"That is good news." I imagine Avery's face when she sees it. The way her green eyes will widen, the sound she'll make when she takes her first look at the incredible antique sailing yacht named for our private, perfect paradise. I imagine us on the water together, sailing into whatever comes next with our child growing inside her and the rest of our lives stretching out like an ocean we haven't charted yet.
I sign off on the final delivery confirmation, slide it back across the desk. "Thanks, Beck. I don't just mean thanks for the intel today."
"I know." He collects his files and rises. "These rich assholes may be your blood relatives, but you'll always have family in me too."
I nod, walking around to the other side of my desk where he stands. "Thanks, brother. I mean that. There's no one else I'd want standing next to me as my best man on Saturday."
"Honored," he says. Smiling, he holds out his hand to me.
I glance down at it, then step forward and pull him into a brief hug instead. He pats me on the back before we separate.
"Do you want me to reach out to anyone for you?" His voice is careful. "Feel out Sebastian's intentions, maybe open a channel?" He rubs his dark-bearded jaw. "Or to Madeline Roth instead? You know I'll be discreet."
The offer hangs in the air.
I consider it. Sebastian cracked the door open at the gala. I could push through it, start building something with the family my mother left behind. My child could have cousins. An aunt. Connections to the Xavier name and whatever that might mean.
Or I could keep that door closed. Honor the choice my mother made. Let the silence that's lasted my entire life continue for another generation.
I don't know what I want the outcome to be. And I won't make a move until I do—and until I've talked about all of this with Avery. After all, this decision will impact her as much as it does me.
"Not yet," I say. "This is enough for now. Let me sit with it."
Beck nods. Doesn't push. He's known me long enough to understand that I'll come to him when I'm ready, and pressing will only drive me deeper into my own analysis.
The door closes behind him.
Silence fills the office.
I reach for my phone, checking for messages. Still nothing from Avery. Part of me wishes I hadn't scaled back her securitydetail. But that's not what she wants. It's not what I want for her or our child either, growing up with armed guards shadowing every move. Trusting that she can move through the world without me controlling every variable is part of what this marriage means—to both of us, I admit, albeit reluctantly.
I tell myself it's fine, no need to be concerned that she hasn't been in touch yet. She's probably caught up in whatever last-minute wedding details are consuming her day. The venue coordinator, the florist, the thousand small decisions that still need answering before Saturday. She'll be here soon.
The dossier folder still sits on my desk where Beck left it. I rest my hand on it, feeling the weight of all those names and numbers and fractured histories gathered into a single manila file.
The Roths were born into empire. The Xaviers discarded my mother for wanting something different—something less—than what they'd planned. Does honoring her mean respecting that choice? Keeping her family out of my life the way they thrust her out of theirs?
Or does honoring her mean giving her grandchild something she never had—family that shows up, that reaches across the silence, that tries?
What would my mother want?
I don't know. I'm not sure I'll ever know. The woman who painted sunsets and taught me to cook and loved me fiercely until the cancer stole her away never told me about the Xaviers. Never mentioned a sister, parents in Boston, the world she'd left behind. Maybe she wanted to protect me from the rejection. Maybe she was ashamed. Maybe she simply wanted to forget.
I'll never be able to ask her now.
But when my child asks me one day where they come from, I want to have an answer that isn't silence. I want to give them more than I was given.
Whatever I do about the Roths and the Xaviers, I'll decide it with that in mind.
35
AVERY
Nadiyah opens the doorto her second-floor apartment and motions me inside with a small nod.
Sami darts in first, his small feet quick on the worn hardwood, heading straight for an elderly woman asleep on the sofa in the main room. The woman startles awake as the little boy throws himself into her lap. Her arms come down around him, loving and warm. She's dressed in a worn cardigan over a modest housedress. A headscarf covers most of her gray hair, which is pulled back from her face in a modest style similar to Nadiyah's.
She looks up toward the open apartment door where Nadiyah and I stand.
