Chapter 63 Chapter 63
Chapter 63 Chapter 63
Cavalier walked into the suite that morning with two cups of coffee and the look of a man who’d spent the whole night thinking about one thing. Laura was sitting on the edge of the bed, her robe open over her pajama pants, her belly pushing the fabric out a little more with each passing day.
“Cavalier.”
“Laura.”
“What about the other coffee?”
“For me—I need it today.”
He set the cup down on the nightstand and sat in the armchair across from the bed—not next to her, not in his usual spot. Laura noticed this before taking her first sip.
—Cavalier, when something’s wrong, you don’t bring coffee and sit across from me as if you were one of my patients. What happened?
—Nothing bad.
“Then what?”
Cavalier stared at the cup for three seconds.
“Laura, we’ve been married for almost two months and have been sleeping on the same side of the bed for a few weeks now. We’re carrying a child inside you. And we have a contract signed by your mother and my grandfather on a hospital desk. All of that is already settled. But there’s one thing that isn’t.”
—Go on.
“A real wedding.”
Laura set the cup down on the blanket. She stared at it for five seconds.
“Cavalier, we’re already legally married. It’s signed, it’s sealed, it’s on record.”
“I know. But that signature was your mother and my grandfather arranging our lives in a hallway at Mount Sinai—not you and me choosing each other face-to-face in front of the people who matter to us. That, Laura, we didn’t do. And at this point, I think it shows.”
“So what do you suggest?”
“I’m proposing a Catholic wedding in the mansion’s garden—with your dress, my suit, Carla and her little one, Manuel walking you down the aisle, and my mom crying twice a day ever since I told her. No contract, no lawyers, no Vanessa, no one who was there for the signing. Just you and me and our loved ones.”
Long pause.
—Cavalier.
—Yes.
“Did you bring a ring?”
Cavalier reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and pulled out a small velvet box. He placed it on the blanket, without opening it.
“I’ve brought a ring. But I want to tell you something.”
—Go ahead.
“I didn’t order it three weeks ago on a whim. I ordered it two months ago, the day after the Riverdale rescue. I kept it tucked away because I realized it wasn’t the right time. If you say no today, I’ll keep it tucked away for another year.”
Laura opened the box. It was a simple ring, polished silver without a large stone, with three small crystals set along the band. Different from the tracker ring, different from the engagement ring, different from the civil marriage ring.
“Cavalier.”
—Yes.
“Why three crystals?”
“One for you, one for me, one for the baby.”
Laura held his gaze for five seconds. Then she laughed—a short laugh, the kind that came out when something tugged at her heartstrings and she didn’t know what to do with it.
—You bastard.
—I know.
“Yeah, Cavalier.”
“Yeah, what?”
“Yes, I’ll marry you in a church.”
Cavalier set his coffee down on the floor, stood up from the armchair, took two steps toward the bed, and knelt down on the carpet in front of her. He took her left hand and slipped the new ring onto her middle finger, next to the three she was already wearing.
“Laura.”
“Yes.”
“One more thing before you make me stop.”
—Go ahead.
“I love you.”
“I know.”
—And I love her, too.
—I know.
“And I love your mother, too—even though I never met her—because without her, you wouldn’t be sitting on the edge of this bed this morning.”
Laura cupped his face with both hands and kissed his forehead, without saying anything else.
The following weeks flew by because Marcela filled them with so many things that no one had a moment to breathe.
She started with the dress. Manuel’s seamstress—a woman who had been sewing for the family for thirty years—came up to the mansion three times with fabrics, threads, sketches, and measuring tapes. She took Laura’s measurements once a month, because her belly was growing faster than the sketches could keep up. Marcela wanted white silk with lace on the bodice and a soft drape over the hips—something that would embrace the pregnancy without hiding it. Laura agreed to almost everything except the three-meter-long veil.
“Marcela, if I wear that, I’ll trip on the first step of the altar.”
“Sweetheart, a short veil then.”
“Fine.”
Manuel, for his part, took charge of the church arrangements. He spoke with the cardinal of the archdiocese—an old friend of the family—and arranged for two priests to come to the mansion’s garden to officiate the ceremony. No parish, no public Mass, no photo in the newspaper. A private ceremony, a private registration, a Catholic blessing with all the formalities but without any fuss.
Laura returned to the clinic three times a week while all this was going on. Her baby bump made it difficult for her to handle long shifts, so she delegated the day-to-day operations and focused on administrative management. Patricio took on more responsibility. The doctors on the second floor learned to call her only for important matters.
