Mateo as they entered the room. “Your father told me that.” It was one of Rico’s earliest memories.
Cry all you want. They won’t care. Cesar had spoken with the voice of experience after Rico had been denied something he’d desperately wanted that he could no longer recollect.
Cesar had come to reason with him, perhaps because he was tired of having his playmate sent into solitary confinement. Reason was a family skill valued far more highly than passion. Reason was keeping him silent and carrying on today, maintaining order rather than allowing the chaos that would reign if the truth came out.
Doesn’t it make you mad that they won’t even listen? Rico had asked Cesar that long-ago day.
Yes. Cesar had been very mature for a boy of six or seven. But getting mad won’t change anything. You might as well accept it and think about something else.
Words Rico had learned to live by.
He was capable of basic compassion, however.
“I’ll always listen if you need to get something off your chest,” he told his nephew as he lowered them both into an armchair. “But sometimes there’s nothing to be done. It’s a hard fact of life, young man.”
Mateo wound down to sniffling whimpers. He decided to explore Rico’s empty chest pocket.
“Should we read a book?” Rico picked up the first picture book within reach. It was bilingual, with trains and dogs and bananas labeled in English and Spanish.
As he worked through the pages, he deliberately pitched his voice to an uninflected drone. The boy’s head on his chest grew heavier and heavier.
“Thank you,” Sorcha whispered when she peeked in.
Rico nodded and carried the sleeping boy to his crib. The nanny came in with the baby monitor.
Rico followed Sorcha down the stairs saying, “I’ll go find Cesar. If Mateo wakes, don’t tell him what a traitor I am.”
“Actually, I was going to invite you for dinner later this week. There’s something I want to talk to you about. Can we go into Cesar’s office?” Her brow pleated with concern.
Rico bit back a sigh, trying to hold on to the temper that immediately began to slip. “If this is about me remarrying, Mother has passed along your concerns.”
Your sister-in-law thinks it’s too soon, his mother had said yesterday, not asking him how he felt. She had merely implied that in Sorcha’s view, he was in a weakened state. His choice had been to confirm it or go along with his mother’s insistence on finding him a new wife.
“This is something else,” Sorcha murmured, closing the door and waving toward the sofa. “And my imagination could be running wild. I haven’t said anything to Cesar.”
She poured two glasses of the Irish whiskey she had turned Cesar on to drinking and brought one to where Rico stood.
“Really?” he drawled, wondering what she could possibly impart that would need to be absorbed with a bracing shot. He left the whiskey on the end table as they both sat.
“Please don’t be angry with me. I know I was overstepping, suggesting your mother hold off on pressing you to remarry, but I care about all of you.” She sat with her elbows on her thighs, leaning forward, hands clasped. “You may not be the most demonstrative family, but you are family. I will never stay silent if I think one of you needs...” Her mouth tightened.
“Sorcha.” He meticulously gathered his forbearance. “I’m fine.” And, before he had to suffer another swimming gaze of tormented sympathy, he added, “If I were in your shoes, I would understand why you think I’m not, but honestly, you have to stop worrying about me.”
“That’s never going to happen,” she said primly, which would have been endearing if he didn’t find it so frustratingly intrusive. “And there may be other factors to consider.” She sipped her drink and eyed him over it. Then sighed. “I feel like such a hypocrite.”
He lifted his brows. “Why? What’s going on?”
She frowned, set down her drink and picked up her phone, stared at it without turning it on. “Elsa, our nanny, showed me something that came up in her news feed.”
“Something compromising?” Sorcha would have taken up the concern with Cesar unless—Oh, hell. Had something gotten out from the coroner’s report? “Is this about Faustina?” His molars ground together on reflex.
“No! No, it’s not about her at all.” She touched her brow. “Elsa always comes with us when we have dinner at your mother’s. She’s acquainted with the maids there and follows some of them online.”
At the word maid a premonition danced in his periphery. He refused to reach for the drink, though. It would be a tell. Instinctively, he knew he had to maintain impassivity. He couldn’t tip his hand. Not before he knew exactly what was coming next.
“To be honest, I rarely check my social media accounts,” he said with a disinterested brush of non-existent lint from his knee. “Especially since Faustina passed. It’s very maudlin.”
“I suppose it would be.” Her expression grew pinched. She looked at the phone she held pressed between her palms. “But one way or another, I think you should be aware of this particular post.”
Biting her lips together, she touched her thumb to the sensor and the screen woke. She flicked to bring up a photo and held it out to him.
“On first glance, Elsa thought it was Mateo dressed up as a girl. That’s the only reason she took notice and showed me. She thought it was funny that it had given her a double take. I had to agree this particular photo offers a certain resemblance.”
Rico flicked a look at the toddler. He’d never seen Mateo in a pink sailor’s bib and hat, but the baby girl’s grin was very similar, minus a few teeth, to the one he had coaxed out of his nephew before the boy’s head had drooped against his chest.
“I actually keep my privacy settings locked down tight,” Sorcha said. “I’ve heard photos can be stolen and wind up in ads without permission. I thought that’s what had happened. Elsa assured me she never shares images of the boys with anyone but me or Cesar.”
The Montero fortune had been built on the development of chemicals and special alloys. Rico had learned early that certain substances, innocuous on their own, could become explosive when in proximity to one another.
Sorcha was pouring statements into beakers before him. A maid. A baby that looked like other children in the family.
He wouldn’t let those two pieces of information touch. Not yet.
“It’s said we all have a double.” His lifetime of suppressing emotion served him well. “It would seem you’ve found Mateo’s.”
“This is the only photo where she looks so much like him,” Sorcha murmured, taking back her phone. “I looked up the account. Her mother is a photographer.”
Photographer. One beaker began to tip into another.
“This is part of her portfolio for her home business. Her name is Poppy Harris. The mother, I mean. The baby is Lily.”
His abdomen tightened to brace for a kick. A sizzle resounded in his ears. Adrenaline made him want to reach for his drink, but he only lifted his hand to scratch his cheek—while his mind conjured the forest of lilies that had surrounded them in his mother’s solarium as he and Poppy had made love so impulsively.
“Do you...remember her?” Sorcha asked tentatively.
Skin scented like nectarines, lush corkscrews of curly red hair filling his hands as he consumed her crimson lips. He remembered the exact pitch of her joyful cries of release, the culmination of madness like he’d never known before or since.
And he remembered vividly