Chapter Seventeen
FOUR MONTHS, AND THE first thing that greeted Valerio Le Sabre when he let himself into his own penthouse was the silence.
Not the ordinary silence of an empty apartment.
This was inhabited silence, the silence of a place that was usually loud.
The evidence of the loudness was everywhere he looked.
A chessboard mid-game on the coffee table with a score sheet beside it in small ruthless pencil, a pair of rain boots by the door in a size that stopped his heart, and a drawing on the refrigerator of four figures holding hands, labeled in careful block letters.
MAMA. ME. BOND. And a tall one at the end, PAPA.
Beside it, held by a magnet, a school worksheet. My Family, by Louis. He shouldn't have read it. He read it.
My papa is away on business, but he is coming back, because he promised.
Valerio stood in front of a refrigerator at eleven at night, a man who'd once bought a hotel in forty minutes, and could not for several seconds remember how to breathe.
He'd flown through the night to get here.
He'd rehearsed things on the plane, whole speeches, and every one of them had assumed a warm apartment, a woman, a boy.
Minna hadn't taken a single one of his calls in four days.
And now it was creeping toward midnight and the rooms were dark and no one had come home, and something older than reason began to move in his chest.
He called the head of their security detail.
It rang once.
"Where's my—"
"Oh, hello, cousin."
Valerio went very still. "Why do you have Johnson's phone?"
"Because Johnson is with me."
"Where's Aislinn and Louis?"
"They're safe with us, too. Don't worry."
"What game are you playing?"
"I should be the one asking you that." Minna's voice stayed level, pleasant, courtroom-calm, which from her was the equivalent of shouting. "Do you know how many times you made Louis cry?"
The refrigerator hummed. The block letters said PAPA.
"Does he hate me?"
"He should," Minna said. "But he doesn't."
"And Aislinn?" He made himself ask it. "Did you ever see her cry?"
A pause.
And when his cousin answered, her voice was unusually clogged, which was rare, close to unheard of, for a woman who kept her emotions where she kept her closed cases. "Never. Instead, she's always very thankful. Because we kept her and Louis safe."
Never. Four months, and never, not once where anyone could see, and he understood exactly what that meant because he'd fallen in love with the woman who thanked traffic, and he had to close his eyes.
"Minna—"
"Take some time to think about what your next move should be, Valerio." She wasn't pleasant now. She was quiet and final, a verdict being read. "Because if you keep messing this up, you'll scar both of them for life."
The line went dead.
Valerio stood alone in his beautiful, inhabited, empty penthouse, with a crayon version of himself watching him from the refrigerator door, and began to think, very carefully, about his next move.
"LOOK AT HIM, MINNA."
It was the last day of Louis's three-day school trip to Nantucket, the day the families were ferried in for the closing program, and Aislinn stood on the old wharf beside the whaling museum with her hands clasped under her chin, just so happy she could hardly stand still.
The day was cold and blindingly bright, the harbor full of masts, the gray-shingled town looking like it had been assembled by a committee of postcards.
And out on the demonstration deck, in a little navy peacoat, her son was teaching four other second-graders how to coil a line properly, correcting their technique with the grave patience of a boatswain who'd seen forty years of sloppy work.
"Look at you," Minna said, "all blushing."
"Well, I can't help it. I'm just so proud as his Mama. He's just so handsome."
"Like his father?"
"Like his father," she agreed, without missing a beat, and Minna made a face at herself.
"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to make a joke like that."
"Oh!" Aislinn turned to her, dismayed. "Don't say sorry. I don't mind at all. His father really is handsome."
Minna looked at her for a long moment, this tall, bone-colored, unflappable woman who negotiated against sharks for a living, and out here in the sea wind, with the gulls arguing overhead and the kids' knots coming undone behind them, she suddenly looked almost uncertain.
"Are you...are you over him?" she asked. "I'm sorry. Honestly, I can't tell. I've never been in love."
"I..."
"I've seen the other guy. The single dad, chatting you up."
"Oh, you mean Benny's dad? He's nice."
"Nicer than me, you mean?"
The voice came from behind them, and Aislinn's whole body knew it before she'd finished turning around.
Valerio stood on the wharf in a black coat with the wind in his hair, four months thinner around the eyes, looking at her like a man who'd crossed an ocean and wasn't sure he'd be allowed ashore.
"And that's my cue," Minna announced to the sky, "to go babysit Louis and talk to the school, because romantic stuff isn't up my alley." She collected her folder and left, pausing only to give her cousin one look, brief and freighted, on the way past.
Then it was the two of them, and the gulls, and four months.
"I'm sorry about my brother," Aislinn said.
"I'm the one who should be sorry."
"I understand why that made you want to leave. Louis, though..."
"I've talked to him." At her look, he added, "This morning, before the ferry. And asked for his forgiveness. Which he freely gave, because his mother taught him well."
"Oh."
"Will you forgive me?"
"I do." Her hands twisted together. "But...I don't think I'd be a good mother if I just...Louis was really sad."
"I messed up." He said it plainly, no defense attached. "I promise I'll be a better father to him. But I'll need you to teach me how, because this is new to me. Living for others. Being good, and forgiving, like you."
She started to cry.
Right there on the wharf, in front of the postcard town, and he didn't reach for her yet, he just kept going, his voice low and stripped of everything it usually wore.
"I know I've hurt you and Louis." Something Italian broke loose under the English now, low and unguarded, a version of him he only ever let show when there was nothing left to protect.
"And I'm asking you to do what I couldn't do right away, when I learned about Viktor.
I've already lost you once. I almost lost you and Louis again, because of my stupidity. Ti prego. Please give me—"
She kissed him.
Crying, on her toes, her cold hands on his cold face, and he made a sound like something breaking open, and when she finally pulled away it was only far enough to say it.
"I love you."
"Aislinn." His forehead came down against hers. "I—"
"Have you guys made up?" Louis was running up the wharf at full speed, coat flying, trailed at a distance by Minna and half his class. "Papa, has Mama told you I'm about to become a big brother?"
Valerio went completely still.
He looked at her, stunned, and Aislinn cried harder, because it was that look.
Sometimes she just knew when a person wasn't faking it, had always known, it was the one gift her whole hard life had given her, and this person, this man, wasn't faking anything.
He'd learned his lesson. He loved her and Louis more than his own life.
And he didn't believe, not for one second, that he deserved any of it.
"Aislinn, I..."
"Just don't leave us again."
Then Louis reached them, breathless and beaming, and Valerio swung his son up into his arms in one motion, like he'd been practicing it in his sleep for four months, and pulled Aislinn in with his other arm until there was no wind between the three of them at all.
He hugged both of them.
His family.
His life.
His second chance.