27. In a Faraway Land of Heroes and Villains #2
Gwyneth waved her hand. “Eh, the man is dead, and nobody else can say different.”
Chiara raised an eyebrow at the brazenness. “Be that as it may, I am alive, and I know it was you stealing designs and blackmailing Lucci and D&B throughout that summer. What, couldn’t quite get a foot in the door at Lilien Haus? Did Renate and Zizou actually outsmart you?”
“Neither Lucci nor D&B will say a word. They both paid one way or another—”
“I couldn’t quite figure it out, you know.
Lucci and D&B perhaps were careless in screening their employees, but Vi didn’t get full access, because Lilien had nothing to show, and Zizou kept a close eye on her all summer.
So it was the one piece that didn’t fit.
And then I finally realized who it was I’d seen leaving her building with a camera.
At that point, I thought I knew. I thought I had it all figured out. ”
Charles gaped, his mouth opening and closing, and Vi watched, her face turning paler.
“But I was wrong, wasn’t I, Gwyneth? Look at him. This man? A co-conspirator in commercial espionage? I bet he never even suspected a thing.”
Gwyneth rolled her eyes and sucked on her teeth with disdain.
“Yes, he is rather pathetic for anything, really.”
“Gwen?” For a moment, the silence could have fooled Chiara into thinking that they were alone.
Not even breathing could be heard from either of the other two people in the room.
But now things were suddenly very loud. Charles' voice booming with sheer shock and his ragged breathing like thunder in the distance.
“What, my dear?” Gwyneth spat the word, then turned away from him, her shoulders completely relaxed, her countenance clear, as if the actual weather was the subject of their conversation, rather than the storm brewing inside the room.
“You like to dress well, and you like to be the center of attention, and you like to be seen for the Earl that you are. Except you squandered everything you had when I married you! And you’re well aware of it, yet you’ve never once asked how it is that there is money in our bank accounts.”
“Gwen—” He was no longer screaming, he was pleading with her, and Chiara looked on in astonishment at how little Gwyneth actually cared. Vi stood completely still, her face impassive, pale as a sheet.
“The camera was connected to the cloud. I had every photo she ever took. And I would have gotten the pictures of the collection from Como, too, except this klutz damaged my Nikon, and I couldn’t get access to them.
So no Charles, don’t worry. I didn’t ever need your help.
It was already a done deal when you brought back the camera.
I had everything I needed the moment Genevieve clicked the shutter.
All her sappy infatuation with Chiara, all four months of it. It seems pathetic runs in the family.”
Vi’s eyes that had been hollow now filled with so much rage, Chiara thought she’d be forced to restrain her.
But Gwyneth just waved her hand and continued, ignoring the two Courtenays and the hearts that seemed to be breaking all over the threadbare carpet, betrayal and anger evident on both their faces.
“I was the only one who knew what was going on. Her puppy-dog adoration, his obliviousness, and the complete stupor every time he as much as glanced at her—”
“Stop!” And now there was indeed something of an Earl in Charles’ bearing, in the authority with which he stepped between Vi and Gwyneth.
“Father?”
Charles rubbed his face with his thin, bony hands, and when he finally spoke after what seemed like forever, his voice was full of sorrow.
“I could never look at you and not see your mother. You are such a strange child, Genevieve. It’s like genetics were punishing me from the start.
I loved her. Her death broke me, and I couldn’t reason that it really wasn’t your fault.
That she died to give life to you, but you did nothing wrong.
I blamed you for years. I couldn’t stop missing her and then you…
You are her! Down to the tips of your ears, to the way you tilt your head, how you sometimes bite your lower lip… ”
Gwyneth tsked before speaking up, disgust permeating her voice.
“And you couldn’t look away either, my dear.
I could have slit my veins in front of you, but if Cinderella was in the room, I didn’t exist, my daughters didn’t exist. And all throughout you wallowed in your grief and in your pathetic ambitions of royalty.
Well, someone had to do something. Someone had to take charge.
How do you think I single-handedly ensured this family would still be received all over the world?
“Not for long.” The words took so much out of her that Chiara wanted to sag, wanted to curl up on the windowsill like Binoche and just sleep.
