Chapter 36
Aaron's POV
After Isabella had left my study I sat there in the dark for hours, brooding over her proposition. She was giving me the very thing I’d believed I wanted when we first got married — a submissive wife who would do her duty and be grumbling about it. But with the offer now on the table, I also saw how hollow it sounded.
Isabella would remain married to me, be a suitable partner in public and private, keep her promises and make our arrangement function. In return, I’d save the life of the man she loved more than she would ever love me.
The irony was unbearable.
I poured myself another whiskey and attempted to picture what this marriage would be. That was Isabella at dinner every evening, across from the dinner table from me, polite and interested and somehow never there at all. Isabella dutifully attending family events by my side, being the doting wife even as her heart belonged to Victor. Isabella lying in my bed purely because of obligation, and only if she could bear it.
It was a special kind of torture, but better than losing her altogether.
And if I was honest with myself, I was impressed with Isabella's maturity in offering to give this to me. The woman who had married me kicking and screaming had become someone who could negotiate the terms of her own life on a coolly pragmatist basis. She wasn’t evading responsibility or soaking in self-pity. She was accepting reality and doing the best she could in an impossible situation.
I had to honor that, even though it wasn’t the outcome I wanted.
The issue now was if I could steel myself to save Victor’s life or not? My own brother had tried to kill me, had engineered to have the woman I loved betray me. By all that was reasonable and proper, Victor should have met whatever fate the northern syndicates had in mind for him.
But Isabella had been right about one thing: Victor was still family. And I could even relate to his motivations, even after all he’d done. He perceived me as a threat to the woman he loved, and took action to eliminate that threat. It was ill-conceived, if not self-destructive, though, but it was born from a place of real emotion rather than vindictiveness.
What’s more, Isabella had made it obvious what would happen if I decided. If something were to happen to Victor because of what was going on tonight, she would never forgive herself. And a marriage that was based on guilt and regret was dead on arrival.
I had made up my mind by dawn.
I phoned Diablo and told him to report to the ranch early. When he came, I was dressed in my study and ready, with a plan and some coffee.
“Boss, you look like you didn’t sleep at all.
"I didn't. We have work to do."
"What kind of work?"
“The kind that is going to take all of our international connections and probably cost us a lot of money.”
Diablo raised an eyebrow. "This is about your brother?"
“This is a matter of getting Victor out of the country safely before the northern syndicates locate him.
“Sir, with all frankness, why would we help the man who just tried to destroy you?”
"Because my wife asked me to. And because, sometimes, family loyalty has to rise above personal grudges.”
Diablo watched my face, obviously searching for an answer. "Boss, do you really want to call it?” Some of the folks we run with think saving Victor would make us look weak.”
“Don’t ask me that, let me worry about what it looks like. For the moment, I need you to concentrate on logistics.”
"What kind of logistics?"
‘Victor needs a safe passage out of Italy, fresh identity docs and enough scratch to get him started again somewhere in the world where the northern syndicates can’t reach him. Maybe South America or Southeast Asia.”
“It’s going to be costly and complex.”
"I'm aware of that."
“And it is going to involve calling in favors from people who may ask uncomfortable questions.”
“And then we will give them easy answers.”
Diablo nodded again, slowly, if unconvinced as to whether or not this was indeed happening. “Who has how much time to do this quickly?”
"Victor's in immediate danger. I'd reckon we've got a day or so before the syndicate's men up north give up searching for him and start manufacturing new friend memories."
"Including potentially Mrs. Romano?"
The idea had crossed my mind, and was one more reason to make certain Victor was safely out of the picture. As long as he remained in the country and in danger, Isabella could be considered a liability by those who wanted to send a message.
"Including potentially Mrs. Romano. So we got to deal with this quick, quiet.”
"Understood. I'll start making calls."
I headed upstairs to take a shower and change clothes after Diablo was gone. Isabella would need a response at breakfast, and I wanted to know what I would be saying in the conversation that would largely resolve — not resolve, but determine — the course of the rest of our marriage.
I went downstairs the next morning at eight o'clock: she was always there, not the mulberry-tree; but she was in the room sitting on the carpet; the breeze was for refreshing her; and the balm-scented air was for warming her, and she was dressed in a blue robe: no icy freeze; but she lay-quite complied so far as the least appearance was concerned as I thought to natural sleep, and she was as well situated as I, sitting on the carpet and that was very good. She looked up when I entered, and her expression was carefully indifferent.
"Good morning," she said.
"Good morning."
I poured myself a coffee and then took a seat across from her, knowing this would be the conversation that decided the future for us.
