Chapter Four
VALENTINO
The bread from Morano's is still warm when I park outside Vaughn's house.
I don't call ahead anymore. Haven't for two years. At some point the standing Saturday arrangement stopped being an arrangement at all. I simply appear, the door opens, and there’s coffee already made.
This is, I'm aware, the closest thing I have to a family breakfast.
I try not to think much about that.
The front path has a tricycle blocking half of it, tipped on its side with the cheerful abandon of something that was ridden hard and abandoned mid-thought.
I step around it, shift the bread to my other arm, and knock twice before pushing the door open.
"Tino!"
Tom hits me somewhere around the thigh at full running speed, both arms wrapping around my leg with the strong grip only a child can manage.
He’s three, turning four soon. You can see Vaughn in the structure of him even now, that compact strength, and Riley in the gaze and the still, commanding way he seems to fill whatever space he enters.
He is also, inexplicably, wearing one rain boot and one sock.
"Where’s the other boot, Tom?" I ask.
He considers this for a moment. "The garden."
"Why?"
"I was doing something."
I accept this and extract my leg gently from his grip, crouching to his level. He immediately tries to take the bread bag.
"That's for breakfast," I tell him.
"I know." He tries again.
"Tom."
He drops his hands with a sigh of profound suffering and then pivots and runs back toward the kitchen, the rain boot thudding unevenly against the wood floor.
The second you step into the kitchen, you know a child lives here. Crayons lie uncapped beside a half-colored dinosaur, Riley’s laptop hums quietly near a cold cup of coffee, and a wooden train sits in the fruit bowl like it has always belonged among the oranges.
Riley is at the stove. She's in one of Vaughn's old shirts, hair pulled back, handling the kitchen with such ease you'd think it's natural.
I'll tell you right now. It's not.
She turns when I come in, and her face immediately lights up.
"You brought Morano's," she says.
"I always bring Morano's."
"I know. I'm expressing appreciation." She takes the bag from me and sets it on the counter, already reaching for the bread knife. "Coffee's fresh. Vaughn's in the back with Tom's other boot situation."
"I heard a bit about the boot situation."
"Everyone within a three-house radius has heard about the boot situation.
" She hands me my mug. It's the dark blue one that lives on the second hook, the one that was never officially designated mine but has been functionally mine for long enough that no one touches it.
"He's been out there for twenty minutes. I think he found a worm."
"Vaughn or Tom?"
"I'm genuinely not sure anymore."
I pour my coffee and lean against the counter and for a minute the kitchen gives me the simplest kind of comfort: the feeling of belonging somewhere without having to earn it.
Vaughn comes in through the back door with Tom on his shoulders and mud on his shoes, carrying the second rain boot in one hand with the expression of a man who has successfully concluded a diplomatic negotiation.
The second he notices me, he smiles. "You're early.”
"I'm exactly on time."
"You're always early, Val. You just call it on time." He lowers Tom to the floor, hands him the boot, steers him toward the hallway. "Boots by the door, bud."
Tom disappears as Vaughn pours himself coffee and leans against the opposite counter.
For a moment the three of us are just quiet together. Riley slicing bread. The radio low in the background. The distant thud of one rain boot being deposited with great ceremony somewhere near the front door.
This is the version of my life I don't talk about.
"You're distracted," Riley says, eyes curious as looks at me.
"I'm not,” I answer automatically.
“You are too,” she replies. “Vaughn has a bald patch on the side of his head.”
Vaughn pauses mid-sip. “Riley…”
My eyes snap to her, then to him. “No, he doesn't. What are you talking about?” I move straight up to him, eyes doing a quick search of his head.
Riley nods solemnly. “He and Tom were conducting a, uh, controlled experiment in backyard science. There was a magnifying glass. And sunlight. And a very ambitious understanding of cause and effect.”
I see it now. A small, uneven patch near the side of his head. It's small enough to not immediately notice, but once you do, it's impossible to unsee.
I suck in air through my teeth. “Damn, Vaughn. That sucks.”
He narrows his eyes at me. “Don’t start.”
I look at him with mock-innocence. “Start what?”
“You know exactly what.”
I'm still staring at the patch, almost fascinated. “I actually think you’re being very brave about this.”
Riley presses her lips together, already losing the battle not to laugh.
Vaughn points at me with his coffee mug. “One word about male pattern baldness and I throw you out of my house.”
“I would never…” I pause. “Nah, that's a lie. I think you’re going to need a wig, man.”
He rolls his eyes. “There it is.”
Riley chuckles along with me. “Normally, with that keen eye of yours, you'd have caught that in seconds.”
I scoff lightly. “Doesn't mean I'm distracted, Riley.”
She sets a plate of sliced bread on the table and sits across from me. "You took one sip of that coffee and haven't drunk it since.”
I take a sip.
“There.”
Vaughn makes a sound that is not quite a laugh. "Okay, I'm with Riley on this one. What's up?" he asks.
I hesitate, but I know deflecting even further would only sharpen their curiosity.
"Hired someone yesterday. Senior Compliance Strategist. We kick off the Aurelius evaluation in six weeks."
"Good," Vaughn says, tearing into a slice. "You needed that slot filled. But that's not what's eating at you."
"Nothing's eating at me." But that statement sounds weak, even to my ears.
"Val."
I set my mug down. "She's Dante De Luca's daughter."
The kitchen goes quiet.
Vaughn and Riley trade one of those loaded glances that come from years of knowing each other. Whole conversations in half a second.
