Chapter 10 - No More Grumpy Faces
Vincent proposed twenty minutes later.
The delay was necessary because Mia insisted Renzo clean up the coffee first.
Then she decided Vincent needed flowers.
Then she decided I needed a crown.
By the time everyone was prepared according to her specifications, I was wearing a plastic princess tiara and Vincent was holding three daisies Mia had pulled from the garden.
He looked at me.
“I had a different plan.”
“I assumed.”
“It involved considerably less plastic.”
“I like this one.”
“So do I.”
He knelt.
Mia gasped even though she'd already seen the ring.
“Elena, before you and Mia came into my life, I thought surviving was the same thing as living.”
My eyes filled.
“You walked into my house because you needed a job. Your daughter walked into my study because apparently doors and rules mean nothing to her.”
“Correct,” Mia said.
Renzo laughed.
Vincent smiled.
“She mocked me within thirty seconds.”
“Also correct.”
“And somehow, from that morning forward, the house stopped feeling empty.”
His voice became softer.
“I can't promise you'll never be frightened. I can't promise I'll always know what I'm doing. You've both provided substantial evidence that I usually don't.”
I laughed through tears.
“But I can promise that there will never be a day when either of you has to wonder whether you're loved.”
He opened the box.
“Elena Harper, will you marry me?”
Mia bounced.
“Say yes!”
I looked at Vincent.
At the man I'd once been terrified to approach.
At the man who had eaten a dirty cracker because my daughter told him it would make him less grumpy.
At the father who had survived unimaginable grief.
At the man who had chosen to destroy the darkest parts of his inheritance rather than pass them forward.
“Yes.”
Mia screamed before Vincent could stand.
He slipped the ring onto my finger.
Then he kissed me.
Mia shoved herself between us.
“Me too!”
Vincent lifted her.
I kissed one cheek.
He kissed the other.
Renzo took a photograph.
That photograph eventually became my favorite.
Not the wedding photographs.
Not the polished family portraits Vincent's public-relations team later insisted upon.
That one.
Me wearing a ridiculous plastic crown.
Vincent kneeling.
Mia laughing between us.
Nothing perfect.
Everything real.
We married in September.
Small ceremony.
Garden.
Forty guests.
Claire came.
So did Gabriella.
Renzo was best man.
Mia appointed herself “flower boss,” a position she took more seriously than anyone expected.
Before the ceremony, Vincent visited Lucia and Sofia's graves alone.
I didn't follow.
Some conversations belonged only to him.
When he returned, his eyes were red but peaceful.
“You okay?” I asked.
“Yes.”
He took my hand.
“For the first time in a long time.”
Our wedding wasn't dramatic.
Nobody objected.
Nobody appeared with a secret.
No guns.
No threats.
No betrayal.
After everything we'd survived, ordinary happiness felt almost luxurious.
A year later, Vincent founded the Sofia Castalano Family Center in Boston.
It provided emergency childcare to single parents working hourly jobs.
The idea had started with seventy dollars.
The amount I couldn't afford the morning I brought Mia to work.
When Vincent showed me the plans, I cried.
“No parent working for a living should have to hide their kid in a laundry room,” he said.
The center opened twenty-four hours a day.
Vincent funded it permanently.
I became executive director.
He insisted I take the position only if I wanted it.
I did.
Two years passed.
Mia became six.
Vincent officially adopted her after a long, emotional process she understood primarily as permission to use his last name whenever she felt like it.
At school she remained Mia Harper-Castalano because, according to her, “Mommy was first.”
Vincent agreed immediately.
Our second daughter, Sofia Elena Castalano, arrived the following spring.
Vincent cried when he held her.
Mia stared into the hospital bassinet.
“She looks angry.”
I laughed.
Vincent frowned.
“She's two hours old.”
Mia copied his expression.
“Like that.”
I laughed harder.
Vincent tried to remain serious.
Failed.
Some things never changed.
Years later, people still told stories about Vincent Castalano.
Some were probably true.
Most were exaggerated.
They spoke about the feared businessman who had dismantled his own father's corrupt empire.
About the prosecutions.
About the fortune he'd sacrificed.
About the enemies he'd made.
But those weren't the stories Mia knew.
To her, Vincent was the man who checked beneath her bed for monsters even though he claimed monsters were “statistically unlikely.”
The man who attended every school play.
The man who learned how to braid hair badly.
The man who kept crackers in his desk.
The man who never removed the faded crayon drawing she'd made at three.
It hung framed behind his desk in his new office.
Four stick figures.
One was me.
One was Mia.
One was Vincent.
And one was Sofia, the little girl Mia had somehow drawn before knowing her story.
Beside it hung another picture.
Our family now.
Vincent.
Me.
Mia.
Baby Sofia.
And a tiny gold star Mia had drawn above us.
“For the sister we never met,” she'd explained.
One Sunday morning, I walked into the living room and found Vincent reading financial reports.
Mia sat opposite him doing homework.
Baby Sofia was asleep against his chest.
Vincent frowned at a page.
Mia looked up.
She narrowed her eyes.
He narrowed his.
She crossed her arms.
He crossed his.
I stopped in the doorway.
“Seriously?”
Neither moved.
Mia tilted her chin.
Vincent tilted his.
Then Sofia woke.
She looked at her father.
Her tiny eyebrows pulled together.
Her lips pushed forward.
The exact same angry face.
Mia exploded with laughter.
I followed.
Vincent stared at the baby in disbelief.
Then he started laughing too.
Renzo happened to walk in from the kitchen.
He saw all three of them.
“No,” he said. “Not another one.”
That made us laugh harder.
Vincent leaned back against the couch, our baby in his arms, Mia pressed against his side.
I looked at the man I'd once believed belonged to a world too dangerous and too cold for someone like me.
Maybe he'd believed the same thing.
We had both been wrong.
Mia climbed onto his lap.
“You still do the grumpy face a lot.”
Vincent kissed her forehead.
“Apparently.”
“But you're happy.”
He looked across the room at me.
There was no hesitation in his answer.
“Very.”
I sat beside him.
He took my hand.
Outside, sunlight filled the garden.
Inside, Sofia made the angry face again.
And the most feared man I'd ever known laughed until tears filled his eyes.
For once, there was no secret waiting behind a locked door.
No enemy at the gate.
No unfinished debt.
May you like
Just a little girl making a ridiculous face, her sister trying to copy her, and a man who had finally discovered that being feared had never been the same thing as being loved.
And in the Castalano house, laughter became the one sound nobody was ever asked to silence.
