Chapter 44 Katarina
KATARINA
Iwoke to the sound of laughter. It felt foreign for a moment as I lay there, perfectly relaxed, in a criminally soft bed. A deep tone and a light, girlish one.
Massimo and Tatiana.
I sat up, hearing Paolo chime in about whatever was making both of them laugh so much downstairs.
I stared at the ceiling, painted with a lavish night sky and stars that somehow seemed to twinkle.
I felt exhausted despite having just woken up, but oddly energized, too.
I felt sad about my mother. Just the thought of her triggered a deep ache in my heart, one that I felt sure wasn’t going to fade anytime soon.
But I also felt at peace with it. The anger had passed.
I felt so many things all at once, but most of all, I felt content to be where I was, exactly here. I was where I was supposed to be.
By the time I got downstairs, the chuckling had turned into full gales of laughter.
They were in the kitchen and had been making pancakes, it seemed.
There was flour on every surface, and batter splattered around.
Massimo was manning the stove, flipping pancakes with a confidence that saw two pancakes out of five on the floor.
Paolo was frantically trying to catch them with a plate and Tatiana was already eating, watching them and laughing.
It was chaos. It was perfect.
“Kat!” Tatiana saw me first, bolting out of her chair to get to my side. She hugged my legs. “You slept for a long time.”
“I guess I was really, really tired.” I smiled at her and ruffled her hair.
I felt Massimo’s gaze on my face, and weirdly, a frisson of nerves blossomed in my belly.
Last night, I’d cried like my heart was breaking, and he’d simply held me.
I didn’t remember the rest, I’d just woken up in his bed.
There was a sudden awkwardness between us, or at least, I felt like there was.
We’d left things horribly before Sergei had picked me up.
Awfully. I’d left his dog tags on the bed and walked out.
I’d left him. And despite that . . . he’d come for me when I needed him the most. He didn’t abandon me.
He’d come in ready to burn the world down to reach me.
I searched my heart for the anger I’d felt when I’d found out about what he’d done. It was still there, but faded somehow. I felt lighter. Freer, somehow, of the heavy, dark emotions that had consumed me.
Tatiana tugged me toward the table. “We made you pancakes. I put the best ones on your plate.”
There was a plate on the table piled high with crepes. I met Massimo’s eyes as I sat down. He watched me steadily, his beautiful, dark eyes mysterious. I couldn’t read the emotion in them, but they were full of it, whatever it was.
Heat crept to my cheeks at his study. Suddenly, I felt flustered and painfully aware of my bedraggled state.
God, I was a mess. I’d only ever known this man when I was a mess.
He, on the other hand, was perfect. I’d never thought I’d get used to him without his priest’s robes, but the man wore everything well.
Even now, dressed in dark, loose pants and a black T-shirt, he was hard to look away from.
Paolo staggered to the table. “What can I make you to drink, Mrs. Lucciano?”
Mrs. Lucciano.
I cut a glance at Massimo, who just chuckled.
“You just couldn’t wait to call her that, could you?” he mused.
Paolo smiled. “Of course I couldn’t, because that is who she is.” He looked back at me. “Some of us around here were starting to worry that this man was going to die alone, that this house would never ring with the laughter of children—”
“Enough, Paolo. Don’t forget, Katarina is going to Florence. Don’t pressure her,” Massimo called to his housekeeper, who stilled at the words.
I stopped, too, in the process of reaching for the honey.
“She is?” Paolo asked, echoing my own thoughts.
Massimo nodded. “She is, because that’s what she wants to do, and my wife gets to do all the things she wants to do. All of her choices are hers.”
I stared dumbly at the table, suddenly feeling tears gather against behind my eyes.
His words split me down the middle. My heart swelled at the thought that he was letting me make my own choice and respecting it to the point of making sure it happened.
That was the rational part of me. The other .
. . felt like crying at the idea of being sent away. Go figure. What a mess I was.
“But when are you going? Am I going with you?” Tatiana asked.
I looked at Massimo, thoughts of my going to stay with Lucy pushed aside for the very real decisions that would have to be made about Tatiana.
“That’s a good question,” I told her, and took her hand on the table.
“Where do you want to go?” Massimo asked her carefully.
She thought it over for a moment and then shrugged. “I want to stay here with you.”
“What about your mom?” I asked gently. Sergei had said she lived in Palermo. Was she looking for her daughter? Had Sergei simply taken her, or had something happened to her? We needed to check and see.
“I don’t have one,” Tatiana said with a certainty that broke my heart.
Massimo was watching me as my eyes stung.
I blinked hard to clear the imminent tears.
God, that hurt. The thought of little Tatiana alone in the world without a mom, hurt.
It hurt for me, too, and for all the girls who’d lost their moms, and all the moms who’d lost their daughters.
I thought of the baby that the unholy trinity had stolen from Mira .
. . One day, they’d grow up to be a kid like Tatiana who’d never know their mother.
It broke my heart.
“Let’s talk about it later, then. Don’t worry, anyway,” Massimo said in a low rumble. “From now on . . . this is your home. One that no one can take away.”
Then he looked down at the table and grabbed a pancake, taking a bite of it plain.
“So, tell me, is this what we do next?”
“No!” Tatiana shrieked, distracted by the sacrilegious sight of someone eating crepes plain. “You have to put a topping on it!”
“I see,” Massimo said with complete seriousness. “Paolo, bring the mushrooms, we need toppings.”