Twice in one day she’d thought of the finicky cat.
She might just buy her a new toy. Although Binoche would probably ignore the toy and play with a pipe cleaner instead.
Maybe Chiara should just resign herself to buying packs of them from now on. It would be much cheaper that way.
She was rambling inside her own head, while Charles and Gwyneth were arguing in high-pitched voices, accusations and insults hurled angrily back and forth.
In the meantime, Vi looked so sad and so lost that Chiara went to her.
“How about we take a cab to Mercer Street, darling? I could sleep for a week.” The fingers that she laced hers with were shaking, and Chiara lifted that pale hand to her cheek, cradling it there, warming it up, feeling like Vi was slowly coming back to life, her eyes getting some of their fire back even as her parents were still screaming obscenities at each other.
“I think just for once in my life, I would like to stand my ground, Chiara. You have been doing so much of it. Maybe it’s my turn?
” She bared her teeth in something not even closely resembling a smile and tugged her hand free of Chiara’s.
Then she strode over to Gwyneth, grabbed her by the forearm and marched her towards the door, Charles being forced to scramble behind the two of them.
The front door slammed, and when Vi came back, she was alone, although the screams were now audible from outside the apartment. But Chiara didn’t care.
“That was… well, hot? It’s the only word that comes to mind.”
And now the smile on Vi’s face was shy and achingly familiar, the girl from five years ago back and here in the room with Chiara, so sweet, so kind, so beloved.
Chiara’s chest seemed to crack, and she touched her sternum, trying to hold whatever was escaping in, except there was no more containing it.
“I love you, Vi Courtenay.”
She closed her eyes, letting the words wash over her, feeling that thread gain strength and finding roots of it in Vi’s chest, tying them together, making them whole again after so much wandering and so much fractured misery.
“You weren’t the only one who was wrong that morning in Paris five years ago, darling.”
Vi’s graceful eyebrow lifted, and the smile playing shyly on her lips wobbled. But Chiara would have none of it, so she leaned in and kissed the corner of that mouth, desperately trying to make the joy last. And if not that, then at least taste it, feel it, keep its memory in her own heart.
When she pulled back, she traced the tense jaw with her fingers and looked into Vi’s eyes, trying to convey with every word, with every caress, the truth she’d kept hidden for years.
“I loved you then. I’ve loved you since you fell at my feet and lost your shoe, Cenerella.
Some stories are that simple and we are the ones complicating them.
Ours should have been easy, straightforward.
And then we started crossing all these thin lines, one by one, until they turned into a tangled mess.
” She sighed and placed her hands on Vi’s cheeks, thumbs tracing the beloved sharp cheekbones.
“I should have believed you. I should have had faith in you. In your heart. Because I’d known it for months, and it had been the one thing that was true the entire time.”
Vi lifted her face and kissed Chiara’s forehead, then simply allowed her own to rest against it.
“I don’t know how you survived that blow. I know I wouldn’t have been able to.”
Chiara held Vi tighter. “You thought it was him.”
Vi’s quiet sob was heart-wrenching in the silence of the room, despite the continued screams outside the door.
“I did. I was so sure. He’d left my place just minutes before you knocked and he took the camera with him—”
Chiara tucked a lock of auburn behind Vi’s ear, and on pure instinct and muscle memory from five years ago, gently tilted Vi’s chin up, holding her face in her hands.
“I thought it was him too, for just one tiny moment, before it all slid into place for me. Then I realized it could have never been him. He is your father and you love him, despite him being totally worthless, but he never had the balls, Vi. He never did.”
“Did you really recognize the gown?”
“The rest of the little things just never added up. The stolen gowns, and then the fact that he did not give a damn about me.”
Now it was Vi’s turn to lean back to take a better look at Chiara’s face.
“Excuse me?”
“Well, yes, I am rather magnificent in my own right—”
“You are magnificent in every right!” Vi laughed, and Chiara smiled along with her, the expression remaining and warming her voice despite what she had to say.
“I would like to think that, if I’d have ruined someone’s life, the next time I see them, I would at least spare them a passing glance.
And Charles had eyes only for you that night at the event and again at my party.
