Chapter 11


    “You thought money was all you had to give her.”


    Naturally. He’d never met a woman who didn’t appreciate financial gifts, his mother setting that


    precedent early for his young mind. “Why would I believe anything else?”


    “She was d you were safe, though, wasn’t she? I bet she cried that first time you called her.”


    That time and almost every one since. “You are right.” Not that he understood why.


    If his disappearance was such a hardship on his mother, surely she would not have dumped him at the


    orphanage in the first ce? Nevertheless, she had not abandoned him entirely.


    “She paid the orphanage to care for me.” He had discovered that when he made his first donation to


    the home long before he amassed his first million.


    It was the reason he had contacted herter. Without the knowledge she had attempted to provide for


    him in some way, he did not think he ever would have. But nothing could have altered the path he had


    taken with his father.


    “Are we going to see her while we are here?” Piper’s voice dripped with the emotion clouding her


    expression.


    This content ? N?v/elDr(a)m/a.Org.


    “No.”


    “Of course, I’m sorry.” From looking on the verge of tears, Piper went to embarrassment in a single


    breath. “There’s no reason to take your friend to visit your mother.”


    “It’s not that. She would like you.” How could she not? Piper was a very likable woman. “However, I


    have no intention of seeing my mother.”


    “What? Why not? Surely we have time. Even if she lives on one of the inds. We can skip the


    sightseeing.”


    “She lives in Athens. I bought her a house in Kifissia.” The distance between that district and the one


    he had been born in was measured in more than kilometers, though.


    Piper’s brow furrowed. “ording to the guidebook in our suite, that’s the elite part of town.”


    “Is that what it said?”


    “Well, as good as.”


    “The book is right. The wealthy have inhabited Kifissia for generations.”


    “And you bought your mother a house there.”


    He shrugged. What did Piper want him to say? He had wanted to give his mother a physical break from


    the past.


    “Yet you are not going to visit her.”


    “No,” he confirmed.


    “But…”


    “I have not seen her in more than twenty years, Piper.”


    “But you said you spokest month.” The confusion on Piper’s face was adorable.


    He kissed her. Not passionately, but he could not resist the innocent iprehension covering her


    features.


    “It was her birthday. So, I spoke to her.”


    “You call her once a year, on her birthday?” Piper guessed.


    “Yes.” The year after he first reconnected with Leda, he had made the mistake of asking what she


    would like for her birthday.


    He’d be too ingrained in American customs. And he’d wanted the excuse to give her something


    nice, something to show her and the man she had married that Zephyr wasn’t such a dead loss after


    all. He wasn’t ame puppy to be abandoned.


    But his mother hadn’t asked for a designer handbag, or a new television. She’d only wanted one thing.


    For Zephyr to call her once a year on her birthday, so she could know he was doing all right. She could


    follow his sess in the papers now, but he still made that call.


    Once a year.


    “Does she call you?”


    “I have asked her not to, unless there is a problem with my brother or sister.” Keeping his mother at a


    distance was necessary and he could not change that.


    “You have a brother and sister?”


    He had expected some kind of criticism for his coldness toward his mother, but Piper hadn’t focused on


    a situation he could not change. She’d zeroed in on the one reality he found truly important. His sister


    and brother.


    “They are half siblings, but I feel a responsibility toward them nheless.”


    “How old are they?”


    “I is twenty-nine. She is married to a good man and has three children of her own.”


    Six years younger than him, his sister had been born a year and a half after he went into the home.


    His mother had missed her visit with him that month and the one after. He’d thought she’d finally grown


    tired ofing to see him and wasn’ting back. But she’d returned and she’d had a beautiful baby


    with her when she did.


    “Have you met the children?”


    “Yes, I insisted.”


    “You sound like you don’t understand why.”


    “I’m the bastard child her mother gave birth to when living a life they would all rather forget happened.


    My sister doesn’t even remember meeting me. She was too young thest time I saw her.”