#Chapter 40 - Marco Is Alive

Layla I’d agreed to dinner with Aldo at the estate simply because I was home and I had to eat. Might as well let someone else cook for me for once, right? If the payoff meant including Aldo in the family meal … I could live with that for a night. It wasn’t like Aldo’s personal chef wouldn’t be whipping up a meal anyway. Right? What I hadn’t counted on was the backdrop of soft candlelight that threw the sprawling dining room into soft shades of umber and gold. The mouthwatering scent of roasted lamb and thyme potatoes that melted the usually museum-like coldness of the manor. The way the flickering lights softened Aldo’s features into a muted watercolor blur. The way he almost looked like my Vasco again. He was smiling, more than he had in weeks. Eli, too, and he chattered away—about school, the project he was working on, the book he’d read, soccer practice … For one moment, I almost let myself believe that this was reality—that we were a family. Or maybe it was just that