"Have you made your decision?" Isabella asked quietly.
"I have."
"And?"
"I'll help Victor. Already, I’ve begun the work of arranging for him to safely leave the country with new identity papers and whatever money he needs to start over.”
Isabella’s shoulders slumped in relief, and for a brief moment, her placid façade fissured. "Thank you."
"Don't thank me yet. This is complicated and expensive and involves me calling in favors from guys who might ask me questions I don’t want to answer.”
"But you'll do it?"
"I'll do it. For you."
"For me?"
"Because you asked me to. Because I care more about your happiness, even if you’re not in love with me, than I do about my pride or revenge on Victor.”
Isabella was silent for a moment, chewing on this. "Aaron, what you're doing... it's too much for me. More than Victor deserves."
"Maybe. But this is what is required if we’re going to make this marriage work.”
"And you think we can make this happen? Really?"
"I think we can try. I believe you’re strong enough and honest enough that we would both be good partners— even if we weren’t romantic lovers. And I believe I’m grown up enough to be able to appreciate what you are offering instead of always regretting what you’re not.”
"It won't be easy."
"No, it won't.”
She nodded, staring at her untouched breakfast. “Listen, there’s something I have to tell you.”
"What?"
When I went down to the marina last night, I was sitting in my car there for almost a quarter of an hour wondering if I should go over and see Victor. And for a moment, I did consider it.”
"I know."
“But at the end of the day, I’d just be a different kind of ‘prisoner’. A captive, not to fear and doubt, but to duty and debt.”
“And you are all for the responsibility and the duty?”
“I’d rather be making choices based on reality as opposed to fantasy.”
I observed Isabella's face, the woman who was formed during the months of our marriage. The sheltered girl who had been forced to marry me was gone, and in her place was someone who could face a hard situation and make a difficult choice with clear eyes.
“Isabella, I need you to hear me out about this thing I’m going along with.”
"What?"
“I haven't lost hope yet that one day things might change for you, too. About us."
"Aaron..."
“I’m not asking you to promise or commit to whether your feelings will last, or care that you make their future easier or harder. But I’m also not signing up to spend the rest of my life in a marriage that is strictly transactional. If there is any chance at all that you might someday find I want to leave space for that.”
"And if there isn't? If I don’t love you the way I love Victor?”
"Then at least we will have tried to do something good together. A relationship based on respect and shared purpose, even if it’s not informed by passion.”
Isabella reached across the table and held my hand, the first time she had initiated any physical contact with me.
“I can’t guarantee you love, Aaron. But I’ll try to be happy with what we bring out together, I can promise you that much. And I can guarantee you that I’m not going to lie to you about how I feel.
"That's all I can ask for."
We just sat and let a comfortable silence gradually expand between us, both of us processing the agreement we had come to. It was not the marriage we had hoped for either of us, but it was honest and realistic and maybe that was all we needed.
“When can Victor get out?” Isabella asked.
"Probably within forty-eight hours. Diablo’s getting' it all lined up, safe passage, fresh ID, boatload of cash to vanish.”
“Will I have a chance to say goodbye to him?
The question knocked me back harder than I thought it would. Still, even as he'd been willing to concede to this kind of relationship, Isabella's concern clearly was for Victor.
"If you want to, yes. “But Isabella, it has to be a good-bye for real. He can't come back when Victor is gone. And you can’t keep contact with him.”
"I understand."
"Do you? Because this only really works if you’re in this to build a life with me. If there’s still a little room inside you that’s waiting for Victor to come back, or hoping for some sort of reunion..."
“There will not be a reunion, Aaron. I’m choosing this, full-well knowing what it means.
I hoped she was right. I was hoping that parting with Victor would give Isabella the closure she needed to move on. But I also knew that love didn’t always go where reason and sense of right and wrong told it to go, and there would likely always be a part of Isabella’s heart that belonged to my brother.
The question was whether I could exist loving a woman who’d never fully love me back. The answer, apparently, was yes. And losing Isabella completely was far worse than having to share her heart with a ghost.
“Letter of commitment Done, then we have a deal” I said, raising my coffee cup in a mock toast.
“It’s a deal,” Isabella agreed, clinking her cup against mine.
As we concluded our breakfast and began to go over the workaday details of our current arrangement, I pondered the peculiar ways of life. I’d married Isabella in an attempt to protect her from his manipulations, yet had been the one to save Victor to protect Isabella’s heart.
Not the victory I had imagined when I fell in love with Fredrick Hawthorne's daughter. But perhaps they got the right result after all.