Page 53 of Ice & Steel

I slid my arms around him and snuggled close against his side. It didn’t matter where we were going or how long we’d be gone. All that mattered was I had him, the man I loved more than anything, and our sons here with me. In this moment, I understood what it meant to love without barriers or conditions.

What a strange thing that Lucien Esposito of all people had taught me that.

I put on a movie and gave the boys snacks from the mini fridge. After a while, their eyelids dropped. The soft hum and gentle rocking of the plane had them yawning. Lucien pulled the seats down and made a bed with the blankets and pillows. The boys curled up together in a heap, exhausted. It didn’t take long for a chorus of little snores to fill the plane.

Lucien sank into a seat on the far end. I grabbed an extra blanket and curled up beside him. His body heat was like a balm to my anxious mind.

“You’re not going to sleep?” I asked.

He shook his head. “I don’t think I could.”

I rested my head on his shoulder and pulled the blanket around my body like a cocoon. “We’re alright,” I mumbled sleepily.

He ran a hand over his jaw. “I hope this doesn’t fuck the boys up.”

I frowned. “I think they’ll be okay.”

“No child should have to run for their lives. This is my fucking problem, not theirs. You knew what you were getting into when you married me, but they were born into this life. They’re innocent.”

“But they’re strong,” I murmured. “They’re Espositos.”

He released a sigh. “Whatever happens, I’ll make sure they’re protected. Not just their physical safety, but from all the shit going on around us. They don’t need that in their heads.”

My head slid down until it lay in his lap. The tips of his fingers brushed over my hair and down the side of my throat. Tracing the line of my nose and mouth. My eyelids flickered and closed under his touch.

Now that the city was far behind us, exhaustion settled over me like fog. My body ached, my fingers and knees sore. But nothing felt more raw than my heart, beating quietly against my ribs.

He shifted, settling back. His fingers wove in my hair and the warm, roughness of his palm rested on the side of my head.

“Go to sleep, Liv,” he said. “I’ll wake you when morning comes.”

PART TWO

Starlight

“Odysseus – if he could return to tend my life

the renown I had would only grow in glory.

Now my life is torment."

Homer, The Odyssey

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

OLIVIA

One Year Later

The shoreline was a pale stretch of gold and the water lay over the horizon in a net of glittering blue and white. In the distance, gulls cried above the heavy, rhythmic rush of the waves.

I dug my toes into the sand, bunching it up wet beneath my feet. The sun rested like a pool of melted gold right above the ocean. Red seeped through the sky around it as, one by one, the rays disappeared over the horizon.

I watched it with hungry eyes.

My husband would be home from the mainland soon.

I bent my neck, cracking my spine with a satisfying sound. For the last hour, I’d stood on the shore and watched the sun seep away to nothing but a golden streak and a few red clouds. My sons were asleep—or at least pretending to be—in the villa on the top of the hill behind me.