Magic by Danielle Steel

seeing Benedetta, in their home, had told him what he needed to know, and brought him to his senses. Despite his very emotional tie to Anya, and new feelings for her, he wanted to come back to his wife. And when they were older, he would want visitation with the twins. But he realized that no matter what he and Anya had just been through together, their relationship couldn’t last, she was too young, and didn’t have Benedetta’s depth. Seeing Benedetta, in all her dignity and grace, he knew that this was where he belonged.
    He stayed for two days, and then he went back to Paris. He didn’t tell Anya what he had decided, there was time for that, and then the night he got back to the hospital, the worst happened. Their baby boy, who had fought so valiantly to live, had a cerebral hemorrhage, and there was nothing they could do to stop it. He was brain dead after the hemorrhage. Gregorio and Anya stood next to his incubator sobbing and bereft when he died. The nurses let them hold him one last time, and then they took him away. And now they had to plan a funeral for him. It was unthinkable. Gregorio sent Benedetta a text that night. He couldn’t have told her on the phone. She closed her eyes and cried when she read it, wondering if the nightmare would ever end.
    Gregorio made the arrangements for the funeral himself at the crematorium at Père Lachaise cemetery. It was the worst moment of his life, with the tiny casket with Antonio’s body in it, and Anya sobbing hysterically in his arms. And then she made him promise he would never leave her again. He didn’t have the heart to tell her that he had promised Benedetta he would return. He couldn’t do that to Anya. Instead they sat watching their infant daughter all night, praying that the same thing wouldn’t happen to her. She was just as fragile as her brother had been. Gregorio doubted now that she would survive. And Anya was inconsolable over the loss of their son. It would have been impossible and too cruel to tell her he was leaving her too. He had to wait for the right time.
    Anya clung to him constantly after that, and he realized that she wasn’t strong enough to survive his leaving her. She talked of suicide if their baby daughter died, and it finally dawned on him that his irresponsible lark of the year before had turned into a tragedy of such proportions that there was no escaping it now. He had to stay with her, and Benedetta would have to understand. Perhaps he could go back to her one day, but not now. He couldn’t have Anya’s blood on his hands. She had all the drama of her fellow countrymen and a very dark side. Benedetta was clearly the stronger of the two, and Anya needed him more.
    And with a heavy heart, Gregorio flew to Milan again, this time to tell Benedetta what she had feared, and exactly the opposite of what he had promised two weeks before. He felt like a madman and a monster. He was leaving Benedetta and felt he had no choice after the death of his son, and the condition Anya was in. He didn’t want to be responsible for her death too. And he knew Benedetta was powerful and stable enough to survive. Anya wasn’t.
    Benedetta looked at him in shock when he told her. He was agonized and deathly pale. He tried to put his arms around her, and she pulled away from him as though he were a snake about to strike. In fact, he was. She had waited all this time to hear him say he couldn’t come back, only weeks after he had promised her he would. His promises meant nothing, he was like a ball bouncing between two women, and changing his mind every day, but no longer.
    “I’ll stay involved in the business, of course,” he said sympathetically. “You can’t run it alone.” He had already thought it out and made the decision.
    “I have been running it since you left. And no, you won’t stay involved. I’ve considered it a lot, in case you made this decision. I want our partnership dissolved. I will buy your shares from you, but you can’t