Will You Marry Me?: A Marriage Made in Italy / The Courage To Say Yes / The Matchmaker's Happy Ending

After putting her fork down, Belle told him what had transpired at the attorney’s office. Leon was astounded by what he heard. For her adoptive brother to take the money before telling her what she’d been desperate to know all her life sickened Leon. What made Cliff more despicable to him was to learn he hadn’t let her keep the money that was legally hers.

“Tell me about your life with the Petersons. I’d like to hear.”

She looked at him for a minute as if testing his sincerity. Then she began in a halting voice. “The day I was taken to their house, Cliff followed me into the small room that would be my bedroom. He grabbed me by the shoulders and told me his dad hadn’t wanted a screaming baby around the house. That’s why they’d picked me. But I’d better be good and stay out of his dad’s way or I’d be sorry, Cliff said. And in fact his father was so intimidating, I tried hard to be obedient and not cause trouble.”

Leon grimaced. “They should never have been allowed to adopt you.”

“Laws weren’t so strict then. The orphanage was overcrowded. You know how it is.”

As far as Leon was concerned, it was criminal.

“Ben was a car salesman who loved old cars and had restored several, but it took all their money. He lost his job several times because of layoffs, and had to find employment at other car dealerships. The money he poured into his hobby ate up any extra funds they had. He was an angry man who never had a kind word. The more I tried to gain his favor, the more he dismissed me.”

And destroyed her confidence, Leon bet.

“Nadine held a job at a dry cleaners and was a hard worker who tried to make a good home for us. She took me to church. It was one of the few places where I found comfort. But she was a quiet woman unable to show affection. It was clear she was afraid of her own son and stayed out of her husband’s way as much as possible. I never bonded with any of them.”

“How could you have under those circumstances?” Leon was troubled by her story.

“One good thing happened to me. As soon as I was old enough, I did babysitting for people in the neighborhood to earn money. I’d helped out with the younger children in the orphanage and knew how to play with them and care for babies. I love them.” Her voice trembled.

There was a sweetness in Belle that got under his skin.

“To tell you the truth, I liked going to other people’s houses to get away from Cliff and his father, who were so mean-spirited. He constantly asked me for money, telling me he’d pay me back, but he never did. I didn’t tell on him for fear Ben would take out his anger on me.”

With each revelation Leon’s hands curled into tighter fists.

“Finally Cliff got a job in a garage after school, and in time bought himself a motorcycle. That kept him away from me, but from then on it seemed he was always in trouble with traffic tickets and accidents.

“He was often at odds with both his parents because of the hours he kept with girls they didn’t know. Sometimes he barged into my room, to take out his frustration on me by bullying me. He never lost an opportunity to let me know I’d ruined his life,” she whispered.

“I can’t begin to imagine how you made it through those hellish years, Belle.”

“When I look back on it neither can I. The day I turned eighteen, I got a job in a cell phone store and moved in with three others girls, sharing an apartment. It saved my life to get away from my nightmarish situation.”

“Did Cliff follow you?”

“No. I left while he was gone. He had no idea where I went, and could no longer come after me for money and badger me. The few times I went to see Nadine, I went by her work at the dry cleaners so Cliff never saw me. She knew things were out of control with him and never pushed for me to come home again, because I was over the legal age.”

Certain things Belle had just said brought home to Leon how mean-spirited he’d been to Luciana when she’d first come to live at the palazzo. He’d been an adolescent and had ignored any overtures on her part. Dante had done the same thing to her, following in his big brother’s footsteps.

“I only ever saw him at the church funeral and the attorney’s office after that,” Belle explained. “When he told me my last name, I didn’t know if it was the truth. But I wanted it to be true, so badly that I flew to Rimini on a prayer, knowing I’d seen the last of him, and was thankful.”

Shaken by her revelations, Leon wiped the corner of his mouth with a napkin. “You didn’t learn anything about your birth father through Cliff?”

She drank the last of her tea. “No. I decided he must have disappeared before my mother took me to the orphanage. What other explanation could there be...unless something horrendous had happened and she’d been raped? I shudder to think that might have been the case, and would rather not talk about it.”

