Total pages in book: 30
Estimated words: 28104 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 141(@200wpm)___ 112(@250wpm)___ 94(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 28104 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 141(@200wpm)___ 112(@250wpm)___ 94(@300wpm)
Louis, meanwhile, conducted a formal survey. He tested the echo in the front hall, opened a bathroom, reported with awe that the bathroom was bigger than their apartment, opened a second bathroom, reported that this one was also bigger than their apartment, and located his own bedroom, which he inspected for approximately nine seconds before appearing back in the doorway of theirs that night, rabbit under his arm, with the expression of a boy who had absolutely no intention of sleeping thirty feet away from a brand-new father.
He didn't even have to ask. Valerio simply lifted the blanket.
Louis burrowed in between them with a wriggle of pure satisfaction, arranged the one-eared rabbit against his chest, and issued his request to the ceiling.
"Tell me a story, Papa."
There was a silence that Aislinn would treasure for the rest of her life, the silence of a man who had bought a hotel in forty minutes encountering a problem with no acquisition strategy.
"A story," Valerio said.
"A made-up one. That's the rule."
"Very well." A pause. Then, like a man opening a board meeting: "Once upon a time, there was a kingdom. It was well managed."
Aislinn bit down on her lip.
"The king had significant holdings," Valerio continued. "Land. Ships. A very good army, which he paid on time, which is important. One day, a dragon arrived and made demands. The demands were unreasonable. So the king had a meeting with the dragon, and explained the dragon's position to it clearly, and the dragon saw sense and relocated. The kingdom's quarterly outlook improved. The end."
Silence.
"They lived happily ever after," he added, in the tone of a footnote.
Louis was staring at his father with an expression of profound diplomatic effort. "That was..." He searched. "It had a dragon in it."
"It was very informative," Aislinn managed, with heroic sincerity, "about the importance of payroll."
More silence. Louis patted his father's arm supportively, which somehow made everything worse, and Aislinn briefly smothered herself in her pillow, and when she came up for air Valerio was looking back and forth between them with dawning, wounded comprehension.
"I suck at this, don't I?"
They burst into laughter, both of them, at the same instant. "Yes, you do."
"But you love me anyway?"
"Yes!" Louis said right away, immediately, arms going around his father's neck, rabbit and all, and Valerio held him with one arm like he'd been doing it for seven years instead of one day.
But Aislinn didn't answer.
She was staring at him, and he was staring at her across the small breathing hill of their son, and the room had gone small and warm around the three of them, and there were eight years in the look, and a library, and a promise made by a voice she was trying every day not to hear anymore.
And then she whispered it, so it belonged to him alone.
"I'll love you no matter what."
Something surfaced in his face, there and gone, too fast to name. He reached over their sleeping-in-progress son and touched her cheek, and no one said anything else, and that was how they fell asleep the first night, the three of them in one bed, one rabbit standing guard.
Chapter Nine
"ABSOLUTELY NOT," AISLINN said.
"You haven't heard the plan."
"I've seen the street." She pointed out the window at the row of boutiques gliding past, the kind with one handbag in the window and no visible price anywhere, because the price was a private matter between the handbag and its lawyer. "Valerio, people get arrested for walking too slowly on this street."
"Then we'll walk quickly," said Louis, already unbuckling.
Traitor.
It was Sunday, the morning after their first night in the penthouse, and the expedition was entirely the grocery bag's fault. Aislinn had unpacked it while the boys slept in, their entire former life in one bag and one backpack, two small shirts, her one good dress with the satin ribbon still sewn to the waist, and she'd turned around to find Valerio standing in the doorway watching her fold it all into a single drawer of a closet the size of her old kitchen. He hadn't said anything. He'd just gotten that look, the apartment look, the one she and Louis had scrambled to chase off his face the night before, right before the banging on the door started, and by the time the coffee was poured he'd already made a call and the car was already downstairs.
The first store swallowed them whole. It was all cream marble and violin music and air that had been personally scented, and the woman who glided up to meet them took one look at Aislinn's coat, then one look at her shoes, and performed a smile that involved no part of her face above the mouth.
"The staff entrance," she said helpfully, "is around the back."
Aislinn opened her mouth to say it was fine, it was an honest mistake, she'd made the same one in mirrors, but she never got the chance, because Valerio had come in from parking-adjacent conversation with his driver, and the temperature of the marble dropped several degrees.