Forbidden Fruit

CAPITOLO TREDICI- Bombshells

He knew they would react to the news this way but nothing could have prepared him for the hurt displayed in their eyes.

It was foreign to him, he hadn't seen that behaviour towards him from either of them in a long time. He knew he had to fix it...but he wouldn't. He'd rather bare their hurtful glares than expose them to the world once and for all.

For he wasn't hiding his girls from the world, he was hiding the world from his girls.

Many of Antonio's enemies were already targeting Gabriel to get to him, often riling up his short temper. But to imagine countless pathetic fools using or harming the girls had Antonio ready to burn down half of Italy.

If his girls' safety meant they were angry at him then so be it. Cataleya didn't get her stubbornness out of thin air and even though they weren't biologically related they harboured the same emotions.

o~O~o

"This secret daughter shit is really starting to get on my nerves now!" Cataleya rants, pacing up and down Rheah's bedroom, talking to her her sister. Rheah, however, sits at the edge of the bed, lost in her own thoughts as she stares down at her sleeping daughter.

"We're about to leave for practically a year and you can't come to say goodbye properly?! What kind of shit is that?! And-"

She looks towards her sister, noticing she wasn't paying attention, "Rheah are you even listening to me?"

"Huh?" Rheah jolts back to reality.

Cataleya eyes her sister sceptically, "Rhee, are you okay? You've been zoning out ever since we saw the brothers' files. Don't tell me you're getting scared now."

"No no it's not that..." Rheah shakes her head, "It's.....It's worse."

"Oh?" Cataleya's curiosity peaks as she approaches her sister, "What do you mean?"

Rheah hesitantly glances up at her sister standing in front of her. She struggles the right words, her mouth opening and closing each time she tried.

"Well, spit it out then!"

Rheah exhales shakily, "Cataleya, that Michael guy..." She exhales, "That man is Cienna's father."

Cataleya's eyes almost bulge out of their sockets.

"MICHAEL ANDERSON IS CIENNA'S FATHER?!"

"Shh!" Rheah scolds jumping up, covering up Cataleya's mouth. "Tell the whole world, why don't you!"

Her eyes dart frantically towards the door, praying nobody had heard before glaring back at her sister. "Mantenere. il tuo. voce bassa! (Keep, your.voice. down!)"

Cataleya swats Rheah's hand away, "Don't 'Shh' me!" She protests. "If you're saying what I think you're saying then you are in deep shit, Rheah! Deep shit!"

"I know, Cataleya I know!" Rheah hisses,  beginning to hyperventilate.

Noticing the panic in her sister's eyes, Cataleya's face softens. "Okay Rhee, breathe... Are you sure that's him?"

Rheah opens her mouth to speak but nothing came out. Nothing could come out even if she tried.

Was she sure? Maybe she was seeing things. She hoped she was seeing things.

But that face! It was the same face she touched tenderly when they grinded against each other at the club and in his hotel room.  And those eyes! they were the same beautiful brown eyes she gazed into as he penetrated into her with deep strokes repeatedly throughout the night...