36. Mia
MIA
Avery was coloring outside the lines on purpose.
She'd announced this three crayons ago. "Mimi, the lines are boring." Then she'd dragged a streak of orange across the entire page and looked at me like she'd invented art.
"You're right," I said. "The lines are boring."
"Daddy colors outside the lines too."
"Daddy is a professional line-ignorer."
She giggled. That high, hiccupping sound that still caught me off guard every time. Five years old and she laughed like the world was built for her entertainment.
The kitchen smelled like rosemary and roasted garlic. Sophia had a chicken in the oven and a pot of wild rice on the stove.
Late afternoon light slanted through the glass walls, turning the countertops gold. Spring had come to the mountains at last. Snow still capped the peaks but the lower ridges had gone green.
I had my hand on Avery's back, tracing lazy circles between her shoulder blades while she worked. Tony was in the studio. He'd been in there since lunch, sketching in charcoal.
Not painting. Sketching. Loose, fast strokes on newsprint.
He'd been doing that more since the journals. Since the library. Since those three words that still made my chest do something dangerous every time I replayed them.
I love you.
Said in his father's study. Over his father's words. The simplest, most terrifying sentence in the English language.
And I'd said it back.
Avery switched to purple. She was working on what she called a "family portrait." Three stick figures.
The tallest one had wild dark hair. The smallest one had a crown. The middle one wore glasses.
"That's me with the glasses?" I asked.
"You always wear them when you read to me."
My throat closed. Don't cry over a stick figure, Mia. Get it together.
The front door opened. Sophia's footsteps. But not her usual rhythm. Too fast. Too sharp.
She came around the corner holding a thick envelope. Cream-colored. Heavy stock. The kind of paper that costs more per sheet than my first apartment's rent.
Her face was a wall. Mouth flat. Dark eyes burning.
She set the envelope on the counter. Didn't look at me. Looked at Avery. Then back at me.
"That woman," she said.
Two words. I knew exactly who she meant.
"Avery, sweetheart." I kept my voice easy. Loose. "Can you finish your picture in the living room? I think the big couch has better light."
"The light is the same, Mimi."
"Humor me."
She gathered her crayons with the slow deliberation of someone being asked to leave a party. Tucked her paper under her arm. Padded out of the kitchen in her socked feet, the stuffed elephant dangling from one hand.
I waited until she was around the corner. Then I picked up the envelope.
The return address was a law firm in Denver. Three names. The kind of names you see on buildings downtown. I opened it and pulled out the filing.
Fifteen pages. Cream linen paper. Embossed letterhead.
The language was clinical. Surgical. Every word chosen by someone who charged four figures an hour.
Angelina Marshall, petitioner, was requesting court-ordered visitation rights to her biological granddaughter, Avery Rossi.
I kept reading. My journalist brain kicked in before I could stop it.
I'd spent years deconstructing documents like this. Finding the spin. Finding the gaps between what was stated and what was true.
The filing cited a "longstanding desire to be part of her granddaughter's life." Longstanding. As if Angelina had been sending birthday cards and showing up to recitals. As if she hadn't been expelled from this house after lunging at me.
Page seven accused Anthony Rossi of "systematic parental alienation."
Parental alienation. Like Tony was the problem. The man who carried his daughter home from the airport. Who read her three bedtime stories every night. Who let her paint his toenails because she asked nicely.
And he was somehow the villain.
Page twelve referenced Angelina's "substantial financial resources to provide enrichment opportunities." Page fourteen mentioned her "established residence in the Northeast" and her "desire to offer Avery a connection to the Rossi family heritage."
Heritage. That was rich. The woman had married into the Rossi name and used it like a credit card.
My hands shook.
Sophia stood at the counter with her arms crossed. Her nostrils flared.
She was muttering something in Hindi that I was pretty sure would make a sailor blush.
"She tried this before," Sophia said. "When Ludo was alive. She wanted control of the trust. When that didn't work, she wanted the house."
Her voice dropped. "Now she wants the child. She doesn't want Avery. She wants leverage."
I set the filing down. My fingertips had gone numb.
"I'm taking this to Tony."
The studio door was half open. Linseed oil and charcoal dust.
He stood at the worktable with newsprint spread under his hands. A stick of compressed charcoal between his fingers. He looked up when I walked in.
His face changed. Not a lot. Just enough.
"What happened."
Not a question. He read me the way he read light. One look and he knew.
I held out the filing. He took it. Wiped charcoal on his jeans. Started reading.
I watched him. His eyes moved line by line. His shoulders didn't change.
His breathing didn't change. His jaw set like stone.
He finished the first page. Turned to the second. Then the third.
