EPILOGUE
THEYRETURNEDTO the island and spent the next few weeks determining how they would build this life they would share. As husband and wife. As two people who loved one another. They laid out what they wanted, and they didn’t always agree, but Francesca was glad for it.
Because neither of them balked at that first fight after they’d said their I love yous. Oh, they’d gone to their separate corners, no doubt. Francesca had ranted to the dog while she’d taken him out on a walk. Aristides had disappeared into his gym.
And when they’d both returned home, sweaty and out of breath, they’d met there in the middle of the castle and just begun...laughing.
She knew not all arguments would be resolved so easily, so cheerfully, but some would be. It was the life she was after.
Just like befriending Ginevra, planning a charitable fundraising event on the island, and extending an invitation to Valentino to attend.
There’d been no response to that, but Francesca was determined, and everyone knew what happened when Francesca determined something.
She was gratified when Aristide stopped trying to talk her out of it, and instead made a suggestion of his own. As they were lying in bed one night. After the very hard work of perhaps starting their very own family.
“We are slated to go to an event in London in a few weeks. I will head to the Diamond Club. Make certain to run into Valentino there. Offer an olive branch.”
“What kind of olive branch?”
“We’ll think of something.”
She pressed a kiss to his beautiful shoulder. “I like the sound of we.”
In a smooth move, he easily rolled her on top of him and grinned up at her. “A we forever, mio angioletta.”
And nothing was better than forever.
When they returned to London, with the express intent of making the first step of an inroad with his brother, it was with happy news. A child on the way. Not a deal, a bribe, or unplanned. A choice. Born of love.
“He may not be ready yet,” Francesca said firmly as Aristide readied himself for a visit to the Diamond Club. “But you are opening a door.”
They had discussed it at length, so he nodded, even if he was not sure he was ready for this. But not only would he do anything to make his wife happy, he wanted to try to fix what he and Valentino had broken as young men.
She gave him a squeeze at the door and he slid his hand down her abdomen as he couldn’t seem to stop himself from doing multiple times a day, marveling that a child would grow there. Their child. A mix of them both and a hope for a future.
“And I will be here, even if it remains closed. Always.” She rose to her toes and brushed a kiss across his mouth.
He smiled at her, his angel, and bid her goodbye so that he could make his way to the club. Much like he had in the past, he had ways of knowing when Vale was there. How and when to show up to irritate his brother.
But that wasn’t the goal tonight. He would try very hard for that not to be the end result either.
He had thought little of the Diamond Club since Francesca had swept into his life—because as much as he’d been the one to steal her—she had been the one to change everything. But it remained unchanged as ever.
The clubhouse itself was on a discreet and quiet street. Like his brother, Aristide kept a suite there. The staff was almost supernaturally excellent, capable of anticipating every whim almost before it was formed.
And so, it was easy enough to find the room where his brother sat, scowling with a drink in hand. Aristide got himself a drink before he carefully made his way over to the seat on the other side of Valentino.
When Valentino looked over, he scowled. “I do not recall inviting you to sit,” Valentino said after a baleful moment. “But then, you have never needed an invitation to intrude upon me, have you?”
Aristide didn’t sigh, though it was a hard-won thing. He had learned that sometimes...relationships took work. Time. He could not expect to undo twenty years in one moment.
Even if he could wish it. “Surely you must exhaust yourself with all of these slings and arrows, brother. Besides, it is all very boring. If you must insult me, is it too much to ask that you come up with something new?”
“If I had wanted conversation, I would have addressed my mirror,” Valentino replied coldly. “That would have provided me with far more opportunity for reflection and honest interchange than whatever games it is you think you will be playing with me tonight.”
They stared at each other, all of that history between them.
“I thought you should know,” Aristide said after a moment, choosing each word carefully since he could just about tell that tonight would not be the night he got through to his brother. And still, he wanted to tell him. And still, he wanted to extend this olive branch in the hopes someday it would be planted and bear fruit. “It is early days, but Francesca and I are expecting a child.”
Valentino stared back at him. “Why are you telling me this?”
