It was Louis who moved first.
Her son slipped his hand into hers, warm and sure. Then, with the gravity of a head of state, he offered his other hand to Valerio Le Sabre.
"Let's go?"
And the most dangerous man Aislinn had ever known looked down at the small hand being offered to him, and something crossed his face that she felt in her own ribs, and he took it.
They left the ruined party like that, the three of them, hand in hand in hand, past the abandoned chocolate fountain and the ice sculpture weeping quietly onto its table, and Louis, who'd apparently decided the situation was now stable enough for business, began asking questions the way other children skipped stones.
"Is the hotel really yours?"
"As of today."
"The whole thing? The pool too?"
"The pool too."
"Louis," Aislinn managed, in a voice that came out two sizes too small, "sweetheart, maybe we shouldn't, um, interrogate—"
"It's not an interrogation, Mama. It's due diligence." Louis looked back up at Valerio. "Do you play chess?"
"Yes."
"Are you any good?"
"Yes."
Louis nodded, the nod of a boy ticking boxes on an internal form, and Aislinn stammered something even she couldn't parse, and Valerio answered every question with the calm of a man who'd waited his whole life to be interrogated by exactly this examiner, and somewhere in there the elevator arrived and swallowed them all, entourage and impossible lawyer included.
It was outside the elevator, in the hush of the top-floor corridor, that Louis paused, looked up, and pointed at the blonde woman.
"Do you trust her, Papa?"
"Of course. Minna doesn't want to admit it—"
"And yet here you are, breaking your word again," the lawyer said seriously.
"—but she's my cousin, which makes her your aunt."
Louis absorbed this the way he absorbed everything, completely and at once, and Aislinn could actually see the calculation finish behind his eyes before he spoke.
"Then can I go with Aunt Minna while you and Mama talk it out?"
"What?" Panic hit Aislinn all at once, everywhere. "No, um—"
"That's a good idea."
That was Valerio, and it was already done. That was the thing about him, had always been the thing about him. By the time you heard the decision, the world had already rearranged itself around it. Minna held out her hand, Louis took it with the composure of a small diplomat being reassigned, and her seven-year-old, her whole heart, her only family, walked away down a hotel corridor with a supermodel attorney, turning once to give his mother a thumbs-up that suggested he believed he'd done her a tremendous favor.
"Minna will feed him, won't she? He doesn't love vegetables, he only eats broccoli if you call it tiny trees, and his bedtime's eight but he negotiates, he's very good at negotiating, he gets that from—"
"Aislinn." Valerio's voice was gentle, and it stopped her cold. "He'll be fine."
She exhaled. "Right. Right, of course. Sorry, I don't know why I—"
The suite doors closed behind them.
And the moment, the very moment, they were alone, Valerio hauled her into his arms.
