Chapter 5 - The Letter in SicilyFour days later, I stood on the private runway with Marcus’s hand wrapped around mine and wondered if people like us were actually allowed to have ordinary happiness.
The thought was ridiculous considering the black jet waiting twenty feet away, the two armored SUVs parked behind us, and the security team pretending not to watch every shadow around the hangar.
Nothing about Marcus Valentino’s life was ordinary.
Nothing about mine had been ordinary since the day he walked into my father’s apartment and changed the course of my existence.
Still, there was something almost normal about the way he kept checking my coat collar because he thought I was cold.
“I’m fine,” I told him for the fourth time.
Marcus narrowed his gray eyes.
“You’re shivering.”
“It’s November.”
“Exactly.”
“That’s generally what happens in November.”
His mouth twitched.
Three months ago, I would have stared at that almost-smile in stunned disbelief.
Now I knew how to summon it.
Sometimes.
Usually by irritating him.
I stepped closer and flattened both palms against his chest.
“You promised me two weeks without business.”
“I promised two weeks without unnecessary business.”
“That sounds suspiciously like something you invented after making the promise.”
“It’s an important distinction.”
“Marcus.”
His expression softened.
He bent and kissed my forehead.
“Two weeks,” he said. “No meetings unless absolutely unavoidable. No territory negotiations. No warehouse problems. No men bleeding on expensive carpets.”
“That last one feels oddly specific.”
“Italy has expensive carpets.”
I laughed.
The sound still startled me sometimes.
For three years, I had almost forgotten how.
Marcus seemed to feel the same because his gaze settled on my face with that particular intensity he never bothered hiding anymore.
Like he had spent too long watching happiness disappear from me and still could not quite believe he was allowed to see it return.
“You’re staring,” I said.
“I’m married. I’m allowed.”
“You were married for three years before you discovered that privilege.”
His jaw tightened with mock offense.
“I’ve apologized for being an idiot.”
“Not enough.”
“I bought you Italy.”
“You cannot buy a country.”
“I could probably buy a respectable percentage.”
I laughed again, and this time Alessandro turned away suspiciously quickly.
I pointed at him.
“He’s laughing at you.”
Alessandro’s expression immediately became blank.
“I would never, Mrs. Valentino.”
Marcus looked at his right-hand man.
“Coward.”
“Yes, boss.”
That was how our honeymoon began.
Not with threats.
Not with blood.
Not with danger.
With teasing.
With laughter.
With Marcus carrying my handbag onto the plane because he claimed it was too heavy, even though it contained nothing more dangerous than a paperback and three tubes of lip balm.
For the first several hours of the flight, I almost believed we had left our world behind.
Marcus sat beside me rather than across from me, one hand resting over mine as we watched clouds spread beneath us like endless white mountains.
He told me about his mother.
Not the terrible part.
Not the debt or the men who had taken her.
He told me who she had been before tragedy turned her into a wound inside him.
Her name was Sofia Bellini.
She had grown up in a village outside Palermo where houses climbed rocky hills and lemon trees filled the air with perfume in spring.
She sang constantly.
Badly, according to Marcus.
“She knew she couldn’t sing?” I asked.
“She believed she was magnificent.”
“Maybe she was.”
“She sounded like an injured cat.”
I smiled.
“You adored it.”
Marcus looked out the window.
For a second, the feared man disappeared.
I saw the boy underneath.
“Yes,” he said quietly. “I did.”
He told me she had taught him to make pasta when he was eight, though apparently he had turned the kitchen into a flour-covered disaster zone.
She believed all arguments should be settled over food.
She hated men who wore too much cologne.
She collected postcards from cities she hoped to visit someday.
She never did.
“She wanted to see Venice,” Marcus said.
I squeezed his hand.
“Then we’ll see it for her.”
His gaze met mine.
Something unguarded moved across his face.
“Cara mia.”
“What?”
“You keep doing that.”
“Doing what?”
“Making things I buried feel like memories instead of wounds.”
I did not know how to answer.
So I leaned across the space between us and kissed him.
He accepted the kiss gently.
No desperate hunger.
No fear.
Just warmth.
When the plane landed in Palermo, late-afternoon sunlight turned the landscape gold.
I pressed my forehead against the window like a child.
