Chapter 10 - HOME FOR CHRISTMAS
Christmas morning arrived quietly.
No armed guards.
No marble ballroom.
No men waiting for orders.
Roman woke at 5:42 because something struck his forehead.
He opened his eyes.
A stuffed reindeer lay beside him.
Luca stood beside the bed.
“Dada.”
Roman stared.
“How did you get out of your crib?”
Luca grinned.
Roman sat up.
“This is a serious security breach.”
Another reindeer hit him.
Lily appeared.
Norah leaned against the doorway laughing.
“You have two intruders.”
“I noticed.”
“Handle it, former crime lord.”
Roman grabbed both children and pulled them onto the bed.
They screamed with laughter.
Norah watched.
This was what she had wanted.
Not wealth.
Not revenge.
Not the enormous penthouse where she once felt lonely despite never being alone.
This.
Messy hair.
Cheap pajamas.
Children laughing before sunrise.
Roman looked toward her.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“You’re staring.”
“I’m allowed.”
He smiled.
Later, Elena arrived carrying enough presents for twelve children.
Carlo brought breakfast.
Matteo arrived walking with a cane.
Ward came unexpectedly and claimed he was only there because Elena threatened him.
By noon, the little house was overflowing.
Roman stood in the kitchen watching everyone.
Carlo nudged him.
“You miss it?”
“What?”
“The old life.”
Roman considered the question.
“No.”
“Not even a little?”
Roman watched Lily put a plastic crown on Matteo’s head.
“No.”
Carlo smiled.
“You’ve gotten boring.”
“Best thing that ever happened to me.”
After dinner, snow began falling.
Norah stepped onto the porch.
Roman followed carrying two mugs.
“Coffee.”
She accepted one.
For several minutes, they watched snow settle across the yard.
“Last Christmas,” Norah whispered, “I thought seeing you on that airplane was the worst thing that could happen.”
Roman smiled faintly.
“I thought it was the best.”
“You looked homicidal.”
“I was emotional.”
“You bribed a stranger out of his seat.”
“He seemed satisfied with the transaction.”
She laughed.
Then grew quiet.
“I owe you something.”
“No.”
“You don’t even know what I was going to say.”
“If it’s an apology for leaving, no.”
Norah looked at him.
Roman continued.
“You had reasons.”
“I still should have told you about the babies.”
“Yes.”
His honesty surprised her.
“That hurt.”
“I know.”
“I don’t think that disappears.”
Norah lowered her eyes.
Roman touched her hand.
“But pain doesn’t have to disappear before people build something better around it.”
Her eyes filled.
“When did you get so annoyingly wise?”
“Prison library.”
She laughed.
Roman became serious.
“I owe you something too.”
“What?”
“A choice.”
He stepped backward.
Norah frowned.
Roman did not kneel.
Instead, he reached into his pocket and removed a small box.
Norah stared.
“Roman.”
“Relax.”
“That sentence has never relaxed anyone.”
He opened it.
Inside was not a ring.
It was a key.
Norah blinked.
“The house is yours,” Roman said.
“What?”
“I bought out the remaining mortgage last week and transferred everything into your name.”
Her expression hardened.
“I don’t need you buying me—”
“I know.”
He interrupted gently.
“That’s the point.”
Roman placed the key in her palm.
“If tomorrow you decide you don’t want me here, I leave. You and the twins keep the house. No leverage. No financial trap. No security men following you. Nothing.”
Norah stared at the key.
“You’re giving me the power to throw you out?”
“Yes.”
“That might be the stupidest thing Roman DeLuca has ever done.”
“I have a substantial list.”
She laughed through tears.
Then remembered the velvet box.
“Good.”
Roman frowned.
“Why good?”
Norah pulled it from her pocket.
Now Roman stopped breathing.
She opened it.
A simple silver wedding band rested inside.
Roman stared.
“You bought me a ring?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because the first time we married, you chose everything.”
Norah stepped closer.
“The house. The security. The wedding. The future.”
Roman said nothing.
“This time, I want to choose.”
His eyes lifted slowly.
“Choose what?”
“You.”
Roman’s face changed.
Not the controlled expression of the feared man he once was.
Just disbelief.
Norah smiled.
“I don’t want the old marriage back.”
“Neither do I.”
“I don’t want the old Roman.”
“He’s unemployed.”
She laughed.
“I want counseling to continue.”
“Yes.”
“I want decisions made together.”
“Yes.”
“No guns in this house.”
