Percival, bless his golden retriever heart, was trying. He’d positioned himself on the floor beside my chair with his head resting against my thigh, which wasn’t unusual, except that he kept glancing at Thiago with the specific wariness of a guard dog pretending to be a house pet.
“So, Thiago. You like sports?”
“Not particularly.”
“Movies?”
“I prefer reading.”
Percy’s eyes lit up. “Mira loves reading. She organizes her romance novels by heat level. Top shelf is the clean stuff, bottom shelf is the...”
“Percival.” Solomon’s voice cut the conversation. The universal signal for stop talking immediately.
Percy stopped talking. He buried his face against my thigh instead, and I ran my fingers through his curls while my father watched the interaction with an expression I couldn’t read.
Solomon was Solomon. He sat at the dining table with a glass of water he hadn’t touched, watching Thiago with unblinking focus. He contributed nothing to the conversation. His silence was loud enough to fill rooms.
“You all seem very... close,” Thiago said. His eyes moved between the three men and me. The emphasis on close was delicate, probing. “How long have you known my daughter?”
“More than a month,” Lucian said.
“And you all live together?”
“We’re brothers,” Percy supplied from my thigh. “Mira stays with us while her bookshop gets rebuilt.”
“A bookshop.” Thiago’s attention returned to me, and a softness crossed his expression. The warmth of it hit me in the chest. “Your mother loved books. She used to read to you when she was pregnant.”
My heart clenched at the memory I wasn’t able to even have. My mother died just shortly after I was born. I never got to meet her.
“She would have loved knowing you opened a shop.” He paused. “She would have been proud of you, Mira.”
The six-year-old me at the window pressed her face harder against the glass.
Evening came slowly.
Thiago stood and Lucian walked him to the door with the courtesy of a man who was very politely not throwing someone out a window.
At the threshold, Thiago turned back. “Mira, could I have a moment?”
Lucian’s eyebrow lifted by a millimeter. I touched his arm as I passed, a reassurance through the bond, and stepped onto the porch.
Thiago stood at the railing, looking out at the tree line, and for a moment he looked old. Tired. The kind of tired that accumulated over decades and settled into bone.
“Perhaps next time,” he said quietly, “we could meet alone. Just the two of us. Father and daughter.” He reached out and placed his hand on my head. A pat. Gentle, paternal.
“Be careful, Mira.”
My name landed strangely. Not wrong, exactly. Just unfamiliar.
“Be careful of what?” I asked.
His smile was small. “The world. People who seem kind don’t always have kind intentions.” He squeezed my shoulder once, then released me. “I’ll come back tomorrow. If you’ll have me.”
“It’s okay… You can come back.”
He walked down the porch steps and across the gravel drive to a rental car I hadn’t noticed before. He waved once before climbing in, and I watched the taillights disappear down the road.
Be careful.