Mountains rose in the distance. Terracotta roofs scattered across the hills. The Mediterranean stretched blue and endless beyond the city.
Marcus watched me instead of the view.
“You’re doing it again,” I murmured.
“I know.”
A convoy waited outside.
Of course it did.
“No business,” I reminded him.
“Security isn’t business.”
“Three SUVs?”
“Minimum acceptable number.”
“Twenty men?”
“Eighteen.”
“That makes me feel much better.”
He kissed my temple.
Our destination was not a hotel.
Marcus had arranged for us to stay at an old villa on a hill overlooking the sea, thirty minutes outside Palermo.
The house was breathtaking.
Weathered limestone walls glowed honey-colored beneath the evening sun. Olive trees surrounded a courtyard paved with ancient stone. Bougainvillea climbed the balconies in dark pink cascades.
Inside, high ceilings arched above tiled floors worn smooth by generations.
I stopped in the entrance.
“Oh my God.”
Marcus stood behind me.
“My mother spent summers here when she was young.”
I turned.
“You never told me your family owned a villa.”
“They didn’t.”
His expression changed.
“This belonged to her aunt.”
“Belonged?”
“I bought it six years ago.”
My chest tightened.
“You bought the house where she spent her childhood.”
“I thought someday I might come back.”
“But you never did.”
“No.”
“Why?”
Marcus stared through the open doors toward the sea.
“Because I knew every room would remind me of her.”
I slipped my fingers through his.
“And now?”
“Now I don’t have to walk through them alone.”
We spent the evening exploring.
Marcus knew surprisingly little about the house despite owning it.
He had purchased it through lawyers, restored it, and then refused every invitation to visit.
I found an old piano in the salon.
A wine cellar beneath the kitchen.
A terrace where the sea seemed close enough to touch.
We ate dinner outside beneath strings of warm lights, just the two of us except for security stationed discreetly beyond the courtyard.
Fresh bread.
Tomatoes with basil.
Pasta that Marcus criticized relentlessly because apparently no chef on Earth cooked it exactly the way his mother had.
“You realize you just insulted a Michelin-starred chef.”
“He overcooked it.”
“By how much?”
“Twenty seconds.”
“You’re impossible.”
“You married me.”
“That defense is getting old.”
Later, Marcus showed me the room his mother had used as a girl.
It had been restored carefully.
White curtains.
Blue-painted shutters.
A narrow wooden bed.
A faded photograph sat on the dresser.
I picked it up.
A teenage girl stood beside the sea.
Dark hair blew around a face unmistakably connected to Marcus’s.
Her eyes were lighter, her smile enormous.
“Sofia,” I whispered.
Marcus stood motionless beside me.
“She was seventeen.”
“She was beautiful.”
“She would have liked you.”
The certainty in his voice made me look at him.
“How do you know?”
“Because she valued kindness more than anything. She used to tell me powerful people reveal themselves by how they treat those who can do nothing for them.”
His mouth curved faintly.
“She would have taken one look at you and decided you were too good for me.”
“She’d be right.”
Marcus caught me around the waist.
“Careful.”
I smiled.
“What are you going to do?”
He kissed me.
Slowly.
Thoroughly.
When he drew back, his forehead rested against mine.
“That.”
“I’m terrified.”
“You should be.”
We probably would have stayed there all night if I had not noticed the loose floorboard.
It was near the wardrobe.
Slightly raised.
“Marcus.”
He immediately changed.
His hand left my waist.
“What?”
“That board.”
He followed my gaze.
Within seconds, Alessandro was called.
Because apparently honeymoon or not, suspicious floorboards required professional attention in the Valentino family.
“You two are ridiculous,” I said as Alessandro crouched beside it with a flashlight.
Marcus ignored me.
The board came up easily.
There was a small hollow beneath it.
And inside was a metal box.
Old.
Rusting.
Marcus stopped breathing.
Alessandro looked at him.
“Boss?”
Marcus crouched.
His fingers hovered over the box before touching it.
“I remember this.”
My skin prickled.
“You’ve seen it?”
“When I was a child.”
His voice had gone distant.
“My mother kept letters in a box like this. I thought they were from my grandmother.”
He carried it to the bed.
The lock had corroded years ago.
