Chapter 49
DOVE
The last weeks don’t seem real. They can’t be.
And yet, here I am.
Reunited.
With my mother.
I’ve probably asked her a million questions since the day she saved my life, and Bane’s. About who she was before my father. About her decision to run to keep Dove and me from him. About the night he shot her and left her to die in the mud.
Lucky for me, she’s been waiting twenty-four years to answer them.
Mom should have died that night. But she didn’t. Instead, the Obsidian Syndicate agents who were supposed to whisk her and Dove away found her, after being delayed by a downed telephone pole across the road leading to the cabin..
They didn’t think she’d last the night, but she did, because she’s a badass.
She spent the next year in a wheelchair, and then killing herself in physical therapy to learn how to walk again.
But the real battle came after, when she spent the next seventeen years watching Dove and I grow up from a distance, living with the heartache of not being able to hug us, or brush our hair, or tell us that she was alive, and loved us.
But that's what she did for seventeen fucking years, taking comfort in the fact that we were safe and cared for.
While biding her time.
That was the hardest part of our reunion: hearing about the night she tried to take us back, only to see it all turn to ash in her hands.
It turns out that Mom had another friend and ally aside from Agatha in our father’s house, when she was a scared young bride.
A quiet and somewhat reserved but kind young man. He’d bring her little gifts to cheer her up and run subtle interference to keep my dad away from her when he could. He sympathized with her situation and became her friend and ally.
So much so that when Dove and I were seventeen, even though this man was no longer working for our father, Mom contacted him to help her take us back.
Ironically, her plan was a fake kidnapping. She planned to send Cesare a bogus ransom note to keep him running around, and in the meantime whisk us away to the Syndicate.
It wasn't her plan that went wrong.
It was that the man she thought of as her friend, who’d once been a driver for our father, turned out to be a literal psychopath and serial killer.
Her ally was Lorenzo Cielo, and my mother has never forgiven herself for not seeing him for who he really was.
“Lark?”
I blink as I turn to the woman who brought me into the world in a tiny beach-side cabin in Maine. Dark thoughts can wait. They have no place here, when I look into my mother’s eyes and feel the warmth of her smile.
”Yeah, Mom?”
She laughs in a way that brings a huge smile to my face.
“I was just saying I still can’t believe I’m about to have both of you standing in front of me.”
I smile back, seeing the look of glee on her face.
“Any minute now,” I wink, reaching out to squeeze her hand. “I’m going to grab a coffee. You want one?”
I feel her grip on my hand tighten.
“It’s just over there, Mom,” I murmur, turning to point across the lounge of the private airfield.
She blushes. “Sorry,” she murmurs. “I’m just…”
Scared to see me even leave the room.
It's okay, I get it.
She lost me for so many years.
“You want him to come with me to keep me safe at Starbucks?” I grin at her as I lean into Bane, who’s sitting on the other side of me.
“Har har,” Mom sighs.
“How about I go get the coffees, and you two stay right here,” Bane growls.
“I like this plan,” Mom says, quickly nodding. “Much better.” She winks at me. “Damn, I like him.”
I grin as I turn toward Bane, lean in, and kiss him.
“I like him too. Can you please get me a black coffee?”
“And I’ll take anything with so much sugar it's more dessert than coffee,” mom pipes up as Bane stands.
“Coming right up, ladies.”
When he’s gone, I glance back at my mother.
“I talked to Val yesterday,” I say.
Her eyes dart to mine, a hint of worry in them.
She’s fearless, my mom. I’ve learned that pretty fast. But there's one thing that gets her worried, other than me leaving her side: anything to do with family.
She knew that she had a brother that she’d lost contact with. She also knew that brother had a couple of sons. But she’s only just found out that those sons are Val, my friend from ballet, and Vaughn.
That’s a part of her past I still don’t know, and I’m not sure I will ever get out of her: who my grandfather was, and what his connection was to the Obsidian Syndicate—who Mom’s nephew Vaughn now runs.
There’s way more to her relationship with that organization than she’s telling me, I'm sure of it.
“Oh?” Mom says, trying to keep her voice neutral.
“You two don’t have to have a relationship, you know,” I say. “It’s not something he’s pushing for. I think he’s just curious. I mean, I told you he grew up in foster care. He barely remembers your brother. So… You being around is kind of a novelty to him, I think.”
She smiles a little, nodding. “I… I’m not entirely opposed to meeting him.”
“Val's a really great guy, Mom. I think you’d like him. Great hugger.”
She laughs. “Well, in that case,” she grins. Then her brow furrows. “And his brother?”
“I, uh…don’t get the impression that Vaughn is much of a hugger," I laugh. "But honestly, I don’t know him very well at all.”