"Estranged," I add. "Background check was thorough. Marchetti's confident there's no active connection."
"Marchetti's confidence has limits," Vaughn counters, not unkindly.
"I know his blind spots. I accounted for them." I pause. "She identified three specific gaps in our compliance architecture from public filings. Before she was even formally in the room."
Another look between them.
"Qualified," Riley says.
"Exceptionally."
"And Dante?"
"Is likely aware his daughter was job-hunting. Whether he's aware she landed here—" I pick up my mug again. "We'll know soon enough."
Vaughn is quiet for a moment, which with Vaughn means he's building toward something.
"The Aurelius evaluation," he starts.
"Six weeks."
"Dominic Calder is running the compliance review."
"I know."
"He'll go through everything. Client communication, incident response, internal protocols. All of it." He tears another piece of bread with the unhurried care of a man who's not actually thinking about bread. "You know where I think the real risk is?"
"Tell me."
He looks at me levelly. "It's not capability. You have capability. Calder knows you have capability. The Aurelius families know it." He pauses. "The question they're going to ask is whether Ferretti Global Risk understands what it's protecting."
I wait.
"You built this company around the idea that good people shouldn't be helpless," he says.
"Which is true and right and the reason it works.
But twelve family offices, Val. Multi-generational wealth, complicated family dynamics, children, marriages, inheritances, internal fractures.
These aren't threat-assessment clients. They're families. "
He meets my eyes.
"They're not going to hire a firm that treats them like a security problem to be solved. They want someone who understands what it costs when family goes wrong."
Only the sound of Tom screeching somewhere in the house fills the space. No one goes to check on him. They only get bothered when he falls silent.
"You protect families," Riley says, without looking up from her coffee, "the way you defuse a bomb. You're precise and effective. Maybe too much." She glances up. "Maybe try not making love sound like a liability."
I look at her. "I don't make love sound like a liability."
"You told the Harrington file last quarter that emotional unpredictability among family members represented a statistically significant threat vector."
"It does."
"They were arguing about where to spend Christmas, Valentino."
Vaughn stays silent. Smart man. He agrees with her and knows when to let her land the point.
I drink my coffee and say nothing, mind somehow wandering to back to a certain interview with a certain brown-eyed woman.
I look up to see Riley watching me closely. When I raise a brow in question, she shrugs slightly and continues eating.
Riley reads people like schematics. She always has. Three years she's watched me with that patient look, like she's watching…or waiting for something to happen. I never ask what.
Tom reappears wearing both boots now, clutching a small red toy car by one wheel. He walks straight to me and holds it up.
"Buckle it."
I look at the car, then at him. "Where?"
He points to the tiny plastic booster seat hooked on the chair beside me. It's doll-sized, part of some set. He wants the car strapped in like a passenger.
Vaughn starts to intervene. "Tom—"
"No, I got it." I take the car. The buckle is stiff as hell, but I work it methodically until it clicks secure.
Tom examines it, tongue sticking out in concentration. Satisfied, he nods, wandering off.
When I look up both Vaughn and Riley are looking at me.
"What?"
Riley is smiling into her coffee. "Nothing."
"Say it."
"I didn't say anything."
"You're saying it with your face."
She looks up, and her smile is the specific kind that means she's been waiting for an opening and I've just handed her one.
"You buckled a toy car into a doll seat," she says pleasantly. "Without hesitating. Without looking at us. You just…took it, did it, done."
I don't see where they're getting at. "He asked me to."
"What she's saying, Val,” Vaughn enters, “is that you're dangerously close to being domestic.”
I nearly roll my eyes. “This again.”
"You know what I mean.”
I glance between them, expression flat enough to sand wood. “If fixing up a toy car for my godson qualifies me ‘domestic,’ it's a miracle you both ever ran a successful company.”
Vaughn laughs out loud now. “Please. We had you.”
Riley joins in, eyes shining from laughing so hard. “Just you wait until the right woman gets her hands on you. You’ll be cooking dinner and folding laundry like you were born for it.”
Vaughn nods gravely. “From a fellow Mr. Domestic, yep. The only reason I don't cook is because she doesn't want to sue me for attempted murder.”
Riley swats his arm, laughing, and the sound fills the kitchen like sunlight. I force a grin, but my mind slips its leash.
Livia.
She's been a presence in my thoughts since she left yesterday. What's worse is that I don't even feel bothered by it.
I didn't stop myself as my mind pictured her over and over, barefoot, staring up at me with those tortured eyes as she says she has a son to feed.
“Savior complex,” an ex said once. “You can’t help yourself. You get dangerously invested in women who are already damaged.”
I get up abruptly, my half-drunk coffee almost toppling over. "I should go. I have calls."
Riley raises a brow.
"On a Saturday," Vaughn says, giving me a knowing look.
"Take the rest of the bread." Riley is already wrapping it. "And think about what I said. Not just the domestic thing. The other thing. About what the families need."
I take the bread.
Tom intercepts me in the hallway, boots planted wide, blocking the door with the authority of someone a great deal larger.
"Bye, Tino," he says.
"Goodbye."
He lifts both arms straight up in the universal sign for lift me.
I scoop him up and hold him for a brief five seconds, breathing in the mix of mud and something sugary, before setting him down again.
He scampers off.
At the door, Vaughn calls out. “Val?”
I look at him.
“Stop skipping meals. You've lost weight.”
A laugh slips out of my lips. “Sure, dad,” I reply, giving a mock-salute as I shut the door.