Page 143 of Thin Lives

Calisto straightened his vest and tie before grabbing his suit jacket off the hanger that hung waiting for him by the mirror. “I will be, dolcezza.”

“This day has been coming for a long time, Cal.”

He knew that, too.

It didn’t make it easier.

“Go check up on Camilla,” he said, hoping Emma would listen.

He didn’t want her worrying over him any more than what she already was. He would be fine. His daughter was twenty-two. Camilla wasn’t a child now. She was a grown woman who had been engaged for two years and was finally ready to take that plunge.

“You sure?” Emma asked.

Calisto nodded. “Absolutely. I want to see you in your dress before anyone else, however.”

Emma winked at him. “I can do that.”

“I knew you would.”

Once his wife was gone from their bedroom, Calisto stared back into the mirror. He took a long, hard look at himself, taking in the changes to his appearance and how the years had aged him. Other than the light dusting of salt just behind his ears, and a few lines at the edges of his eyes, he was still the same man.

Sometimes that shocked him the most, but he wasn’t sure why.

Well, he thought. The years had treated him well.

Still, he sometimes wondered if he had done enough in his life. When he was on his final ride, being laid to rest, would he leave the best pieces of him behind?

Or would they go with him?

“Daddy?”

Calisto turned fast at the soft voice. He found Camilla standing in the bedroom doorway and twisting her hands together like she was nervous. A smile edged at the corners of his mouth at the sight of her in her makeup with her hair done and a long robe covering her up.

She looked just her mother—she had Emma’s features, and her sly smile. But she had Calisto’s eyes and his demeanor. Most times, Camilla’s cold, aloof attitude was enough to turn people away. She didn’t make friends easily, and she didn’t like a crowd.

She did better in her own space.

And maybe that was why Calisto found it so surprising when Tommaso Rossi had approached him three years earlier with a request to take Camilla out on a date when the young man had been visiting from Chicago. His daughter had always been too busy for boys, and when she did make time for them, they bored her easily. She could just as quickly use a man as a toy to play with before discarding as she could a new tube of lipstick.

It all depended on her mood.

Calisto just … let his daughter live.

The girl grew up to be perfect, no matter what he wanted for her. She did what she wanted—what she needed. And he was happy to let her.

God knew she had fought damn hard when she first came into the world. Camilla’s birth had not been like her brother’s. Cross had been their little miracle. He was determined to stay in his mother’s womb for as long as he could, regardless of what the doctor’s said or thought about Emma’s weak cervix. But Camilla … she came early at twenty-nine weeks.

Too early.

Her lungs weren’t ready. Her stomach couldn’t digest properly. She’d been just under two pounds with limbs as thin as Calisto’s fingers. And when she cried …

Jesus, when she cried it was like airless sobs with no sound.

She couldn’t even make noise.

Calisto had felt so guilty every time he visited his daughter in the NICU, watching her struggle for life and breath. He’d asked for the second child, despite knowing how much risk there was for Emma and the pregnancy. But he wanted that baby with her—another baby.

He had to keep Cross’s paternity a secret to save his son and wife from the shame of their affair, but he wanted just one child that people saw as his.