“Then we won’t.” If Luciana had been raped, and Leon’s father knew about it, how would he feel about Belle, the innocent second victim? The more Leon thought about it, the more it was like a bomb exploding, the resulting shock waves wreaking devastation. “What’s the name of the orphanage?”

“The Newburgh Church Orphanage. Why do you ask?”

He put down his fork. “Despite the public’s opinion of the Malatesta family, we give to a number of charities. Your story has decided me to send an anonymous donation to the orphanage where you were raised. That’s something I intend to take care of right away.”

A gift no matter how large wouldn’t take away his guilt over his treatment of Luciana, but he realized the only reason Belle was still alive was due to the generosity of others who gave to charity.

“If you did that, the sisters would consider it heaven sent, but you don’t need to do it.”

“I want to. They gave you a spiritual and physical start in life. No payment would be enough.”

“You’re right,” she said in a quiet voice. “One of the sisters in charge reminded us that we were lucky to be there where we could get the help we needed, so we shouldn’t complain. The priest at the church where Nadine took me told me I was blessed to have a birth mother who loved me enough to put me in God’s keeping.”

Hard words for a child to accept, but Leon could only agree. Whatever Luciana’s circumstances at the time, she’d at least had the courage to make certain her baby would be looked after. His admiration for her choice when she could have done something else changed his perception of her. But why had she given up her baby?

Had Luciana loved that baby with all her heart, the way he’d loved Concetta from the moment he’d learned they were expecting? He knew enough about Luciana’s strict upbringing to realize she would have been afraid of letting anyone find out about her baby, causing a scandal that would tarnish the Donatello family name.

Unbelievable that her offspring had grown up into a beautiful, intelligent woman eating lunch with him, no less! You’re enjoying it far too much, Malatesta.

Luciana had lived through a nightmare, and had gone on to make a home for his father and the boys despite Leon’s antipathy. An unfamiliar sense of shame for his behavior over those early years crept into his psyche. He was now paying the price.

“Their goodness to you needs to be rewarded,” he murmured, still trying to digest everything.

“Sometimes I felt guilty for wanting to know about my parents when the sisters tried so hard to keep our spirits up. When Cliff asked me why I wanted to find someone who didn’t want me, I told him it wasn’t important if they didn’t want me. I just needed to know who I am and where I came from. But I’m not your responsibility, and I’ve taken up too much of your time as it is.”

She pushed herself away from the table and stood up. “Now that I have answers to those questions, I can go back to New York. Needless to say, I’ll be indebted to you for the rest of my life. Thank you for bringing me to your villa, and please thank the cook for the wonderful food. If you’ll drive me back to the library, I’d be very grateful.”

Leon got to his feet. “We haven’t even scratched the surface yet.”

“Yes, we have. You and I both know there are reasons why she gave me up. I would never want to cause her pain by showing up uninvited and unwanted.”

“You could never be unwanted!” he declared. He refused to believe it, but that was the father in him speaking, the father who idolized his little girl. Ever since Belle was born, she’d never known the love of her own parents. He couldn’t fathom it.

CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_2c4af0c0-10b4-562c-af93-66cb7a99fd5b)

“YOU SAY THAT with such fervency, Leon, but we know the facts, don’t we. My mother came back to Italy and married your father. Unless you’re aware of other information, I’m sure she has never tried to find me.”

“I have no idea and neither do you. Nevertheless—”

“Nevertheless, she and your father have made a life for themselves,” Belle interrupted. “Last year I went to the orphanage for a final time to beg them to tell me something about my roots. I had a talk with the sister in charge.” The tremor in Belle’s voice penetrated to Leon’s insides.

“What did she say to you?”

“She told me she wasn’t at liberty to tell me anything, because my adoption was a closed case. Then she handed me a pamphlet to read. It was called ‘A Practical Guide for the Adopted Child.’ The material was based on research gathered by the psychiatric community. She said we’d discuss it after I’d finished it.”

“And did you?”

“Yes!” she cried. “The whole brochure described me so perfectly, I went into shock.”

“Explain what you mean.”