I shuddered, recalling how I hadn’t gotten another text for months. I had been surprised to see a text alert one morning.
Did you get rid of it?
I was immediately livid. I quickly shot back a reply.
No.
The response was so impersonal. I ran my hand over my rounded belly as I read it again.
This was your choice. Not mine. I want nothing more to do with either of you. I will send the obligatory funds via wire transfer. Do not contact me further except to send your banking information.
I had thrown my phone across the room. It bounced harmlessly off the padded window seat and landed face up on my rug. I could just make out the text message from my spot on the bed.
I couldn’t hate him. Not yet. I thought of my own father; how he had been a scared boy. Julien wasn’t a coward. Surely he would come around...
But of course he hadn’t.
I shook my head to clear it. That was all ancient history. Everything was different now. Julien wasn’t a heartless coward, and I wasn’t a scared single mother. We had each other again. We had the truth.
“No!” Alex shrieked, recalling me to the present. “I’m the king!” He clawed at Savio’s closed hand and snatched the chess piece Savio had been holding. Savio sucked in a sharp breath and put his scratched knuckle up to his lips. “Piccolo bastardo!” he hissed under his breath. Nonna Vera narrowed her eyes at him with dislike.
“Alex!” I said. “We do not scratch people.”
“But I’m the king, Mama,” Alex said in justification. Nonna Vera pulled him into her lap to comfort him. She was surprisingly strong for a woman in her eighties. “Sì, mio nipote. You are il re,” she cooed to Alex. Taking the chess piece from him, she made it dance up his little arm.
Savio was vibrating with animosity. I hedged a little closer to Alex. Maybe Savio had a few screws loose, or at the very least needed to attend some anger management classes. He was seriously overreacting to being scratched by a toddler.
“I’m so sorry, Savio,” I said in my best what’s-a-mother-to-do voice. “Did he break the skin?”
Savio studied his knuckles, slightly chastened by my scrutiny. “It is nothing,” he said quietly. “Perhaps I will go put some ointment on it.” He rose and sulked out of the room.
I raised my brows at Nonna Vera as if to say, “Did that really just happen?”
After putting Alex to bed and saying goodnight to a very tired Pops and Nan I joined the others in the study. There was a fire crackling merrily at the hearth, and if I didn’t know any better I would swear I was looking in on a happy family. Nona Vera sat closest to the flames, busying herself with needlework of some sort. Julien was at his desk, the ever-present Marla standing not far away, hovering between Julien and the settee where Savio sat engulfed in a game of solitaire.
Élodie had gone to bed, worn out like Pops and Nan. Nona Vera was a night owl and still going strong though it was approaching nine-thirty.
Looking at them one would never guess the complicated relationships ranging throughout the room. Marla and Savio would be leaving in the morning. I couldn’t deny my excitement at the thought of being free of Marla’s simmering presence. I wouldn’t miss Savio and his short fuse either. Good riddance.
Julien was scowling over paperwork. He had fallen astronomically behind on work these past three weeks. Added to the myriad duties of a CEO was the stress of a lurking assassin and an expected coronation looming over his head. I honestly didn’t know how Julien wasn’t cracking under the strain. How ignorant I had been to think an unplanned pregnancy would be enough to send him running scared. Julien didn’t run.
Speaking of assassins and kingdoms, Signore Passarelli was expected any moment now. Martin was bringing him by to discuss next steps in regards to the whole taking-back-a-kingdom thing. Just the thought of all that entailed was enough to give me a migraine. I padded over to Julien and massaged his upper back. He dropped his head in surrender, offering me easier access.
What happened next was so confusing, fast, and terrifying it would be several moments before my brain could properly process the chain of events.
Mr. Martin came in with Signore Passarelli. Signore Pasarelli began greeting the room when his gaze fell upon Savio. He blanched and gasped, “Principe Macri!” Savio responded by pulling out a gun - what? - and firing at Mr. Martin who was several steps ahead of me in the recognizing danger department. Because my brain tends to shut down during shoot-outs I took the time to note that the silencer on Savio’s gun made his fired shots sound like harmless video game bullets. Pew pew, pew!