“Yes.”
“No disappearing for three days and calling it business.”
“Yes.”
“No solving arguments by buying me jewelry.”
Roman hesitated.
“That one feels unnecessarily restrictive.”
“Roman.”
“Yes.”
“And if I tell you I’m angry, you listen instead of trying to fix me.”
He nodded.
“Yes.”
Norah took his left hand.
“So I’m not asking whether we can go backward.”
She slid the band onto his finger.
“I’m asking whether you want to start over.”
Roman stared at the ring.
Then at her.
“You’re proposing to me?”
“I believe that’s what’s happening.”
“You had an entire year to plan this, and this is your speech?”
“I was busy raising your children.”
“Our children.”
She smiled.
“Our children.”
Roman pulled her close but stopped inches from her lips.
“May I?”
That single question nearly broke her heart.
The old Roman would simply have kissed her.
The new one asked.
Norah nodded.
“Yes.”
He kissed her beneath the falling snow.
Inside, someone screamed.
They separated.
Roman spun instinctively.
Then they heard Carlo.
“Luca! Put that down!”
Roman and Norah ran inside.
Luca stood beside the Christmas tree holding Roman’s old watch.
The toddler had apparently dropped it into a glass of eggnog.
Roman stared.
Norah covered her mouth.
Carlo looked horrified.
“That watch cost eighty thousand dollars.”
Roman looked at his son.
Luca grinned.
“Dada.”
Roman started laughing.
Carlo stared.
“You’re laughing?”
“It’s a watch.”
“You once threatened a man for scratching that watch.”
“I was an idiot.”
Lily toddled over and hugged Roman’s leg.
He lifted her.
Luca demanded equal treatment, so Roman picked him up too.
Norah stood beside them.
Elena quietly took a photograph.
Roman noticed.
Normally he hated photographs.
This time he smiled.
One year earlier, Christmas Eve had trapped him on an airplane beside the woman who feared him most.
He had believed discovering his children was the miracle.
He had been wrong.
The miracle was not finding them.
It was becoming someone they did not need to run from.
Six months later, Roman and Norah married again.
There were thirty guests.
No politicians.
No criminal associates.
No newspaper photographers.
Lily dropped flowers down the aisle.
Luca immediately picked them back up.
Matteo served as Roman’s best man.
Claire’s photograph rested beside Norah’s bouquet.
And when the officiant asked Roman whether he took Norah as his wife, he did not make some dramatic promise about protecting her from the world.
He had learned better.
“I choose you,” he said. “And I’ll keep choosing you when you disagree with me, when you’re angry with me, and when loving you requires me to change.”
Norah smiled through tears.
“That was annoyingly good.”
The guests laughed.
Roman grinned.
“I had help.”
Years later, their children would know pieces of their father’s past.
Roman never lied about it.
But the twins would never remember armed guards in hallways.
They remembered Saturday pancakes.
Bad singing.
Christmas lights.
Their father sitting through school plays with tears he pretended were allergies.
Their mother laughing whenever he burned dinner.
And every Christmas Eve, Roman insisted they take one photograph together.
Not because he loved Christmas.
He still hated snow.
He did it because December 24 was the anniversary of the moment his old life ended.
One Christmas, when Lily was seven, she asked why.
Roman looked toward Norah.
She smiled.
“Tell them.”
Roman pulled both children onto the couch.
“Once upon a time, your father got on an airplane in a very bad mood.”
Luca laughed.
“That sounds like Dad.”
“Your disrespect is noted.”
“What happened on the plane?” Lily asked.
Roman looked across the room at Norah.
Even after all those years, she could still make the rest of the world disappear.
“I found the two most important people I never knew I had.”
Lily frowned.
“Me and Luca?”
“Yes.”
“What about Mom?”
Roman smiled.
“I’d already found your mother.”
He reached for Norah’s hand.
“I was just stupid enough to lose her first.”
Norah sat beside him.
“And then?”
Roman kissed her temple.
“Then she taught me the difference between finding a family…”
He looked around the warm little house, at the crooked Christmas tree and the children pressed against him.
“…and becoming worthy of one.”
Outside, snow covered Chicago.
Roman no longer hated it quite as much.
Because once, on the coldest Christmas Eve of his life, a storm had grounded his private jet, ruined his plans, and forced him into row 2 of a commercial airplane.
Roman DeLuca had boarded that flight believing the storm was keeping him from the life he needed to reach.
May you like
He understood now.
It had been carrying him home.