When he was done, he set the papers on the worktable. Laid both palms flat. Stared at them for three seconds.
Then he picked up his phone.
"Katherine." His voice was level. Steady.
The voice of a man who had just read fifteen pages of lies and decided to dismantle them one brick at a time.
"I need you in the office tomorrow morning.
Seven sharp. I'm sending you a filing from Marshall's attorneys.
I want a response drafted by end of day. "
He hung up. Called another number.
"James. Tony Rossi. I need a second opinion on a custody petition filed in Colorado. Sending it now. Call me tonight."
He hung up. Called a third number. This one was shorter. Something about retaining a forensic accountant to subpoena Angelina's financial records.
I stood in the doorway and watched a man I'd never seen before.
This wasn't the artist with paint under his nails. This wasn't the father who made silly voices during story time.
This was the boy who had survived Angelina Marshall. The man who inherited Ludovico Rossi's empire. The billionaire's son.
He was using every resource he had. Every dollar. Every connection. Every advantage his father had left him.
For Avery.
I fell deeper in love with him standing in that doorway than I had in his father's library. Watching him fight for his daughter did something to me that three words couldn't touch.
He finished the third call. Set the phone down. Pressed his knuckles into the worktable.
"She's not getting within a hundred miles of my daughter."
I crossed the room. Put my hand on his back, between his shoulder blades where the muscles were locked tight.
He was vibrating. The controlled fury was so intense I could feel it through his shirt.
"She won't," I said.
He turned. His hand found my waist. Pulled me against him.
His jaw was still locked but his eyes were different. Not rage. Something underneath it. Fear.
"Mia."
"I know."
His forehead dropped to mine. We stood like that. His hand warm and firm on my hip. The filing sitting on the worktable behind us like an accusation.
He kissed me. Hard. The kind of kiss that isn't about want. It's about holding on.
His free hand pressed flat against the small of my back and his phone buzzed on the worktable and he ignored it. He pulled back just enough to breathe. His eyes searched mine.
"Stay." Not a request. A need.
"I'm not going anywhere."
That night I put Avery to bed.
She brushed her teeth. She picked a story. She negotiated for a second story.
She negotiated for a third. I gave in on the third. She'd deployed the green eyes and the word "please" in a combination that should be classified as a weapon.
After the third story, I turned off the lamp. Just the nightlight left. Purple butterflies on the ceiling.
Avery lay on her side. Elephant tucked under her chin. Dark curls across the pillow.
She was quiet. Not the normal post-story quiet where her breathing slowed and her eyelids got heavy. A different quiet. A thinking quiet.
"Mimi?"
"Yeah, sweetheart?"
"Is the bad lady going to take me away?"
The air left my lungs.
I didn't ask who told her. I didn't ask what she'd heard.
Kids hear everything. They absorb it through the walls. Through the tone in Sophia's voice. Through the way Tony gripped his phone like it owed him something.
I lay down beside her. Pulled her against me. Her small body warm and solid. Her heart thumping fast against my arm.
"Listen to me, Avery Rossi." I kept my voice calm. I kept it sure. I kept it the way Lucas kept his when he told me I'd be safe.
"Nobody is taking you anywhere. Not the bad lady. Not anyone. Your daddy and I are right here. We're not going anywhere and neither are you."
She pressed her face into my collarbone. Her fingers curled into my shirt.
"Promise?"
"Over my dead body, sweetheart."
She didn't know what the phrase meant. Not really. She just heard the fierceness in it. The absolute, bone-deep certainty.
"Okay." Her voice was barely there. "Can you stay until I fall asleep?"
"I'll stay as long as you want."
Her breathing slowed. Her grip loosened. The elephant shifted under her chin.
I stayed.
Long after she fell asleep. Long after her hand went slack around my two fingers.
I sat on the floor with my back against her bed. The purple butterflies circled the ceiling.
Downstairs, Tony's voice carried through the floor. Low. Steady. Still on the phone. Still building walls around his daughter with money and lawyers and the cold precision of a man who would never let that woman win.
I thought about Angelina. In her designer suit, performing grief. Performing grandmotherly love. Performing every emotion she'd never once had.
I'd exposed people like her before.
I'd sat across from them in studio chairs and asked the questions nobody else would ask. I'd called her "Our Lady of Perpetual Victimhood" on national television and Jack had to bleep out what she called me back.
That woman had no idea who she was fighting. She thought she was taking on a reclusive artist and his nanny.
She was taking on me.
I looked down at Avery's sleeping face. The dark curls. The long eyelashes against her cheeks. The small hand that had reached for mine like it was the most natural thing in the world.
I said it again. Quieter this time. Not for Avery.
For myself.
"Over my dead body."