Maybe that’ll change, now that he’s my cousin.
Or not.
We'll see.
“How about, when you're ready, we'll start with Val,” I say gently. “He’s fun, and very charming. You’ll love him.” I shrug. “We can wait on Vaughn. I don’t think he’s that invested either way.”
Mom nods. Just then, Bane walks back over with our coffees, and right after that, we hear the announcement that the plane is about to land.
It’s almost time.
I feel my heart quicken, rattling in my chest. I bring the coffee to my lips, then realize I’m so jittery that I have zero need for caffeine right now.
Bane laughs when I toss the cup into a trashcan as we walk past.
“I’m too nervous!” I squeak as I turn to him.
He smiles, pulling me close and cupping my face. “I know you are, baby. But it’s going to be fine. I bet she’s just as freaked out.”
I bet she is.
I mean, it’s been over seven years since we saw each other.
As it turns out, the story of Lorenzo Cielo taking Dove and I didn't actually end the way I thought it did.
I know now why my DNA was found on the handle of a knife that was used to cut Lorenzo’s throat.
It’s because that DNA belonged to my mother.
For all intents and purposes, Lydia Marchetti, née Bancroft, is dead. And we’re going to keep it that way. But I’ve talked to Taylor and Fumi and given them enough information…in confidence, of course…that they’ll be challenging the DNA findings.
They’ve assured me it's too different from my own DNA and more to the point too similar to the DNA of a woman who's been dead for twenty-four years for any judge in the country to admit it as evidence.
And without it, the Cielo family’s crusade against me falls apart.
Mom finally told me the full story of that night.
When Lorenzo never showed up at the rendezvous with us, Mom started looking for him. She even tried to contact Agatha. But she was so deep into her Alzheimer’s by then that she didn’t even know who Mom was.
But eventually, Mom tracked Lorenzo down. The next night, she found him at his horror-house on Staten Island…
…With her daughters chained up in separate bedrooms, their heads shaved.
She’s the one who cut that monster’s throat before Antonio and his men came in, guns blazing.
I take a deep breath as the airport’s PA system announces that the plane we’ve been waiting for is now de-boarding.
She’s almost here.
It’s almost time.
You see, mom did kill Lorenzo that night. But she also did something else.
…She got one of us out.
She only had time for one. By the time she found Dove chained up with a shaved head, her ex-husband’s men were already smashing in the front door, shooting everywhere, and accidentally setting the place on fire in the process.
So Mom made a gut-wrenching, split-second decision for the second time in her life.
“I see her!” Mom chokes, grabbing my arm in an iron grip. “I SEE HER!”
Mom had to choose that night: leave quickly with the princess, or keep looking for the housekeeper’s granddaughter?
One would be easy to snatch another time.
The other would never be let out of the house again.
So she made her choice: she grabbed Dove, escaped out the window, and told herself she’d come get me within the next day.
But by then, I’d been hit on the head, told I was Dove, and believed it.
And I became the inaccessible princess that night: the mafia don’s daughter who was now under permanent guard, doubly so after what had happened at Lorenzo's hands.
When the coroner found remains in the room next to mine—remains of the girl I’d heard being brutally raped and ultimately killed—they were un-identifiable, due to the sheer heat of the chemical fire. But based on my testimony, those remains were declared to be those of Lark Peltier.
Except my sister wasn’t in the room next to me. There was a room between the two of us, and in that room was a girl named Ellen Foster—the Barber’s final victim.
After Mom told me this, I looked into her. Ellen only has one family member left: a sister who's a single mom who lives in Albany.
Four days ago, I wired ten million dollars to that sister's bank account in Ellen’s honor, with the transfer being attributed to "Agatha Peltier".
The concourse doors open.
My mother grabs my hand. On my other side, Bane grabs the other one.
And suddenly, I’m seeing her again.
The best friend who was my sister.
The girl who died, who actually lived.
“Lark—”
“Dove—”
There’s a frozen second where we just stare at each other.
There’ll be time later to talk about what she’s been doing for the last seven years. All I know, from talking to Mom, is that it involved the Obsidian Syndicate.
Or to figure out the whole name thing, because I’m genuinely not sure how to process the concept of thinking of myself as “Lark”, when I’ve been “Dove” for the last seven years of my life.
But those and the ten million other questions I have can wait.
Right now, there’s only one thing I need to say.
“I missed you,” I choke, sobbing as my sister crashes into my arms.
She’s crying. Mom is crying as she hugs us both fiercely. Bane is grinning like mad as he hugs all three of us, kissing the top of my head as pure love and joy and happiness thunder through my veins.