I should go to my office.
Instead, I walk.
Through the east wing, past the kitchens, through the gallery with portraits of dead men who built this empire. My feet know where they’re taking me before my mind catches up.
The garden.
The evening air hits my face as I push through the side door. Jasmine overwhelming, the way it always is this time of year. Mama planted it thirty years ago, trained it up the iron trellis that frames the stone pathway. Papa used to cut stems for her, leave them on her pillow when he came home late from business he couldn’t talk about.
I haven’t walked this path in months. Couldn’t bring myself to. What the hell am I doing out here.
The bench sits at the end of the garden, beneath the live oak that’s older than this house. Wrought iron, weathered to black, with scrollwork Mama said reminded her of music.
Papa proposed to her on that bench.
Told her he was a dangerous man with a dangerous life and she deserved better, and she laughed and said she’d take him anyway.
I was eight when she told me that story. Sitting on her lap in the library, asking why Papa looked at her like she hung the moon.
“Because I did,” she said. “For him, I did.”
I haven’t been able to sit on that bench since she died. Haven’t been able to look at it without seeing my father there, reaching for a woman who wasn’t there anymore.
I stop at the edge of the pathway.
She’s there.
Cassia.
Sitting on the bench like it was built for her. Shoes off, feet tucked beneath her, head tipped back against the iron scrollwork. Her eyes are closed. The last of the sunset paints her in gold and amber, catching the copper threads in her hair.
She’s not reading. Not working. Just being. Breathing in the jasmine. Letting the evening settle around her.
She doesn’t know.
Doesn’t know whose bench that is. Doesn’t know what happened there thirty-five years ago. Doesn’t know that my father knelt in that exact spot and offered my mother his heart and his empire and everything he was.
She just saw a pretty bench in a pretty garden and sat down.
And she fits.
Fuck.
She fits there. In the place where my parents’ story began. In the space I’ve avoided for years because it hurt too much to look at.
She’s sitting in the heart of everything I’ve been afraid of, and she looks like she was always meant to be there.
I want this. Her in my garden. Her on my parents’ bench. Her breathing in jasmine at sunset like she has nowhere else to be.
I love her.
My grip on the iron trellis turns my knuckles white. I can’t let go.
Cazzo.
I’m in love with my wife.
She shifts on the bench. Stretches her neck. In a moment she might open her eyes. Might see me standing here like a man watching his own destruction unfold.
