He looked at her, stunned, and Aislinn cried harder, because it was that look. Sometimes she just knew when a person wasn't faking it, had always known, it was the one gift her whole hard life had given her, and this person, this man, wasn't faking anything. He'd learned his lesson. He loved her and Louis more than his own life. And he didn't believe, not for one second, that he deserved any of it.
"Aislinn, I..."
"Just don't leave us again."
Then Louis reached them, breathless and beaming, and Valerio swung his son up into his arms in one motion, like he'd been practicing it in his sleep for four months, and pulled Aislinn in with his other arm until there was no wind between the three of them at all.
He hugged both of them.
His family.
His life.
His second chance.
Epilogue
"YOU LOOK BEAUTIFUL, Mama."
"She does, doesn't she?"
"You're going to make me ruin my makeup!" Aislinn wailed.
Her sisters laughed, all three of them, the sound filling the dressing room and tangling together as it had all morning, as it had for months now, and oh, just the thought of that made her want to cry harder. She had sisters, plural, and they were laughing at her. Thank goodness for waterproof mascara.
They were everywhere at once, the way they always were. Kleah knelt to fuss over her skirt, smoothing the fall of ivory silk over the proud little curve that the dressmaker had so cleverly honored, her dark hair catching copper where she moved. Cadence checked the bouquet for the fourth time, doe eyes suspicious, as though the peonies might attempt an escape. And Liana straightened from the mirror, blue-shadowed waves swinging, and cheerfully said her goodbyes before taking Louis's hand to accompany him out to the garden, because the ring bearer would need to walk down the aisle first, and the ring bearer had been rehearsing his walk with the seriousness of a state funeral.
Then the room was briefly, impossibly quiet, and Aislinn looked at herself in the tall mirror.
So much had happened.
Once, not so long ago, she had been so scared, so alone, so helpless, just her and Louis against a world that kept proving how little it wanted them. And now, in what felt like an instant, she had three sisters, three whole sisters who called and visited and argued over her bouquet, and soon, minutes from now, a husband. The only man she'd ever loved. And in a strange way they were all of them bound together because of Viktor, the brother she never knew, who had loved four girls so much he'd made himself a stranger to all four.
She closed her eyes.
Wherever you are, I hope you are at peace. Thank you for loving us even when we never knew you.
And I'm grateful to You, God, for bringing Valerio and me back together.
A knock on the door.
Giancarlo Marchetti waited in the doorway in formal black, cane and all, and asked her gravely, "Ready?"
Ready.
The garden had been strung with white, and the music started when she appeared, and every face turned, but Aislinn walked the first half of the aisle looking at none of them, too busy holding on to the arm of the man beside her and the composure of the woman she was five minutes from becoming.
"Thank you for offering to walk me down the aisle," she said shyly.
"I was your brother's best friend for many, many years." Giancarlo's eyes stayed forward, his pace easy around the cane. "I wouldn't have it any other way."
"He tried to kill you," she pointed out helplessly.
"Your brother was always more good looking than smart."
She was still trying to choke back the laugh when they reached the end of the aisle, and Giancarlo lifted her hand from his arm and placed it, with old-world ceremony, into the waiting hand of Valerio Le Sabre.
Valerio, who had clearly been watching her fight the laugh the whole way down. "What's so funny?"
