Epilogue 1
“Careful, bella, you’ll punch a hole in the plane floor if you keep tapping those heels like that.”
“I’m nervous, amore! What if I make a fool of myself? My God, a cousin who’s a sheikh! I’m sure I’ll embarrass myself,” she says, raising both hands to the sky in a gesture that reminds me so much of my mother.
Elodie’s natural restlessness combined with her acquired Italian flair always makes me smile. And makes me hard as steel, too. A Spanish Romniya with Italian mannerisms is hotter than hell.
Today, though, I can’t blame her. She’s about to meet the woman who, as far as we know, is her mother’s only sister. A woman named Amapola.
It turns out Amapola married a sheikh, now deceased, and is the mother of the current one, Kamal[10], who happens to be Elodie’s cousin, as well as Amber’s and Amos’s. Now all three siblings are in my plane, heading to the Emirate of Sintarah[11].
Amber and Amos have been there before, but for Elodie, it’s the first visit, and she’s a bundle of nerves.
“Besides my cousin the sheikh—head of state, or government, or whatever his title is—anyway, besides Kamal, I also have two more cousins who are princes, Irfan and Zarif! That’s a lot of royalty for a commoner like me, caro.”
I unbuckle her seat belt, indifferent to the relatives sitting nearby, and pull her into my lap. “There isn’t a heart nobler than yours, my Romniya.”
She flashes that dazzling smile and wraps her arms around my neck.
“You know exactly what to say to win me over every day, Gianni. I thought that after a few years of marriage, it would change, but even though you already own my heart, you still work hard to keep me in love.”
“Winning you is a constant, renewable goal, Elodie. I’ll never take anything for granted between us. I want our fire to stay burning, always, my Romniya.”
I watch my wife’s family from a distance, all of them gathered together.
The sheikh’s mother, Amapola, is a kind woman, and I liked her the moment we met, especially because she welcomed my Elodie with open arms.
Now they’re talking, laughing as if they’d been reunited for years.
I was surprised to find out Kamal’s wife is American. I thought people from Sintarah only married among their own, but Madeline is living proof that love ignores custom and nationality.
After the introductions, we discovered that the royal family is made up of people as normal as us non-nobles, and after a few hours in Sintarah, Elodie relaxed and went back to being herself.
“Papà, water,” my son Leander asks from my lap, his mix of English and Italian now so characteristic of him.
When he’s happy, he’s Calé through and through—smiling, babbling nonstop in his own baby language. But if he gets upset, there’s no doubt he’s a true Italian, waving his little hands dramatically as he shows the world his displeasure.
I think the nanny heard him, because she comes to take him from my arms, holding a superhero cup with a bright green straw he loves.
“Here you go, bambino, your water,” she says, smiling.
I watch as they walk away, wondering how I’ll someday explain to my son about his paternal grandfather.
Is lying the same as hiding the truth? I think the line is very thin.
“What are you thinking about?” my wife asks, sitting beside me, her belly already five months round with twins.
“How we’ll explain Dino to our children.”
She threads her fingers through mine. “The kids were blessed with two assholes for grandfathers on both sides, Gianni, but in return, they have parents and a whole family who will love and protect them from everything evil.”
“I love you, Elodie. You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me. I used to have such a warped idea of relationships. Now I know love is chaos, but it’s peace, too. It’s a storm, but it’s also shelter.”
“In my case, more storm than shelter, huh?” she says with that smile that always pulls me out of the dark places I sometimes drift to.
“I have no problem with your stormy days, bella. I crave the thunder every single day.”