Mr. Martin dropped like a stone. Julien was up and over his desk in a flash. He threw me to the ground at which point I lost visual of the goings on. By the time I got my bearings and poked my head above the desk again they were at a stand-off. Julien had somehow managed to get a hold of Martin’s gun and he was pointing it at Savio. Savio in turn was pointing his gun right back at Julien. I almost blacked out in terror. I must have made a sound, because Savio nodded toward me, indicating I should join Julien at the end of his gun.
I was shaking as I walked. I was amazed my legs were sound enough to carry me the few feet to my destination. As I neared Julien he shifted so he was blocking me with his body. Savio smiled smugly at Julien’s attempt to shield me. “It is a shame to kill such a beautiful woman,” he lamented. “But I cannot let you live knowing you could be carrying another one of his heirs.”
I didn’t like the way Savio’s hands were shaking with nerves. In marked contrast Julien’s hands were steady, as was his voice as he said, “You don’t have to do this, Savio. No one here has to die tonight.” I spared a glance for Mr. Martin, hoping he wasn’t already a part of the death tally.
“This ends now,” Savio said vehemently. “You must all die. Isn’t that right, Regina Adel?”
Signore Passarelli’s eyes nearly bugged out of his face as he turned to Nonna Vera and gasped. “Is it true? Are you truly our Regina Adel?”
Nonna Vera nodded solemnly. “Sí. Io sono la regina Adel, Vera Manzetti.” She saw my confusion and repeated in heavily accented English. “I am Queen Adel, Vera Manzetti of Mugga.”
Again with my brain’s inability to ponder important, relevant matters, I couldn’t help but sputter, “You speak English?”
Nonna Vera met my look of astonishment with kind eyes. “Sí. When is necessary. Is necessary now. I will tell my story before I die.”
Nonna Vera, or rather, Queen Adel, had been pregnant with her first child near the end of World War II. Her small country was in upheaval, still reeling from the chaos inflicted by Mussolini before his fall from power. Fearing for their lives, she and her husband, King Giovani III went into hiding.
Nonna Vera became very agitated at this point in her story. She slipped frequently back into Italian, and it was hard for me to piece together, but somehow she became separated from her husband or he was killed.
Pregnant, alone, and living in fear for her life, Queen Adel made her way south, eventually ending up in Terni. With dangerous men hunting her, and having no means to care for her newborn son, she left him on the steps of a church with a note reading only, Please care for my Giovani.
Leaving her baby proved too much for her to bear, and within weeks of Giovani’s arrival she found herself at the church orphanage offering her services as a nursemaid in exchange for room and board. It had been the perfect solution. No one would ever suspect the nursemaid at the orphanage of being misplaced royalty, and she got to watch her son grow into a man.
A sob escaped my throat as I realized I might be denied the pleasure of watching my own son grow up. And for what? Politics? I was supposed to die because a psychotic, power hungry man wanted to play King of the Hill?
Savio swallowed hard. A fine sheen of sweat was dampening his face and causing his hair to curl along his hairline. For a moment I had hope that he didn’t have it in him to kill several innocent people, then I remembered poor Mr. Martin, lyi
ng in a growing pool of his own blood. I could feel Julien tensing up next to me. He was going to make a move. Savio noticed too. He raised his gun a fraction of an inch. The thunder of the shot echoed off the study walls. Julien flinched at the sound and my heart stopped. It was my greatest fear realized. I was watching Julien die in front of me and the man who killed him would go after my sweet sleeping baby next.
But wait. It was Savio that was crumpling to the ground. It was Savio’s chest that was blooming red with fresh blood. The reasoning center of my brain began stuttering to life again and I realized that the gunshot I heard couldn’t have been Savio’s. His gun had a silencer. I frowned in concentration at Julien’s gun. It hadn’t moved. Turning, I saw Marla. She was a sight to behold, standing next to Julien’s open desk drawer, holding his pistol straight out in front of her like one of Charlie’s Angels.
