Page 116 of A Dangerous Bargain

My tears are already falling, but I must ask; I have to make sure he’s here before I let myself fall again. “Do you remember the last animal I painted with you?”

He presses his brow to mine. His laughter is a warm rain against my face, a stormy summer night spent tangled on a floor overlooking the sky. “That dog was a millipede. You’ll never change my mind.”

I can’t tell if it’s a sob or a laugh that splits me wide open, but I’m not in pieces for long. Our arms tangle, my head goes to the divot of his neck, and he’s holding me together. Each gasping breath feels like the first one I ever took.

“You remember.”

He tucks a black curl behind my ear, thumb lingering on my cheekbone, brushing away the tears I can’t stop shedding. “Not fully, but bits and pieces. I know—I know you were important to me.”

His dark, shining eyes are careful, but in them I also see softness. He hardly remembers who I am, but he trusts me. He knows me.

He deserves the truth even if it feels like too much. “Then know that I love you, Leonardo. I loved you for years and was too lonely to know it. If you’ll allow it—if it’s not too late—I want to earn your love again.”

He blinks, then smiles, a slow, sly smirk I’ve seen a thousand times before. “Virgil.” Cristo santo, will there ever be a day when my name in his mouth doesn’t set every one of my nerves on fire? I hope not. I don’t think so. I’ll burn for him until I’m ash. “How can it be too late already? We’ve only just met.”

I’ve spent so much of the year dwelling on my death, wondering what its cause would be.

I never expected it could be sheer, heartrending joy.

I push up onto my toes and kiss him.

He tastes like chestnuts. And honey. A cake, if I’m being honest, and all at once, I remember the feast I asked the servants to lay out inside.

“Did you know,” Leonardo says, “there’s people watching us?”

I turn and gasp. The spying scoundrels! My brothers and sister watching us from the third-floor windows even though I asked them not to. Beneath them on the second floor, Mamma, already weeping. She waves tentatively, clutching a handkerchief.

“My family.” I pause, worrying I’m overwhelming him, and decide to leap in anyway. “They’d like to be yours, too, if you’d let them?”

He makes a soft sound, two fingers touching the place where I’ve kissed him. “I’ve always wanted a younger sibling.”

“I know, caro, I know.” My tears well up again. There’s an ocean of feeling inside me, its shores hidden on distant horizons. I don’t know how this will go. I don’t know if he’ll want to stay at Casa delle Volpi or leave, but I believe there’ll be time enough for everything. To remember our history, to make the dreams we talked about real enough to touch. I have him here, and that’s all I want for now. Niccolo is keeping everything else I need safe: a battered drawing of two foxes, a red-leather-bound copy of Dante’s Inferno, and a little vial filled with gold.

“Can… we go inside? I’d like to meet them.” Slowly, tentatively, he laces his fingers through mine. As if testing a lost key on a forgotten door. “I want to remember this old life of mine.”

I squeeze his hand tightly, so he knows he belongs. “ ’Tis not old. It’s barely started.”

FLORENCE, ITALY

APRIL 1506

EPILOGUE

The wisteria vine is so ancient and huge, the workshop door is barely visible behind it.

The boy ducks beneath the cascades of lavender flowers and sets the pigments on the workbench. Master da Vinci is working, painting the same portrait of the woman with the odd smile he’s worked on for years. It’s been so long, the boy knows Master Pitti had to buy it from the man who commissioned it. Master Pitti is forever doing things like this for Master da Vinci: paying off forgotten balances with shopkeepers, closing drawers and cupboards, scrubbing paint footprints off the workshop floor. Every time the boy offers to help, Master Pitti waves him away, as if part of him likes doing it himself.

Master da Vinci gasps, noticing him. “Didn’t we tell you to take today off?”

The apprentice ducks his head. They had, but the pigments were ready, and truth be told, he’d hoped for some time working with his masters all on his own.

The da Vinci workshop is one of the most prestigious in Florence, and he wants to be the very best. Sometimes, when Master Pitti gets all misty-eyed, he’ll even tell stories about his days being an apprentice during the age of the angels. The old bargain marks on his arms are almost gone, but you can still count them, if you look closely. Master Pitti doesn’t like it when anyone does that.

A hand clamps down on the boy’s shoulder now. Master Pitti’s smile isn’t friendly. “Off with you, ragazzo.”

Murmuring apologies, the boy slips out the door again and makes sure it slams loudly behind him. He waits until he hears the snick of the lock turning.

Then he races around the side of the workshop and through the open window back inside. He tiptoes across the floor behind his masters to crouch among the straw-filled crates alongside the door. Usually, he’d let himself be shooed off and think nothing of it, but today his masters are acting strange. He wants to know why.