He could not have cared less about Lilien Haus, some wretched gala or Poise’s Chiaroscuro launch. He was there to see you .”
“Ha, only because I wounded his pride by refusing him access to myself. I took away his heir. And I honestly don’t know how to deal with him blaming me for my mother’s death.
Has he really hated me that much all my life?
And if he has, why seek me out again? My therapist will have her work cut out for her for years.
” Vi shook her head, and the laughter was now mirthless.
Chiara wanted to tell Vi that she suspected there was more to Charles’ reaction to seeing her again after years of not being allowed, after years of being deprived.
Hell, she herself had the exact same look in her own eyes when she had first seen Vi again at Mercer Street that September day.
Longing. Love. And a rending of the heart that could only come with that emotion.
But she kept her thoughts to herself, allowing Vi to gather her closer and nuzzle her cheek.
“I don’t want to talk about them anymore, not tonight…”
Outside, police sirens were sounding very close to them, and now someone was shouting out of the opposite building’s window, a cacophony of voices mingling into the unintelligible.
“You might be called in to post bail. Unless your stepsisters do it.”
“I am no longer certain about anything where my family is concerned. Only that they ruined me five years ago, and I was so close to losing you forever.”
“You wouldn’t have. I would have come to my senses.”
Vi peered at her from beneath her bangs, and Chiara grinned.
“What? I would have. I did! In fact, I knelt in front of you right by that wall over there.”
“Oral sex is coming to your senses?”
“Darling, you are confusing all the metaphors and we once agreed that is entirely my prerogative.”
“I didn’t agree to any of that, Chiara. And since you’re allowing me to change the subject, let me do it again by telling you that what was truly hot was you, standing there, casually leaning against the windowsill, single-handedly saving me from my horrible family, slaying the dragon, breaking the curse, climbing up that tower and rescuing the princess. ”
“Vi, now you’re not just mixing up metaphors, but your fairytales as well. All I ever did was help you with your shoe.”
Vi placed her hand on Chiara’s chest, under the collarbones, and she could feel her own heart beating steadily against the now warm-again skin of Vi’s palm.
“You did so much more than that. You saved me. Back in Paris and again in New York.”
Chiara lifted the tender fingertips to her lips, kissing them one by one.
“Oh darling, you have it all wrong. You saved me, on the rooftops and so many, many times with the big and small things you did. From giving me inspiration to giving me the courage to live—”
“If Aoife was here, she’d roll her eyes, throw a piece of remnant fabric at us, and say we are being absolute bloody fools. Lovely, but fools.”
She said the last bit of it with such a bad imitation of Aoife’s Irish accent that Chiara had to laugh.
“Now you’ve gone and ruined the mood, darling. My god, good thing you’re a talented photographer, because this right here was terrible. If not for how awful your Aoife impersonation was, all this talk about ‘hot’ would make me want to actually do something about it.”
Vi gave her an exaggerated pout before sighing and bringing their foreheads together again.
“I think you wanted to say if you weren't so tired, what with saving the day and all that.”
And she was very, very tired. So exhausted, in fact, that from up close, Vi’s eyes were converging into one, a big gray orb watching her with tenderness and humor.
Chiara shook her head, smiling at her own train of thought.
“How about sleep then, Cyclops?”
Vi tugged at her hands as they made their way to the bedroom, losing clothes in their meandering walk, and then cushioned Chiara’s fall as they stretched in the cozy bed under a dark green ceiling.
“Cyclops? You really do need that rest, Chiara. But you’ll have to explain your thought process to me here. Plus, if it’s Cyclops from X-Men, I could be game. Marsden is handsome. But if you’re talking about the Cyclops from Odysseus, I’m out, because he was damn ugly and met an even uglier end.”
Chiara kissed her, stopping the stream of consciousness and tasting Vi’s blooming smile, this new memory made replacing the ones from half an hour ago.
“I love you. Comic book references mixed with classic literature talk. I love you so much.”
As Vi argued that X-Men were, in fact, part of world art heritage due to their cultural importance and impact, Chiara closed her eyes and allowed the sound of her beloved’s voice to carry her to sleep, safe and warm in the knowledge that this nerd was hers, now and forever.