At the reading, Leo appeared for the first time in decades. He was gaunt, sharp, and sober. He didn’t look at Maya. He looked at the housekeeper, Elena, who had raised him after his mother checked out emotionally.
Maya gripped the arm of her chair. “I knew he had secrets. I didn’t know which ones would destroy us.”
Elena stepped forward. “The child is yours, Leo. Not your father’s. You were fifteen. You ran before you could know. Your father protected you by claiming it himself.”
The will was read in the same oak-paneled library where, thirty years ago, Maya had watched her father strike her older brother, Leo, for coming out at seventeen.