Carla gave birth four months into Laura’s pregnancy. A healthy baby boy, three kilos two hundred grams, delivered vaginally at Mount Sinai. They named him Carlos, after her boyfriend. Laura attended as a nurse and friend, supported Carla throughout the four-hour labor, and held the baby before Miguel did—in retaliation for Carla’s belly at the baby shower.
—Lau.
—Carla.
“I’ll hold him at the wedding.”
“I’ll hold him at the wedding. And I’ll pass him to Marcela afterward. Let’s take turns so no one makes a fuss.”
—Okay.
Marcela cried, just as Cavalier had warned, twice a day. Once in the morning when Laura came downstairs for breakfast with her baby bump showing. Once at night when she asked Gloria to go over the guest list. A hundred people in total, counting Carla and Miguel, the Vargas doctors, three of Marcela’s friends, two of Manuel’s business partners, and the distant Cavalier cousins that Manuel wanted to invite to show family unity after the Marcelo scandal.
Manuel was aging before our very eyes. During his checkup, Vargas had confirmed his chronic high blood pressure, poorly controlled diabetes, and a new murmur in his mitral valve. But Manuel didn’t care about any of that anymore. The only thing that mattered to him was walking down the aisle in the garden with his granddaughter-in-law on his arm.
“Sweetheart.”
“Manuel.”
“I want to tell you something.”
“Go ahead.”
“If I fall at the altar, you let me fall and keep walking. Okay?”
—Manuel, you’re not going to fall.
—But if I do fall, just keep going. That’s all I’m asking.
—All right.
Cavalier took charge of handling the enemies simultaneously. Vanessa was in maximum-security federal solitary confinement with no access to anything. Marcelo was on a Pacific island, watched over by a new team that Manuel had hired after Vanessa’s warning. Derek sent Cavalier a weekly report on his brother’s movements.
One afternoon, while Laura was already in her sixth month and the dressmaker was finishing the final adjustments to the dress, Cavalier went up to the suite with his jacket over his arm and a face worn out from meetings.
“Cavalier.”
“Laura.”
“My brother-in-law?”
“He’s still on the island, according to this morning’s report.”
“Are we safe?”
—We’re safe.
—Good.
Pause.
—Cavalier.
—Yes.
“One thing.”
—Go ahead.
“Would you mind if I asked Vargas to give me his personal blessing before I head out to the field?”
—Vargas?
“Yes, Cavalier. That man has checked my blood pressure, my heart, my baby, my blood, and seen the look of panic on my face three times. I think he’s earned the right to bless me before your mom puts the veil on me.”
Cavalier laughed—briefly.
“Fine. But after that, you’re heading to the back pew—I don’t want my cardiologist near the altar.”
—Fine.
That same night, while Laura slept on her left side with her left hand resting on her belly and the four rings on her finger, someone knocked on the door of the main study on the ground floor. Cavalier was still awake, reviewing the security plans for the mansion’s garden for the day of the ceremony.
“Come in.”
Derek entered with an envelope in his hand. The serious expression of security chiefs who’d gone a month without any surprises and then encountered one just as the day was ending.
“Boss.”
“Derek.”
“This arrived twenty minutes ago by courier at the gate.”
Cavalier opened the envelope.
Inside was a single photo.
The photo was of Marcelo, on the Pacific island, sitting on a terrace next to a pool, with a phone in his left hand and a small smile. And behind him, standing next to a servant, with her hand resting on her son’s back, was a woman Cavalier hadn’t seen in thirty-one months.
The photo came with a note on the back.
Just a heads-up, Cavalier. Your brother hasn’t been alone on that island for the past two weeks. And your mother isn’t going to like the woman in the background.
Cavalier stared at the photo for three seconds.
“Derek.”
“Yes.”
“That woman.”
“Yes, boss.”
“Don’t tell anyone. Not my grandfather. Not my mother. Not my wife. Until further notice.”
—Yes, boss.
—And come up with a Plan B for the wedding day.
—Plan B, boss?
—The one we put together three weeks ago. The one where Laura evacuates through the west wing exit in less than ninety seconds.
"Yes, boss."
Cavalier put the photo away in the locked drawer of his desk.
And as he climbed the stairs to the east wing with his hand still in his jacket pocket, he knew that the woman in the photo—who hadn’t set foot on the continent in thirty-one months—was going to arrive in Manhattan before Marcelo.
And that his wife, sleeping on the left side of the bed with their child inside her, couldn’t find out until he decided how to tell her.