“A good change or a bad change?” I asked.
“Depends on how you look at it. If I send you an address, can you meet me? It’s a bit of drive, though.”
“Sure. If it’s to see you, who cares about the distance.”
She giggled, a sound that was rapidly becoming one of my favorites on the planet. “Okay, I’ll text you the address and see you in a little bit.”
“Okay. Hey, before you go.” I looked down at the results of the DNA test in my hand. “Turns out you only have three brothers.”
“I fucking knew it. I kind of called him on it in my own, subtle way, and he had guilt written all over him.”
After folding the results back into the envelope, I started my car. “I don’t even want to know where Illiana’sactualchild is.”
“Hopefully, alive and well and living with some rich family in a very legal business somewhere in Texas.”
“Fingers crossed.”
“I’m leaving here now. I’ve got a couple of stops to make, and then I’ll be headed to the meetup point, so I’ll see you there?”
My heart leaped just at the thought of it. “I’ll see you there. I love you.”
“I love you too. Bye.”
The line went dead, and after a few seconds, I received a text message. Given that the safe house we’d been using was already an hour outside of Chicago, and then the hotel I drove us to was an additional hour away, I didn’t expect the address Denise sent me to bother me too much, but when I read it, my eyes bugged out of my skull.
It was in Stillwater, Minnesota, a little under a six-hour hike from where we were. Why the hell did she want to go there?
I set my car’s navigation for the address Denise provided, sent a text to Arturo and my dad to tell them that I was taking care of some business, and then set off for the destination. Minnesota wasn’t an uncommon trip for me. As one of the main families in the midwest, we had business inroads in most of the midwest states, and Minnesota was one we’d helmed control of long before Illiana showed up and started encroaching on our markets. It wasn’t an unpleasant place to be, on the whole, but California just sounded better to me if it was supposed to be our big getaway. Regardless of what Denise had up her sleeve, I was excited to see her, and maybe whatever had changed between when I left her that morning and when she called me would give us a better out than the one I’d come up with.
It was late morning by the time I’d spoken with Denise, so it was already into the afternoon when I arrived at the address she’d sent me. It was a beautiful, albeit municipal-looking building with alternating stone and brick walls, and some of the walls were made only of stained black windows. It was one of the places a mobster least wanted to be in the entire world.
Denise sent me to a courthouse.
I parked my car and got out, looking around the parking lot before finally heading inside. There were the expected people inside—a few guards, a couple of families that looked like they were waiting to take care of some important business, and one pair of people sitting, one with a white dress on, and the other with a black suit. Just being inside gave me jitters, and the guards were already sizing me up, so I turned around to head back out. I passed through the doors, back into the warm afternoon air, and planned to just get back in my car to wait, but I stopped when I saw Denise headed my way.
She looked like herself.
The burgundy color she’d dyed her hair not long after returning to the Costa household was gone, and there were no contacts in her eyes, leaving them their pure, sky blue color.
“Hi,” she said when I walked up to meet her in the parking lot.
“Hi.” I wound my arms around her waist and pulled her in to meet me. “You’re back to you,” I said.
She nodded. “Yeah. I decided I don’t want to be someone else anymore.”
I brushed the back of my fingers across her cheek. “You look beautiful.”
She smiled. “Thank you. Thanks for making the hike.”
“Of course, but uh,”—I nodded at a police officer as he passed—“why are we here? This place is breaking me out in hives.”
“I know, but…” She pulled me over to the side. I could see her expressions twisting as if she didn’t know what to say.
“What?” I asked.
Finally, she took a deep breath and looked up at me. Her eyes were sparkling with happiness, and I couldn’t help but smile at her. She was so beautiful. “Ashton Carducci,” she started, her tone even and serious. “Will you marry me?”
Chapter Seventeen:Denise
