Chapter 10 - Dawn over the River
April in the Hudson Valley arrived with the smell of wet earth and wild garlic.
The ice on the river had broken up three weeks ago, swept down toward Manhattan by the spring freshets. The lawns of the Marquetti estate had turned an impossible, brilliant green, dotted with yellow dandelions that the grounds crew had been forbidden to spray because Rosalie liked to use the leaves in her spring salads.
In the second-floor library, the French doors were thrown wide open to the stone terrace. A warm, sweet breeze off the water rustled the white linen curtains, carrying the faint sound of church bells from Cold Spring.
Angela sat at the large secretary desk, wearing a cream-colored silk blouse with the cuffs rolled neatly to her elbows.
Her skin was clear. The pale drugstore powder was gone, replaced by a faint dusting of freckles across the bridge of her nose that had come from spending her Saturday afternoons in the greenhouse with Rosalie.
Her wrists were bare.
On the left sat a simple gold watch—a graduation gift from Silvano when she had completed her first semester of business calculus with the highest mark in the county.
She signed the last page of the Peekskill riverfront lease, stamped it with the Marquetti corporate seal, and placed it inside a red leather folder.
A hand rested on her shoulder.
It was broad, heavy, and warm.
Angela leaned back against the touch, tilting her head up.
Silvano stood beside her desk, dressed in his dark charcoal suit, his morning coffee in his right hand. He looked down at the red folder, then at her.
The lines around his dark eyes had softened over the winter. He still had the crooked nose, still carried the knife scar across his cheek, but the cold, dead stillness that had inhabited him for twenty years had retreated, like the ice retreating from the riverbanks.
“Is it done?” he asked.
“Signed,” she said, her voice clear, confident, without a trace of the old tremor. “We took the gravel depot for four percent under their asking price. Dante’s men have already secured the docks.”
Silvano smiled. It was small, private, but it reached all the way to his dark brown eyes. “You’re harder on them than I am, Angela.”
“They were stealing from you,” she said simply, resting her hand over his on her shoulder. “I don't like people who take what isn't theirs.”
Silvano turned his hand, his fingers intertwining with hers, their palms pressing together.
Down on the driveway, a white van pulled up to the front circle.
The side door opened, and a young man in a wheelchair was lowered down on a hydraulic lift, laughing as Dante made a ridiculous face while maneuvering the footrests.
It was Leo.
Every Sunday afternoon, Dante drove the van to Kingston and brought Leo to the estate for dinner. Rosalie had spent three hours making fresh gnocchi with braised beef shank, and the smell of the ragù was already drifting up through the library floorboards.
“He looks stronger,” Angela whispered, watching her brother through the window.
“He gained four pounds this month,” Silvano said. “The therapist says he’ll be using the walker by August.”
Angela looked at the window, then turned to face Silvano completely.
She rose from the chair. She was five inches shorter than him, but she did not duck her chin. She looked straight into the face of the most dangerous man in three counties, reached up with both hands, and straightened the dark silk tie at his collar.
“You didn't have to bring him here every week,” she said softly.
“I have twenty-four rooms in this house, Angela,” Silvano murmured, his hands coming to rest gently against the small of her back, holding her close. “And for thirty years, it felt like an empty tomb. It doesn't feel like a tomb anymore.”
He leaned down.
He kissed her.
Not with the fierce, possessive violence of the men who ruled by fear, but with a slow, deep reverence that made Angela’s eyes flutter shut. It was the kiss of a man who had built a fortress around the only thing in his life that was clean, and who knew, with every drop of blood in his veins, that the gates would never be breached again.
When he pulled back, his forehead rested against hers.
“Are you staying for dinner?” he asked, a faint trace of humor in his low voice.
Angela looked down at the grand foyer below, where her brother’s laughter was echoing up the marble staircase, mixed with Rosalie’s loud, scolding Italian from the kitchen.
Then she looked into Silvano’s eyes—the eyes that had seen her bruises in the yellow light of the linen room, and had chosen to tear down the world to make her whole.
May you like
“I’m staying,” Angela said.
She took his hand in hers, pulled the library doors shut against the breeze, and together they walked down the wide, sunlit staircase to the family that was waiting below.
