Our future.
I thought of the vault in the closet of my father’s bedroom, a room none of us had entered since his death months before. I thought of the white gold ring inside it, the square emerald encircled by glimmering white diamonds. My mother’s wedding band. A piece of jewelry my father had intended for me to offer to the mother of my child before she gave birth.
I’d spent over a year regretting that I hadn’t proposed to Alana Rhodes, married her, made her my wife.
Then, I’d regretted that I’d fallen for Molly, had put her in the path of danger. But one thing Molly had taught me was that regrets were useless. Life can be a giant shit-fest, or it can hold great joy. It was all about living in the moment and milking those moments of joy for all they were worth.
And in this moment, I wanted Molly to know that despite what she’d had to do in her past, I would never judge her. How could I? I was a far worse person than she was, had committed far worse atrocities than she had. And yet she loved me. If she could love the man I was considering all my myriad shortcomings, how could she ever doubt that I could love her?
I turned to see her staring out the window of the hospital. The view left much to be desired; the only things in sight were the roofs of the lower stories of the building, with one thin strip of sky near the top and a narrow sliver of the Philadelphia skyline. She must’ve heard me come in because she quickly wiped her cheeks.
She’d been weeping again. Still mourning but attempting to conceal that fact. “I’ve already picked out some baby furniture,” she said, with a forced joviality. “It was supposed to be delivered a few days ago, so I hope it isn’t sitting out on the lawn.”
“It’s not,” I told her. The surveillance team watching her residence had informed me
the day it arrived, and I’d had Gabriel move it inside out of the elements. “I had it taken care of.”
“Oh,” she said. “Thank you. I hope you like it.”
“I’m sure I will.”
“I picked it out the same day…” she trailed off and fluffed her blankets as if needing to straighten the bed. She made kind of a production of it, and finally, I put my hands over hers.
“Molly, you don’t have to hide how you really feel from me. I know you miss your sister. Losing someone isn’t something you get over in a few days or even weeks. It’s okay to grieve.”
Finally, she peeked up at me, tears glistening in her whiskey eyes. “I promised myself I’d be strong. You need me to be Queen Molly so I will be.”
“You already are. Crying over Tara won’t change that.”
“Damn tears,” she said, acting annoyed at herself. “They just won’t quit. Ever since I’ve been pregnant it’s like a have a valve I can’t shut off.”
I brought my lips to her cheeks, kissing them away. “The baby furniture went to your cottage. Does that mean you plan to live there?”
“Well, that was the plan,” she said, pushing her hair out of her face. “But that was before…”
“I’d like you to come back to the mansion,” I told her.
“Like to my old room?”
“More like to my room. I’ve missed you. I’d love to go to sleep with you by my side and wake up with you in the morning. If you’re interested.”
She smiled, “I am.”
“It took me a while to hunt down the signal because every time I thought I had it, it wouldn’t be there,” Alessandro told me, looking like he’d been up for a week straight, probably because he nearly had. “But then I realized, it was mobile. I sent a drone to hover over the last known location and managed to catch sight of a van before it drove off. I think whoever did this is in the van.”
“Whose van is it?” I asked, glad to have a lead. “Does it belong to the Bianchis?”
“No, that’s the thing. I found it listed under some guy named Burton Fashinelli, but the guy’s a ghost. He died five years ago as a marine in Afghanistan. Whoever’s in that van knows how to cover his tracks and evade detection. I’m searching to see if any other names have been tied to the vehicle, but it’s going to take some more time. If we could just find it, we could take the guy out now.” He rubbed his eyes under his glasses. “Molly get situated okay?”
“Yes. She’s sleeping a lot and is still sore, but she’s doing better.” We’d gotten Molly set up in my room the day before, and Rosa was taking her food from the kitchen for every meal. We’d put her in my king-sized bed, and last night for the first time, I’d been able to sleep in it without feeling the pang of Alana’s loss. “I think having Anna around in the mornings and evenings will keep her spirits up.”
“My niece has that effect on others.”
I smiled. “True.” Now that my daughter had become a rambunctious toddler, she spent the majority of her time awake running everywhere in her walker and chattering her little head off. I loved the sound.
“So I saw you head into Mom and Dad’s old room. You going to make an important inquiry of the queen sometime soon?” Sandro said, and I narrowed my eyes at him.
“When did you see me go in there?”