Marcus opened it carefully.
Dozens of letters lay inside.
Some yellowed.
Some folded.
Some tied together with ribbon.
And beneath them was a photograph.
Three people stood outside the villa.
Sofia.
A young man I did not recognize.
And another woman.
Marcus stared.
I watched the color slowly leave his face.
“What is it?”
He did not answer.
“Marcus?”
His hand tightened around the photograph.
“That man.”
His voice was barely audible.
“I know him.”
“Who?”
Marcus looked at me.
For the first time since I had learned who he really was, I saw something I had never seen in his eyes.
Not anger.
Not fear.
Shock.
“His name is Lorenzo De Luca.”
Alessandro went completely still.
That name meant nothing to me.
Apparently, it meant everything to them.
“Who is Lorenzo De Luca?” I asked.
Marcus’s jaw clenched.
“The former head of the De Luca organization.”
“Former?”
“He disappeared twenty-two years ago.”
I waited.
Marcus looked down at the photograph again.
“He was also my father’s greatest enemy.”
Cold moved through me.
“Why was your mother taking pictures with him?”
“I don’t know.”
Alessandro took the photograph.
His eyes narrowed.
“This was taken before you were born.”
Marcus began opening letters.
Italian handwriting filled the pages.
Some were signed with an L.
Others with Sofia’s initials.
He read faster.
His expression grew darker with every line.
Finally, he stopped.
“What?” I asked.
Marcus said nothing.
“Tell me.”
He handed me one of the letters.
“My Italian isn’t that good.”
“I’ll translate.”
He swallowed.
His voice came out hollow.
“Sofia. If Giovanni discovers the truth, neither of us will survive it. I know you believe the boy will be safe if you remain with him, but you don’t understand what your husband has become. Marcus deserves to know where he came from.”
My heartbeat slowed.
Marcus continued.
“I will wait until the end of summer. If you don’t come, I’ll leave Sicily and never contact you again. But understand this. No matter what name he carries…”
Marcus stopped.
His face had turned to stone.
“Marcus?”
He forced himself to continue.
“No matter what name he carries, he is my son.”
The room became absolutely silent.
I stared at him.
Marcus stared at the letter.
Alessandro muttered something in Italian.
I could barely process the words.
“Lorenzo De Luca believed you were his son?”
Marcus stood abruptly.
The letter slipped from his fingers.
“My father was Giovanni Valentino.”
“That’s what you were told.”
“That is who raised me.”
His voice sharpened.
“Who beat me. Who drank away everything we had. Who created the debt that got my mother killed.”
I reached for him.
He stepped away.
Not from me.
From everything.
From the room.
From the memory.
From the possibility.
“This doesn’t make sense.”
He dragged a hand through his hair.
“My mother would have told me.”
“Maybe she planned to.”
“She had fourteen years.”
“Marcus.”
“No.”
His voice cracked through the room.
“No. Giovanni Valentino was my father.”
But even as he said it, he looked at the photograph again.
And I knew.
Some part of him already doubted it.
Alessandro’s phone buzzed.
He answered quietly.
Then his expression changed.
“What?” Marcus demanded.
Alessandro lowered the phone.
“We have a problem.”
Marcus laughed once without humor.
“Of course we do.”
“One of our perimeter teams spotted a vehicle on the north road. No plates. They approached. Vehicle fled.”
“Local?”
“No.”
Alessandro hesitated.
“The men got a photograph of the driver.”
He held out the phone.
Marcus took it.
His body went rigid.
I moved beside him.
The security image was grainy.
An older man sat behind the wheel.
Silver at his temples.
Hard face.
Gray eyes.
Marcus’s eyes.
The resemblance was unmistakable.
My blood turned cold.
“Who is that?” I whispered.
Marcus looked from the photograph to the twenty-two-year-old letter.
When he answered, his voice was barely human.
“Lorenzo De Luca.”
I stared at him.
“You said he disappeared.”
“He did.”
Outside, somewhere beyond the olive trees, a car engine echoed faintly through the Sicilian night.
Marcus slowly turned toward the open window.
And I understood the horrifying truth.
We had come to Sicily chasing memories.
Instead, Marcus’s past had been waiting for him.
Alive.
May you like
Watching.
And close enough to know we had arrived.
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