Chapter 10: Learn to Be My Father

Lorenzo opened his eyes when I set the wooden horse beside his bed.

For a moment he looked at it instead of me.

“Matteo found you,” he said.

“He was easier to find than you. He wasn’t being operated on.”

His mouth moved in something too tired to become a smile.

I sat carefully. My hip still hurt, and the nurse had made me promise not to stay long.

“The baby?”

“Doing well. They want to check me again before I leave.”

He closed his eyes, breathing out.

I turned the horse so the short leg faced him.

“You weren’t very good at this.”

“I was twenty-two.”

“Old enough to count legs.”

This time, he did smile.

Then the silence came back, carrying twenty-seven years neither of us knew how to discuss.

“Matteo showed me the letter,” I said. “About the other car.”

“I should have found them.”

“Grandpa worked hard to make sure you didn’t.”

“I know.”

“He was afraid of your family. That wasn’t something he invented.”

Lorenzo looked at the ceiling.

“No.”

I waited until he looked at me again.

“I want another test. With a lab I choose.”

“Of course.”

“And I want all the letters Danny took. Not selected pages. Not things you’ve decided won’t upset me.”

“We’ll recover what we can. You’ll see everything we find.”

He spoke carefully now, as though each promise had weight he hadn’t understood before.

“Where will you go when they discharge you?” he asked.

“I haven’t decided.”

“The master wing is undamaged.”

“I’m not moving into your bedroom corridor.”

“The east wing, then.”

“Lorenzo.”

He stopped.

“I came to your house because I needed a job and somewhere people wouldn’t look. I didn’t come to be kept.”

“Someone tried to kill you today.”

“Someone tried to take me. There’s a difference, and I need you to understand it.”

His jaw tightened. I could see the argument forming.

“I can accept help,” I continued. “I can accept sensible security. But I choose where I live. I keep my identification. I have my own phone and money. Nobody follows me without telling me. Nobody decides who I can talk to.”

He looked at the little horse between us.

“You think I’d lock you in?”

“I think you’d call it protecting me.”

That landed harder than an accusation would have.

He lay still for a long time.

“I don’t know how to be a father,” he said at last.

“Then learn.”

I left the horse beside his bed when the nurse came for me.

The next morning, Matteo brought my identification, an envelope containing my wages, and a phone I could set up myself.

“Your money,” he said. “Every shift, including yesterday.”

“Yesterday was a terrible shift.”

“I’ve raised that with management.”

I laughed, then winced because my neck hurt.

He waited while I counted the wages. Nobody hurried me. Nobody looked offended.

I chose the keeper’s cottage beside the stables for the weeks ahead. It had a small kitchen, two bedrooms, and a front door opening directly onto the yard.

Lorenzo offered it. I accepted after we put the arrangement in writing: a place to stay, without conditions about my name, my child, or how often I visited him.

There were still guards at the estate gates. After what happened, I wanted them there. I just wanted to know who they were working for and what they were allowed to do.

Balthazar watched me carry in my first bag.

His jaw had been treated, and he wore a new halter. When I reached the stable door, he lowered his head into my hands.

“You look better than I do,” I told him.

He searched my pockets.

“And you’re still rude.”

Ethan called that evening.

I recognized his voice before he finished saying my name.

“Nora?”

I sat down on the kitchen floor because the chair was too far away.

“I’m here.”

“I’ve been trying to find you. The foundation said you were in a hospital. Are you hurt?”

“I’m all right now. There’s a lot I need to tell you.”

He listened while I explained Danny, the clinic, the messages I had never sent. When I told him about the baby, he went quiet.

“Ethan?”

“I’m here. I’m just trying to understand how much you went through without me.”

“You didn’t know.”

“I should have come back.”

“I believed you didn’t want me. You believed I didn’t want you. He made sure of both.”

We stayed on the phone until the room darkened around me.

Before we hung up, he asked, “Can I come?”

“Yes.”

Two weeks later, he arrived in a muddy truck with a bag on the passenger seat and crushed wildflowers in his hand.

I stood on the cottage step, suddenly frightened in a way no gun had made me.

He stopped when he saw my belly.

Then he looked at my face.

“May I hug you?”

I crossed the little space between us and answered by putting my arms around him.

He held me carefully. I buried my face against his jacket and smelled cold air, soap, and the faint familiar trace of animals.

We didn’t fix everything that afternoon. We talked about the letters. About the work he needed to finish overseas and the arrangements he was making to remain in New York. About the appointments he wanted to attend, if I wanted him there.

I did.

Lorenzo came down the path during dinner, walking slowly after surgery.

Ethan stood.

“Mr. Falcone.”

“Dr. Cole.”

My father looked at Ethan, then at the place he had set for himself beside me.

“If you hurt her—”

“Lorenzo,” I said.

He paused.

Ethan waited, looking remarkably calm for a man being examined by Lorenzo Falcone.

“If you hurt her,” Lorenzo finished, “she’ll tell you what she thinks of it.”

“I would expect her to,” Ethan said.

I gave my father a plate.

“Stay for dinner. You can practice ordinary conversation.”

He stayed.

Over the following weeks, the independent test confirmed what Mara’s report had said. I gave my statement to investigators and received copies of my records. Dritan remained in custody. Mara continued cooperating through her lawyer, facing questions about her own conduct instead of being allowed to hide behind his.

The damaged wing was rebuilt. The cottage became mine in smaller ways: books beside the chair, my grandfather’s photograph on the shelf, Ethan’s boots by the door when he stayed.

By the time spring reached the hills, nearly three months had passed since the courtyard.

That night, thunder rolled over the stables.

I was folding a little gray blanket when the first contraction made me stop.

Ethan looked up.

“Nora?”

I waited for it to ease, then put down the blanket.

“I think it’s time.”