Chapter 8: The Son Who Was Taken
The officer had stepped away to take a call.
The attorney was reviewing something on his phone.
For exactly one minute, it was only Marco, Sylvia, and me at that table.
Marco sat down.
"You knew," he said.
Sylvia said nothing.
"The son Father spent years looking for.
You knew where he was."
"Marco—"
"Did you know?"
Her hands pressed flat against the table.
"Your father was a young man with a complication he didn't need," she said.
"He had a child with a woman who was completely wrong for him.
She was not from this world.
She had no education, no family worth speaking of, nothing to offer him or his future.
He was trying to build something and she was an anchor."
"He was looking for his son," Marco said.
"For years, he was looking."
"He was being sentimental.
He would have brought that child into this family and it would have divided everything.
The inheritance.
The attention.
The narrative." Her voice was crisp and managerial, as if she were describing a business problem she had solved efficiently.
"I made a decision."
"What decision."
"I found the woman.
I gave her money to move.
Enough money that she could build a real life somewhere else.
I told her that if she contacted Aurelio or allowed that child to contact him, I would make certain she regretted it."
The word h*t landed somewhere in my chest.
Marco's hand on the table curled slowly.
"You threatened a mother to keep a child from his father," he said.
"I protected this family."
"You stole my brother."
The word hung in the air between them.
Sylvia blinked.
Just once.
"He was never your—"
"He was my father's son." Marco's voice finally broke on that line — not into tears, but into something rawer.
"Whatever you decided he was or wasn't, he was my father's son.
And Father spent years searching for him and never found him because you paid someone to disappear." He stood up slowly.
"You did this while he was alive.
While he was in pain about it.
While he asked you to help him find his child.
You sat across from him and you knew."
Sylvia said nothing.
"And then he d*ed," Marco said.
"And whatever he wanted, whatever he hoped for, whatever he grieved, it went with him.
Because you decided it was yours to decide."
Her attorney reached for her arm again.
She shook him off.
"I did what I had to do," she said.
"Every decision I made—"
"Stop." Marco's voice was quiet and absolute.
"Do not tell me it was for this family again.
Don't say that." He picked up his phone.
"I'm going to find him.
Whatever it takes, however long it takes, I am going to find my father's son and I am going to tell him that his father spent his life looking for him.
And I am going to tell him who took those years away from both of them."
Sylvia looked at her son.
For the first time all evening, she looked genuinely old.
"You'll destroy everything," she said.
"You destroyed it," Marco said.
"I'm just deciding what to build next."
He walked away from the table.
I stayed a moment longer.
Sylvia looked at me.
Her eyes were dry.
She was not a woman who cried in front of people.
Probably not a woman who cried at all.
"I hope you're satisfied," she said.
"I didn't want any of this," I said.
"Yes you did."
"I wanted to be married to your son without being poisoned at my own wedding." I picked up my clutch from the table.
"That's all I ever wanted."
I left her sitting there.
The officer came back in.
The attorney leaned over and began speaking quickly into Sylvia's ear.
Through the tall glass doors of the resort lobby, I could see the reflection of arriving lights outside.
Blue and white against the dark.
Marco was waiting for me near the terrace door.
He held out his hand.
I took it.
We walked outside together, and the salt air came in off the ocean, and neither of us said anything for a long time.
Behind us, the door opened.
One of the officers stepped out and said Marco's name.
"We'll need formal statements from both of you," the officer said.
"Tonight if possible, or first thing tomorrow."
"Tonight," Marco said.
"We'll do it tonight."
He looked at me.
A question in it.
May you like
I nodded.
We turned back toward the light.