As I watched her, her arms dropped. She let the pistol fall from her limp hands and sunk to her knees on the floor. “Mon dieu. Je ne savais pas, Julien. I had no idea!” Marla shook her head slowly back and forth. Julien quickly took stock of everyone in the room. Satisfied that I was unharmed, he rushed to Martin and felt for a pulse. I just continued to stand stupidly in the middle of the room watching the stain on Savio’s shirt grow bigger and thinking that Julien would make an excellent soldier or paramedic.
Someone was crying loud, ugly sobs. It took me a minute to figure out that the noise was coming from me. I stumbled stiffly to Julien’s desk and picked up the phone. I dialed nine-one-one but nothing happened. “It’s broken!” I was pretty sure I was hysterical. “Nine-one-one is broken!” A hand grabbed at my arm and shook me to get my attention. I jumped in a panic. It was Marla, still on the floor. “One-one-eight,” she said. I stared at her blankly. “One-one-eight!” she repeated. “The emergency number is one-one-eight.”
Signore Passarelli took the phone from my hand and proceeded to dial the correct number to alert an ambulance. I sank numbly to the floor next to Marla. I was empty. I was in shock. I registered the fact that I was shivering, but it felt more like I was watching someone else shiver that looked a whole lot like me. Marla wrapped her small arms tightly around my neck and we shivered together, each of us crying into the other’s hair.
I was in a fog of exhaustion. I had given my statement to no less than three officers, and had watched as first Savio, and then Mr. Martin had been taken away atop gurneys. Neither of them had fully succumbed to their wounds, but they both remained unconscious. Mr. Martin looked especially pale and I worried he may not make it through this. The thought was enough to start me crying again.
Alex. I just wanted to go to Alex. I was grateful he was asleep in his bed, and would never have to know of the night’s events. I ached to hold him, and press relieved kisses to his sleeping face. At last it looked as if things were coming to an end. I stared catatonically at the smeared puddle of blood that marred the floor where Mr. Martin had lain, and the much smaller smudge where Savio had fallen. Who was going to clean them up? How do you get blood out of hand-woven unicorn fur carpets? Surely Julien’s carpets weren’t the type you could just hose off. Hydrogen peroxide? We’d need a vat of the stuff...
“Lara?” Julien’s soft voice broke into my rambling thoughts. He was staring down at me with concern. “Are you well?” He offered me his hand and pulled me up from the sofa. “Go up to bed, Chérie. I will finish things down here. He kissed me on the forehead and pointed me toward the door. I was too numb to argue. I climbed the stairs like an automaton, pausing to listen a moment before opening Alex’s door. It was silent as a tomb.
The first thing that caught my attention was the fact that one of the windows by the balcony stood open, its long, sheer curtain billowed out, lazily swishing with the cool night air. Rushing to Alex’s bed I pulled back the comforter, already knowing I would find it empty.
Frantically I turned, and ran smack into Savio, who had come up behind me. Before I could react he had me by the throat. “Where is he?” he asked. His palm was clammy against my neck, he was sweating profusely, and I could smell the coppery tang of blood on his damp shirt. His eyes were feral. Where is he? Savio doesn’t know - that means he doesn’t have him! My body sagged in temporary relief. Savio took that as an indication of surrender. He lessened his hold on my windpipe to allow for my answer. I gulped in a fresh breath and prayed Alex was hiding far away, perhaps sleeping with Pops and Nan. “Go to hell,” I said. Savio immediately clamped down hard again, causing my throat to tickle and spasm, and my blood to pound behind my eyes.
“I will find him,” he said quietly. “I will find him, and gut him like a little fish. When Julien sees my handiwork he will beg me to finish the job.”
I was getting dizzy. I stumbled back, and Savio pushed his advantage, shoving me against the wall next to Alex’s bed. “With the addition of the queen’s corpse, the collection will be complete. How tragic. A whole family, taken so quickly by... A fire? Yes. A fire will serve my purposes perfectly. It takes care of all the loose ends, and prevents any messy questions being raised.”
