hand out and took hers.

“I would love to spend time with you, if things don't work out between the two of you. I don't wish that on you, if you want to stay married to him. I just want you to know that I have strong feelings for you. But if you stay with him, I will be happy to be your friend.” He made no move to kiss her, and had the utmost respect for her.

“Thank you,” she said softly, and they sat in silence for a while in the moonlight as he held her hand. They had had a lovely time together with her friends, and he was leaving the next morning, flying back to Rome, and then to Delhi on his plane.

“You can always call me if you need me,” he said before he went back to his hotel, and she thought about him that night. They had breakfast together the next day with Francesco and Flavia, and then he gave Benedetta a chaste kiss on the cheek and left, after he thanked Francesco and Flavia for hosting him so generously on their boat. They had been enormously impressed with him, and said as much to Benedetta after he left.

“What a terrific person.” It was clear to them that Dharam would have liked to be more than a friend to Benedetta, but he was a gentleman and never stepped over the line, which they admired him for. He didn't want to complicate her already difficult situation, which was noble of him. And she had to face Gregorio when she went home. Benedetta was relieved that Dharam had put no pressure on her.

Gregorio came to Milan two days after she returned, and after they talked for a while, he promised her that as soon as he could decently leave Anya, he would. He was hoping that the twins would be stable in another month, if they improved, and by the end of the summer, he wanted to be home in Milan.

“Has she agreed to that?” Benedetta asked him pointedly. “I don't want any more drama after you come home.”

“She'll have to agree,” Gregorio said seriously, although this was not what he had promised Anya before he came home. But being in Milan and seeing Benedetta, in their home, had told him what he needed to know, and brought him to his senses. Despite his very emotional tie to Anya, and new feelings for her, he wanted to come back to his wife. And when they were older, he would want visitation with the twins. But he realized that no matter what he and Anya had just been through together, their relationship couldn't last, she was too young, and didn't have Benedetta's depth. Seeing Benedetta, in all her dignity and grace, he knew that this was where he belonged.

He stayed for two days, and then he went back to Paris. He didn't tell Anya what he had decided, there was time for that, and then the night he got back to the hospital, the worst happened. Their baby boy, who had fought so valiantly to live, had a cerebral hemorrhage, and there was nothing they could do to stop it. He was brain dead after the hemorrhage. Gregorio and Anya stood next to his incubator sobbing and bereft when he died. The nurses let them hold him one last time, and then they took him away. And now they had to plan a funeral for him. It was unthinkable. Gregorio sent Benedetta a text that night. He couldn't have told her on the phone. She closed her eyes and cried when she read it, wondering if the nightmare would ever end.

Gregorio made the arrangements for the funeral himself at the crematorium at Père Lachaise cemetery. It was the worst moment of his life, with the tiny casket with Antonio's body in it, and Anya sobbing hysterically in his arms. And then she made him promise he would never leave her again. He didn't have the heart to tell her that he had promised Benedetta he would return. He couldn't do that to Anya. Instead they sat watching their infant daughter all night, praying that the same thing wouldn't happen to her. She was just as fragile as her brother had been. Gregorio doubted now that she would survive. And Anya was inconsolable over the loss of their son. It would have been impossible and too cruel to tell her he was leaving her too. He had to wait for the right time.

Anya clung to him constantly after that, and he realized that she wasn't strong enough to survive his leaving her. She talked of suicide if their baby daughter died, and it finally dawned on him that his irresponsible lark of the year before had turned into a tragedy of such proportions that there was no escaping it now. He had to stay with her, and Benedetta would have to understand. Perhaps he could go back to her one day, but not now. He couldn't have Anya's blood on his hands. She had all the drama of her fellow countrymen and a very dark side. Benedetta was clearly the stronger of the two, and Anya needed him more.

And with a heavy heart, Gregorio flew to Milan again, this time to tell Benedetta what she had feared, and exactly the opposite of what he had promised two weeks before. He felt like a madman and a monster. He was leaving Benedetta and felt he had no choice after the death of his son, and the condition Anya was in. He didn't want to be responsible for her death too. And he knew Benedetta was powerful and stable enough to survive. Anya wasn't.

Benedetta looked at him in shock when he told her. He was agonized and deathly pale. He tried to put his arms around her, and she pulled away from him as though he were a snake about to strike. In fact, he was. She had waited all this time to hear him say he couldn't come back, only weeks after he had promised her he would. His promises meant nothing, he was like a ball bouncing between two women, and changing his mind every day, but no longer.

“I'll stay involved in the business, of course,” he said sympathetically. “You can't run it alone.” He had already thought it out and made the decision.

“I have been running it since you left. And no, you won't stay involved. I've considered it a lot, in case you made this decision. I want our partnership dissolved. I will buy your shares from you, but you can't keep an interest in our business. You are leaving that too.” She said it with an iron resolve.

“That's ridiculous,” he said, staring at her in disbelief. “Our families have collaborated for generations—you can't simply dissolve that. Why would you punish them for this unfortunate mistake?” He was still calling it that instead of the disaster it had become.

“Why should I be punished? I've spoken to our lawyers, and the partnership can be dissolved as part of our divorce.” Her face was set in stone as she announced it to him, and he looked horrified.

“What divorce? I said I was leaving you, not divorcing you. We don't need to get divorced.”

“You may not, Gregorio, but I do. I'm not going to have one of those marriages where you live with your mistress and her child, and I'm the wife you abandoned but stay married to, and run our business on top of it. What kind of life is that for me? And when you get rid of her, you come back to me for a while, and then find someone else? No.” She smiled at him icily. She was better prepared than he was for what came next, and had braced herself for it. “If you want out, then you need to be out completely, of our marriage and our business. It's over, Gregorio. You've made your decision. Now go back to her. I wish you luck with her and your little girl.” She stood up then as a signal for him to leave. He was in shock.