“No!” Tatiana exclaimed, laughing merrily, and got up to chase Paolo away from the fridge.
Yes, it was chaos and yes, it was perfect.
“You have a visitor,” Paolo said later. Tatiana had fallen asleep in the library while I read to her, and I’d left her to her dreams. She had to be even more exhausted than I was.
I stood up, raising an eyebrow at him, wondering who it could be, when the door opened and Lucy walked in.
She crossed the room to me and hugged me tightly. The sudden movement stole my breath for a second. I was going to have to get used to hugs again. They felt so alien. I tentatively hugged her back.
“I’m so glad you’re all right,” she murmured, and pulled back to look me over. “No injuries?”
I shook my head. “Nope. None. Well, none that you can see.” I smiled at her so she knew I was kidding. “Don’t tell me you came all the way back from Florence to see me?”
Lucy sat down. “I only got halfway there before Giada told me what had happened. And I was just thinking that you’d decided to stay with Massimo, until she told me . . . I’m so sorry, it’s awful.”
“Don’t be. I’m so tired of all of it. I just want to put it all behind me now,” I admitted, realizing it was true as I said it.
“So what are you going to do? Stay here, or come to Florence?”
I shrugged, but Lucy sighed knowingly and gave me a warm smile.
“I knew it. I knew you’d forgive him. Promise me one thing . . . you’ll at least come and visit.”
I nodded, hearing the sound of Tatiana’s voice in the hallway. She was awake.
“Have you told your husband that you’ve decided to forgive him and stay?” Lucy asked.
“There hasn’t been a good time yet,” I admitted. “And I’m not sure how.”
Lucy considered my words and then shrugged. “Oh well, let him sweat it a little. It won’t kill him,” she teased with a wicked smile.
Lucy left a little while later, off to travel to Florence. Tatiana and Paolo were watching a movie in the sitting room while I sat in the kitchen nursing a cup of tea and wondering where Massimo had gone.
He’d been gone most of the day, and by the time he walked in, I was already missing him.
Our eyes met across the room. His cheeks were warm, having been out in the cold.
It was snowing again. This winter felt like it might never pass.
I couldn’t imagine spring finally arriving, but it would.
It always did. The silence felt still between us, like an untouched pond.
I didn’t know how to back down on my anger.
I didn’t know how to take back the things I’d said before.
I wasn’t sure where to start. Earlier he’d made it clear he still expected me to go to Florence.
So . . . I should go . . . except I didn’t want to anymore.
I didn’t want to be apart from him, or Tatiana or Turin. I finally felt at home, after so long.
“Have you eaten?” Massimo asked, breaking the silence.
I nodded. “We all ate a little while ago.”
Massimo walked into the room, coming close to where I was sitting. He pulled out the chair opposite me and sat down, taking a small, rectangular-shaped package out of his pocket and placing it on the table.
“I meant what I said. I’m sorry about everything . . . all of it. About your mother, and the wedding . . . I should have given you the choice.”
Emotion clutched my throat, making it hard to swallow. I didn’t want to cry again today.
“I’ve never loved anyone like I love you, and . . . maybe it made me crazy.” He grinned at me, making me smile back.
“I know what that’s like.”
“But I never want you to feel like you don’t have free will.
Like you’re locked up . . . imprisoned. So go to Florence, and take your time.
Leave me in the dark and make me pay for being a pushy asshole.
Make me wait by the phone, and give me sleepless, lonely nights .
. . I deserve it.” His hand surrounded mine and squeezed.
His dark eyes stayed on mine, unwavering.
“But then, when you’re done . . . come home. Come home, and I’ll be waiting.”
Those damn tears that had been threatening to overcome me all day started to spill when he pulled the necklace with the dog tags and crucifix from his pocket.
“One day, come home to me. I’ll wait patiently and happily in purgatory until you do.
” He slipped the chain over my head, returning it to its rightful place.
It felt right as it settled around my neck.
Next, he pulled the ring from his pocket.
The one he’d slipped on and never once told me was anything important.
He slipped it onto my ring finger. The ruby flashed in the kitchen lights, warm and beautiful.
He took my hand and kissed the ring. It felt like an unbreakable vow.
A blood bond, like the one we’d sworn that dark night in Hallow Hall.
The tension in my chest loosened, and all the heavy things I’d endured in the last three years felt lighter, suddenly, all at once.
I was happy, I was loved, I was with family.
Somehow, I had gotten everything I’d dreamed of, when I’d least expected it.
I should tell him that I’d decided to stay. I should say something, but the lightness in my chest urged me not to. Instead, I just nodded.
He looked disappointed in my lack of response but rallied when Tatiana came into the kitchen. He’d bought her bags full of toys and gadgets that she’d never had before, and she was going through them like it was Christmas.
I watched them play for a while until Paolo came through, and Massimo stood up.
“I have to go out,” he announced, and my heart dropped.
“Why? You just got back.”
He nodded, watching Tatiana and Paolo looking for snacks.
“I might be ready to let you go, angel, but I can’t watch you leave. Even I don’t hate myself enough for that.” He met my eyes for one searing moment, and then turned away.
“Kat! Do you want to finish the movie with us?” Tatiana was there, climbing onto my lap. I watched Massimo go, taking in the defeated line of his broad shoulders and the tension filling his body. He was really suffering. It was real. He was letting me go, but it was costing him a lot.
“Kat! Are you listening?”
“Sure, of course I am.” I focused on Tatiana, a wicked little plan forming in my mind.