Chapter 10 - THE PRINCESS’S WISH
For three days, I told myself the photograph was a trick.
Anthony had survived the bombing. That much was clear from the recording, the storage box, and the documents he’d left behind. But the photograph showed him alive much later—older, thinner, standing beside a woman whose face was turned away from the camera. The timestamp was from six months earlier.
If it was genuine, my brother had been in Chicago while I mourned him. He had watched from a distance while I built the very empire he had tried to expose. He had let me believe he was dead.
I knew what it felt like to be lied to by family. I knew what it did to a person’s sense of reality. Still, a part of me wanted the photograph to be true.
My father recognized the place in the background: a train platform in Milwaukee. The woman beside Anthony wore a silver pendant shaped like a crescent moon. It was the same shape as the mark behind Emma’s ear.
We sent the image to the attorney and a trusted investigator. The answer came back the next morning: the photograph had not been altered, but the woman’s identity could not be confirmed. The platform had been demolished two months earlier. The trail was already cold.
I could have put the organization back together and used every resource I had to find Anthony. Instead, I began doing what I had promised the captains. I turned over records, shut down shell companies, and cooperated with investigators who had spent years trying to prove what our family had done. Some men called it surrender. Others called it survival. I no longer cared what they called it.
Richard was charged in connection with the conspiracy and the payments tied to Sofia’s murder. The North Shore Circle’s name surfaced in court filings, but its members remained hidden behind layers of corporate ownership and political influence. My father agreed to testify. It would not undo what he had done, but it was the first honest thing he had offered in years.
Isabella and Emma moved into a quiet house near the lake, with a garden and a yellow front door. Isabella returned to work only when she wanted to, not because she needed to keep a roof over her daughter’s head. I set up a trust for Emma’s education, managed by an independent attorney, with no conditions attached and no right for me to interfere in her life.
Isabella insisted on reading every document.
“I won’t let your family turn her into a symbol,” she said.
“Neither will I.”
She studied my face, looking for the old certainty. “You’re changing.”
“I’m trying.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
“No,” I said. “It isn’t.”
The teddy bear wedding became a weekly event. Emma insisted that Prince Ribbit, Daddy Bear, and Mommy Bear all attend. She made Marco wear a paper boutonniere. She ordered my father to sit in the front row and instructed me to wear the pink tiara whenever I was present.
The first time I refused, she crossed her arms and said, “Princesses keep their promises.”
So I wore it.
My men never stopped teasing me about it. Marco took a photograph and threatened to put it on the office wall. I told him I’d have him assigned to traffic duty. He laughed and hung it up anyway.
One evening, after the ceremony, Emma sat beside me on the garden steps. The sunset painted the lake gold. She leaned against my arm, her curls warm against my sleeve.
“Are you still Mr. Grumpy?” she asked.
“Probably.”
“Are you still a princess?”
“Only on Saturdays.”
She thought about that. “That’s okay. You can be a prince on Sunday.”
I smiled before I could stop myself.
She saw it and gasped as though she’d witnessed a miracle. “Mommy! He smiled!”
Isabella laughed from the doorway. My father watched from the garden path, no longer asking for a place he had not earned. He was learning to be present without expecting forgiveness as payment.
For a while, the house felt almost peaceful.
Then a letter arrived with no return address. It had been delivered to the attorney overseeing Emma’s trust. Inside was a small silver key and a photograph of Anthony standing outside a school. Behind him, barely visible in the window, was a little girl with golden curls.
The picture was dated two weeks earlier.
On the back, in handwriting I knew as well as my own, were the words:
**SHE’S NOT THE ONLY CHILD I SAVED.**
I stared at the photograph for a long time. The girl in the window had Emma’s green eyes, the same crescent-shaped mark behind her left ear, and a tiny pink crown drawn on the glass beside her.
My phone rang. The number was blocked.
I answered without speaking.
A man’s voice came through, roughened by years and distance.
“Vincent,” he said. “If you want to see me, come alone. And don’t tell Dad.”
The call ended.
Across the garden, Emma was arranging her teddy bears for another wedding. She lifted the pink tiara and held it toward me.
“Your turn, Mr. Grumpy.”
I took it and set it carefully on my head.
Whatever waited beyond the garden, I would face it without making a child carry the burden of my family’s sins.
But as Emma laughed and clapped her hands, I looked once more at the photograph.
Anthony was alive.
May you like
And he had been watching us.
The next wedding, I suspected, would not be for teddy bears.