“I appreciate your congratulations.” Aristide shook his head, almost tempted to laugh. “In the past, you have had a tendency to assume the worst, so I thought you should know. My wife and I are having a baby. It is not an assault on you, or your position as heir—whatever that means with a father such as ours. I merely thought you should hear it from me.”
Valentino didn’t move, except to perhaps clench his glass tighter. “It is funny, is it not, that you have anointed yourself the messenger of all of these things. That despite the reception you must expect from me, you consider it your duty to fill me in. What does that say about you, I wonder?”
“Perhaps nothing,” Aristide said quietly. “But then, I am the one who trusted you to remain my friend no matter what happened. You are the one who broke that trust.” Not an accusation. Just the truth of what hurt. Like Francesca had taught him.
“Your mother taught me to cook and clean as a child,” Valentino said instead, abruptly. “Do you remember?”
Aristide did not understand the change of direction, but he was willing to follow it.
Olive branch, he reminded himself.
“Of course I remember. I was there.”
“Why?” Valentino asked, as if he was demanding to know the whys of why life existed. “Why did she do such a thing? Was it...did she get some amusement from this?”
Aristide still did not quite know how to characterize his mother. He had seen more of her in the past few weeks than he had in the past few years, as she and Francesca always had their heads together. And he had seen her in a new light, in the way she was with Francesca, offering his wife a mother she’d never had the chance to have.
It had reminded him of all the ways his mother had been good, even if there had been quite a few mistakes she’d made that hurt him deeply. She was not perfect.
Like the rest of them, she was learning as she went.
Which meant she was no one’s enemy either. “Cooking and cleaning is how my mother loves, Valentino,” Aristide said, trying to be gentle. “It is how she shows her love. Not quite the villain in your story, I think. Just a woman in love. For her sins.”
Valentino stood abruptly. “I commend you on your ill-gotten marriage and all the many moral lessons it will teach an impressionable child,” he said. And then, “As it happens, I have also married. And I’m also expecting a child.”
It hurt. Not because he wasn’t happy for his brother, but because Valentino said it like an accusation. Like they were still at odds and in competition, when it should be... Aristide saw what a future could be. Them growing their families together, in hope and in love.
Valentino seemed to have neither at the moment, and so he wasn’t ready yet. Aristide offered a wry smile. “But of course you are.”
Valentino nodded. “May the cycle continue,” he said, then turned on a dime and stalked away.
Aristide had finished his drink, contemplating the exchange. Still not sure why it did not hurt quite the way he’d expected. It was only when he recounted the evening to Francesca that it dawned on him.
“He was not himself. Not cool. Not calm. Not collected. I recognize the hunted look of a man not quite sure what to do with good.”
“An excellent sign, then. He’ll come around.”
And she was right. Because Valentino did come around. With his pregnant wife, the bright and dazzling Princess Carliz, and it was clear Valentino had indeed been hunted that night. By love.
Amends were not immediate. The building of a relationship with his brother was careful, but they had both been changed by love. So it came that they found careful ways to rebuild a friendship that had been broken by young hurting hearts.
And when Milo refused to acknowledge Aristide’s son as any kind of heir to the Bonaparte name—as if it would hurl that wedge back between Valentino and himself—they hadn’t let him win.
It helped that Aristide was very rich on his own, of course, but neither he nor Valentino had any use for the legacy of meanness and cruelty that they had been brought up in.
It wasn’t very long before Milo died, ingloriously, that Aristide and Francesca finally convinced Ginevra to move to their castle. At first, to help with their growing family.
Then, once Milo was indeed gone to hell where he belonged, and Vale suggested they turn the old Bonaparte estate into an orphanage, his mother moved there to work with the children. Francesca also lent much time to the establishment, as did their children over the years.
The Bonaparte brothers filled their island with the sound of children, of joy, of life. Something Milo would have hated.
But Aristide almost never thought of his own father anymore. Like Francesca had said all that time ago.
They were not their parents and they were not their pain. They got to choose.
And he had chosen his beautiful wife, his children, his brother, and love over all else.