Black stars were beginning to flicker before me and I was becoming disoriented. I tried to focus on what he was saying. He meant my family harm. He meant to kill us all. My hands clawed frantically at his steel grip on my windpipe. The edge of the side table was pressing painfully into my thigh and my jostling caused it to shake on its legs. I vaguely registered a light bump against my hip. Julien’s toy truck. I snatched it up and slammed it as hard as I could into Savio’s face, feeling no small amount of satisfaction as the pointed corner of the truck bed punctured his flesh.
The assault stunned him momentarily, loosening his grip enough for me to wrestle myself free. My only escape route was over the bed, but I hadn’t even made it half way across before he grabbed ahold of my leg. I kicked at him in a panic, my heel connecting solidly with his jaw. Somehow I managed to get him in a scissor hold. Adrenaline was coursing through my veins and I felt a super human strength rise up in me. I remembered a news story I had seen once about a mother single-handedly lifting an SUV off her child to save him. This moment, this psychotic man between my legs, was my SUV. Years of horseback riding had conditioned my legs and core, and I pulled on the strength of a mother’s love and the certain knowledge that this situation was kill or be killed. I literally had Savio in a death grip.
It almost didn’t register when he finally went limp. For a moment I thought he might be faking it so I would let him go. Suddenly there was a thundering commotion in the hall. Julien and several officers came barreling through the door. I let go of my hold on Savio’s unconscious body and relentlessly kicked him away. Without the force of my legs holding him, he slipped off the bed and sank gracelessly to the floor with a dull thump. He was immediately engulfed in lawmen, and I was immediately engulfed in Julien’s arms. “Alex!” I was panting, trying to catch my breath. “Where’s Alex?”
“I have him. He’s with Nan and me.” Pops materialized from the hall, wearing rumpled pajamas and a confused frown. That was all I could handle. Alex was safe. Savio was in custody and no longer a threat to my family. As if a switch were turned from on to off in my body, I succumbed to the horrors of the night and slipped blissfully into a sanity preserving faint.
It wasn’t until the following morning that I learned how Julien and the police came to be in the hall. Apparently Savio managed to overtake the paramedics and make his way back to the house, slipping into Alex’s room undetected in all the commotion. When the second ambulance made its way down the drive they noticed the first ambulance parked oddly on the lawn. Upon investigating they found two unconscious paramedics and no Savio. They immediately alerted everyone back at the house.
I gave Julien a squeeze, wanting to change the subject but even more so because Alex was stirring on my other side and I didn’t want him to hear any of this. The three of us had spent the night in Julien’s bed, neither of us wanting to let Alex or the other out of our sight. He took the hint. “You are un
e tigresse, Chérie,” he said softly, hugging me back fiercely and dropping a kiss on my temple. Alex’s head popped up beside me, showcasing his uncanny ability to go from sleep to perfectly awake sponge in zero point four seconds. “Mama, good morning!” His apple cheeks were rosy and warm from sleep and his curls framed his face, the morning sun shining through the window behind him and giving him the appearance of a cherub. “Yes, baby,” I answered. “Good morning.”
Mugga is a very small country laying just to the east of the Italian comune of Muggia. It is close to eight hundred thousand acres, or roughly the size of Rhode Island. It boasts a population of five hundred thousand citizens, all of whom seemed to be participating in the annual festival, flooding the streets dressed in elaborate costumes with wigs and make-up and glowing accessories.
Floats meandered down the crowded cobblestone boulevards of the capital city. It was atop one of these floats that Julien and I rode, bundled in thick coats to keep the chilly February night at bay.
I smiled as we passed sign after sign of Nonna Vera’s face, welcoming the lost queen back into her proper place as ruler of this small kingdom.
“You know, Chérie, don’t think it has escaped my attention that you have yet to officially answer my proposal,” said Julien into my ear. I shivered as his warm breath tickled my neck.
“That may have something to do with the fact that you have yet to officially ask me,” I answered. His brows rose in surprise. I thought I heard a chuckle come from Mr. Martin in the back corner of the float. I definitely heard him say something jeeringly in their special pidgin language. Julien frowned in the other man’s direction, then turned his full attention back to me.
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