Chapter 10 - Home to the Sea
Six months later, the lancet windows of Blackwood Hall were thrown wide to the salt breeze blowing off the bay.
The gardens had been cleared of the debris from the winter siege. New limestone had been set into the western wall, its pale gray color standing out against the century-old weathered stone like a clean scar that had finally finished healing.
On the terrace, where blood had once pooled in the gravel around the Neptune fountain, an enormous wooden playpen sat beneath the shade of a white canvas marquee.
Inside the playpen, Grace was currently engaged in a vicious, focused assault on a set of wooden building blocks, her lead-gray eyes narrowed in deep concentration as she attempted to balance a blue triangle on top of a red cylinder.
She wore a clean, pale yellow dress—cotton, but cut from fine Irish linen—and two matching white socks that were firmly in place. Around her neck, the silver Saint Christopher medal hung from a shortened, polished chain, resting against her chest where the sunlight caught the jagged letter **J**.
Hannah sat on the stone balustrade, a sketchpad on her knee, a piece of charcoal between her fingers. She wore a simple white linen blouse, her sleeves rolled up to the elbows, her dark hair falling loose around her shoulders in the afternoon wind.
She had gained back the weight she had lost during those terrifying months in the servants' wing. Her cheeks were flushed with sun, and the hollows beneath her eyes were entirely gone, replaced by a calm, steady warmth that seemed to fill the entire terrace.
I walked out from the library, carrying two tall glasses of lemonade with crushed mint from the garden.
Grace saw me first.
She dropped the blue triangle, let out a piercing shriek of pure joy that sent three gulls scattering from the balustrade, and hauled herself up against the wooden railing of the playpen, her hands reaching out in that demanding, imperious gesture that she had perfected over the summer.
"Dante!" she shouted.
It wasn't her first word—that had been *bear*, followed closely by *no*—but it was the only one that made my chest tighten with a feeling so intense it bordered on physical pain.
I set the glasses on the iron table, walked over to the playpen, and lifted her high into the air.
She laughed—a rich, rolling, fearless sound that carried all the way down to the gravel drive—and grabbed both of my ears with her sticky fingers, pulling my face down until she could press her forehead against my cheek.
"She’s been doing that all morning," Hannah said, setting her charcoal down on the balustrade and looking up at us with a faint, wry smile. "Every time a car comes up the drive, she thinks it’s you. She nearly broke the screen door thirty minutes ago."
"The maritime board signed the final conservatorship papers this morning," I said, setting Grace on my hip as I sat down in the iron chair across from her.
Hannah went very still. "Is it done?"
"It’s done," I said. "The Caruso trust is officially restructured. Forty percent belongs to Grace, held in an irrevocable blind trust until she turns twenty-five. The remaining sixty is split evenly between the shipping foundations and the terminal workers' pension funds."
Hannah stared at me, her hazel eyes searching my face. "You gave away thirty percent of your father’s empire to the union?"
"My father built this empire on dead men, Hannah," I said, looking out over the bay where two of our cargo ships were clearing the narrows, their white wakes cutting clean lines through the deep blue water. "Julian knew that. That’s why he couldn't breathe in this house. If Grace is going to grow up with this name, she isn't going to inherit a fortress. She’s going to inherit a home."
Grace reached down, caught the Saint Christopher medal between her thumb and forefinger, and offered it to me with a grunt of satisfaction.
I took the medal, feeling the heat of her skin in the silver, and looked down at the crude **J** I had carved thirty years ago in Rapallo.
*Always come home.*
He hadn't come home in the way I had imagined. He hadn't walked through the front doors with his sea bag over his shoulder and that mocking, crooked grin on his face.
But he had sent his blood. He had sent his daughter. And in doing so, he had torn down the walls of the tomb I had spent fifteen years building around myself.
"Dante?" Hannah’s voice was soft, hesitant.
I looked over at her.
She had stood up from the balustrade and was standing beside my chair, her hand resting lightly, naturally, on my shoulder.
"What happens now?" she asked.
May you like
I reached up, placed my hand over hers, and looked at the two of them—the child with my brother’s eyes, and the woman who had crossed an ocean of terror to bring her to my desk.
"Now," I said, as Grace let out another bubbling laugh and tangled her fingers in the collar of my shirt, "we teach her how to sail."
