Modern Romance Collection July 2024 Books 1-4

CHAPTER TWELVE

THEYDIDEXACTLYTHAT.

They started over, as if they were new.

As if both of them were ready to accept what had happened that night in Rome, then and there.

And it was good.

But it was one thing to thunder on to his wife and spend his days relearning every part of her so that he might love her better.

Other relationships required more care.

He met with his brother in the Diamond Club, some weeks before Christmas.

“It’s almost as if you’re stalking me,” Aristide said in his usual droll way. “And to think, you had to come all the way to London to do it when, last I checked, we were neighbors.”

“I’m having a son,” Valentino said. Starkly. He made no attempt to dress it up, and because his brother looked taken aback by that, he continued. “I would like him to know his cousins. I would like him to have the run of the island, as we did. And play as we did. And know nothing at all about our father or what came before. I wish we could have had that longer than we did.”

Aristide sat in the seat opposite Valentino, and gestured for his whiskey. He waited for a staff member to produce a glass, tossed it back, and then sat a moment before he spoke.

“If I didn’t know better,” he said, mildly, “I might begin to suspect that this is your version of an apology.”

Valentino smiled. Then he leaned forward, and held his brother’s gaze. “I would like to think of it as a new beginning.” But because he was no longer playing the role he had for so long, he smiled. “If that is something you would find yourself amenable to.”

And he found himself something a little too close to choked up when his brother looked at him, cleared his throat as if there was emotion there too, and then nodded.

When he told Carliz the story, she cried.

She cried a lot throughout the rest of her pregnancy. They spent most of their time on the island, though he would often whisk her away to this city or that. He would take her out to dinner at the finest restaurants, where they would sit. And order food off menus. And talk of everything and nothing.

“Look at us,” she said after one such meal, her hand threaded with his as they walked back through the lively streets of Barcelona. “We seem just like people.”

“Or near enough, Your Royal Highness,” he murmured.

Their son was born entirely perfect in every way, not that they were biased. And they liked him so much that they decided to give him a set of brothers, three in total. He taught them how to be decent men and kept them away from his father. Carliz taught them perfect manners and her own dry wit, and encouraged them to run like wild animals all over the island with their cousins.

Just the way he and Aristide had done when they were small.

Life was good, because they made it good. Valentino learned to splash about in color. And how to love Carliz the way she deserved.

That it turned out, was the easiest part of all.

It was loving himself, too, that took work. It was the mirror that intimacy held up to his own true face that gave him pause.

But then, there were cures for that.

His children’s delight in him, so different from the fear he’d felt for his own father. Or the sick need he’d had to protect his mother when he’d been too young to understand what was going on.

And when they were alone, the games that he played with his wife when both of them were naked, that these days were all about correction, not control.

Life was good. They made sure of it.

As the years passed, even a monster like Milo could not talk his way out of mortality. And it was a truth worth learning early that people died how they lived. Once the old man was gone, the brothers came together and knew that neither one of them could or would ever live in that house again.

“I suppose we can’t burn it down,” Aristide said, regretfully.

Valentino was tempted to light the match himself. “It does have historic value.”

So they decided to make it something far better than it had ever been during their father’s lifetime. An orphanage, but one that would take care of children instead of degrading and diminishing them.

One that would lift them up instead of smashing them down.

And it turned out, despite everything, that Valentino Bonaparte made himself into a good man instead of a monster. With the great honor of a life lived, if not always as well as he’d like, as fully as he could. With the legacy of mended fences with his brother and a set of cousins who would never know that there had ever been any distance between their parents.

Best of all, he had Carliz to walk with him all along the path, sharing it all with him. Every step. Every moment. Making it better simply because she was there. All of that laughter. All of that joy. All because of one night in Rome and the brightest light he’d ever seen, guiding him home.

A home they made together, from scratch and brand-new, every morning they woke up and started again.

Which they planned to do forever.

And did.