Chapter 14
We returned to the mountain house Sofia had been trying to reach.
I had avoided it since her death.
Livia had no memory of the place.
She ran through the empty rooms as though grief had never lived there.
Maybe for her it hadn’t.
That helped.
In the kitchen, I found an unopened box Sofia had shipped ahead.
Inside were curtains.
Children’s books.
A yellow night-light shaped like a moon.
And one framed photograph of the three of us.
Nothing secret.
Nothing incriminating.
That nearly hurt more than the tapes.
Sofia had not been building an escape bunker.
She had been building a home.
Livia lifted the moon lamp.
“Mine?”
“Yes.”
“Mom bought?”
“Yes.”
She hugged it.
I turned away.
Later, Rafe found me on the porch.
“You okay?”
“No.”
He nodded.
Good.
No useless reassurance.
I told him I had spent eighteen months thinking Sofia’s drive to the mountain house made no sense.
Now it made perfect sense.
She wanted to see the place before bringing Livia permanently.
She wanted distance.
Safety.
Normal windows without guards watching every car.
I had interpreted distance from Valenti as distance from me.
That mistake came from the same family philosophy Camilla believed.
Family and organization had become synonyms.
Sofia tried to separate them.
I failed to understand before she died.
I could still finish the work.
We moved to the mountain house three months later.
Not permanently outside the organization.
I still led Valenti.
But I stopped making the main estate the center of Livia’s life.
The boss could travel.
My daughter did not need to live inside command.
The first night, she plugged in Sofia’s moon lamp.
Yellow light spread across her room.
Then she asked:
“Daddy?”
“Yes?”
“Mom found house?”
I looked around.
“Yes.”
She smiled.
“Then she knew where we live.”
I swallowed.
“Yeah.”
May you like
She did.
Finally.
