A Love That Never Existed Chapter 41
Over the following days, Cordella produced a stack of photographs and dossiers on young women, laying them out one by one in front of Damiel.
“This is the youngest Parker daughter. Twenty years old, excellent family. Father Brennan said she would bring you peace.”
“This one is the niece of the chairman of Harrison Bank. A perfect match for you on every count…”
Damiel was propped against the headboard, leafing through a financial report, not so much as glancing at the photos.
“Take them away.”
Cordella grew frantic.
“Damiel, you’re gambling away your life out of pure stubbornness!”
Damiel closed the file.
“It isn’t stubbornness.”
He raised his eyes to the gray sky outside.
“Even if I did buy into any of this, marrying a woman I don’t love just to keep breathing, spending the rest of my life beside her- I’d rather not be here at all.”
“Then who do you want?” Cordella slapped the photographs down on the table. “You want Yvosha, don’t you? But she doesn’t want you. She isn’t going to come back and rescue you!”
At the sound of her name, Damiel’s hand went still.
The ache in his chest started up again.
“I know,” he said. “I never expected her to come back. So let it go.”
With that, he opened the file again and refused to say another word.
Cordella looked at him, and in the end she left without a single word more.
She went straight from the hospital to Father Brennan and explained Damiel’s condition.
The old priest listened, his brow drawing tight.
“Madam, I told you before. Mr. Vorretti’s fate is an unusual one. That marriage eight years ago carried him through a crisis, but it also tied his fate to that woman’s. This relapse isn’t only a matter of the body. It’s because the bond between them was never properly cut.”
“Then what are we to do?” Cordella pressed.
Father Brennan shook his head.
“You must find her. Her flesh and blood are already part of Mr. Vorretti’s body. A tie like that can’t be replaced. And this time, if he is to survive it, three years won’t be enough. It has to be for a lifetime. Only then can their fates be truly woven together.”
Cordella’s expression turned grim.
Bring Yvosha back, and make her Damiel’s wife for the rest of her days.
From what she knew of Yvosha as she now was, the odds were close to nothing.
But the image of her son wasting away in that hospital bed steeled her.
Whether or not it would work, she had to try.
