Page 152 of Double Trouble for the Mafia Prince

We pass a strange little tree near the edge of the path.

It is squat, with thick, waxy leaves, and dangles a dozen glossy yellow fruits shaped like teardrops.

He tilts his head, blinking at it. "What is that?"

"Medlar," I say softly. "It’s one of the only things that grows this far north if you bribe it with sun and shelter. My girls like it better than they admit."

He squints.

"I’ve never seen it before."

"They have to rot before you can eat them," I add, amused by his raised brow. "Astringent when fresh. Sweet only when they’re nearly gone. My mother used to say everything worth tasting makes you wait."

He chuckles under his breath.

"She was never wrong."

I nod, and we walk on.

The path curves.

The rosemary deepens.

He leans a little heavier into the cane and glances to his right, where a low stone bench half disappears beneath the leaves of an orange-blooming shrub.

"Do you remember the mulberry bush at the old estate?" he asks, almost idly.

I stop.

Of course I remember.

"It used to stain the marble pink," I say. "Rafa and I weren’t allowed near it after the first summer. But we always found our way back."

"Your father wanted it cut down," he says. "Too messy, he said. The berries fell too fast, ruined the tiles. But your mother liked how it looked against the columns. Called it a small rebellion."

A breeze stirs the jasmine behind us.

The scent is thick, dizzying.

"I used to sit under it during storms," I murmur. "That one summer when he was gone for weeks. The roof tiles leaked in the south hall, but that bush never shook."

He makes a soft sound.

Maybe agreement.

Maybe regret.

"The fruit was always a little too sour," I add. "But we ate it anyway. The stains stayed for days."

He laughs then, not loud, but rich in the way that makes my heart ache once more for the childhood that I remember, and the one I never got to experience.

"I cleaned more of that marble than I care to admit," he says. "And never once complained to your mother."

"Because she would’ve fired you?"

"No. Because she would’ve made me plant another."

The silence is full with time, and memory, and all the versions of me he’s carried without my knowing.