Chapter 9 - Toby’s BirthdayThe danger did not disappear in Maine.
But for nine days, it stayed far enough away that they could pretend.
Matteo began therapy in the living room.
Dominic ordered portable parallel bars.
Vincent complained about the internet connection.
Clara informed him that civilization had survived for thousands of years without encrypted conference calls.
Evan remained under protection at another property while helping Dominic identify Mercury Strategic’s clients.
On the tenth morning, Clara woke before sunrise.
She did not speak at breakfast.
She barely touched her coffee.
Vincent noticed.
Of course he noticed.
Matteo noticed too.
After therapy, he asked, “Are you sick?”
“No.”
“Mad?”
“No.”
“Then what?”
Clara stared toward the ocean.
“It’s Toby’s birthday.”
Matteo became quiet.
Vincent stood in the kitchen doorway.
Clara had said Toby’s name many times since entering the Rossi house.
But birthdays were different.
Birthdays measured absence.
“He would have been eleven,” she whispered.
Matteo rolled closer.
“What did he like?”
Clara looked at him.
“What?”
“Toby.”
A smile appeared through the grief.
“Dinosaurs.”
“What kind?”
“All of them. But he was convinced the triceratops could beat everything.”
Matteo immediately objected.
“That’s wrong.”
“I told him.”
“T. rex.”
“Exactly.”
“Finally, someone sensible.”
Clara laughed.
Then unexpectedly she began crying.
Matteo looked alarmed.
“I didn’t mean—”
“No.”
She wiped her face.
“You didn’t do anything.”
Vincent crossed the room.
Clara expected him to hold her.
Instead he asked, “What did you do on his birthdays?”
She thought about it.
“Chocolate cake. Always too many candles because he liked blowing them out.”
Vincent nodded.
Then he looked at Matteo.
“Get dressed.”
“For what?”
“We’re buying cake ingredients.”
Clara stared.
“Vincent.”
He looked at her.
“You told me not to erase him.”
Her breath caught.
“So we don’t.”
Two hours later, one of the most feared men in the American underworld stood in a small-town grocery store arguing with Matteo about frosting.
Clara watched from the end of the aisle.
Nobody recognized Vincent.
Nobody cared who he was.
An elderly woman asked him to move his cart.
A cashier told him his credit card had declined because the fraud system flagged the location.
Matteo laughed so hard he nearly fell sideways in his chair.
Back at the house, they baked.
Poorly.
Vincent had never cracked an egg.
Matteo dropped flour across the floor.
Clara eventually forced both of them out of the kitchen.
That evening, they placed eleven candles on the cake.
Clara sat at the table staring at them.
“I don’t know if I can do this.”
Matteo reached for her hand.
“You don’t have to.”
She looked at him.
Those were words she had spent years needing someone to say.
Vincent lit the candles.
No speeches.
No demands.
No attempt to transform grief into inspiration.
Just light.
Clara closed her eyes.
She remembered Toby laughing.
Running.
Sleeping with a plastic dinosaur beneath his pillow.
Changing his mind about cereal three times.
“I love you,” she whispered.
Then she blew out the candles.
Later, after Matteo slept, Clara found Vincent outside on the porch.
“You gave me something today.”
He looked at her.
“What?”
“A memory that wasn’t terrible.”
Vincent pulled her against him.
She rested her head against his chest.
For a long time they listened to the ocean.
Then his phone vibrated.
Dominic.
Vincent answered.
His expression changed almost immediately.
“Say that again.”
Clara straightened.
Vincent listened.
Then he ended the call.
“What?”
“Mercury Strategic wasn’t hired by a rival organization.”
“Then who?”
Vincent looked toward the dark water.
“A man named Richard Vale.”
Clara waited.
She had never heard the name.
Vincent clearly had.
“Who is he?”
For several seconds, Vincent said nothing.
May you like
Then he answered.
“The man who ordered the bombing that killed Matteo’s mother.”
