Chapter 154

Chapter 154
Alina's POV

In the gaps between wedding preparations, I did three things.

The first: I withdrew my lawsuit against Lowell.

That complaint should never have existed in the first place. With my lawyer's help, the withdrawal was carried through to completion, and on the day the court's acknowledgment letter arrived at the estate, I folded the paper, tucked it into a drawer, and never took it out again. The lawsuit had never truly represented my will, and its ending required no public statement.

The second: I brought Antonio and Marco to court.

Antonio's confession had already been signed. Together with the documents I'd dug out of Adams's study, the financial records, the encrypted communications—it was enough to piece the whole of what had happened back then into a single, complete picture. The trial didn't drag on for long. Antonio put up little struggle in the courtroom, because he had no room left to struggle. Marco was even more silent, barely lifting his head from beginning to end. Father and son were sentenced together on multiple counts, and the final verdict was death.

I wasn't there on the day of the execution. I only sat by the study window, watching the branches of the old oak in the garden sway in the wind. The light was beautiful, glazing the leaves in a glossy green. I sat there a long while, until the light outside shifted from bright to burnt orange, and only then did I stand, close the documents spread across the desk, and put them away in the drawer.

I had avenged my parents. All those things that had weighed on my heart for so many years finally had their full stop.

The third thing had not yet happened—but that same afternoon, word came from the hospital: Lowell had woken.

My heart was pounding by the time I reached the ward. The instant I pushed open the door, I saw him leaning against the headboard, his face turned slightly toward the sliver of light coming through a gap in the curtains. The gauze over his eyes had been removed. His eyes were open but empty, unfocused on anything, as though he were looking at the world through a layer of fog.

I stepped toward him softly, but he still moved his head, as if he'd caught some faint sound. I stopped at the bedside and looked at him.

His gaze didn't land on me. Those eyes, once so deep and sharp, were unfocused now. Light poured in through the window and fell across his face; he blinked, as if trying to adjust to the blur.

"Who's there?" His voice was faint and hoarse, dry from having gone so long without speaking.

I took his hand. His fingertips curled slightly against my palm, as if recognizing something. Several seconds passed before he spoke, a restrained testing in his tone. "Alina?"

"It's me." My voice was calm as I drew his hand up to my face.

He didn't follow the motion. Instead, he gently pulled his hand back. His face turned a little away, avoiding my direction, and after a long moment he said, "I can't see anymore. Even hearing you takes effort. If you take care of me, you'll only be throwing away the rest of your life."

I gathered his hand back into mine and pressed it to my chest, letting him feel the heat of my heartbeat. My voice was firm, each word spoken close to his ear. "Listen to me. I've already told Grandmother—the wedding goes ahead as planned. I'm going to marry you, no matter what you've become.

"If you can't see, I'll be your eyes. If you can't hear, I'll be your ears.

"This time, you couldn't shake me off even if you tried."

He said nothing. His lips moved, as if he wanted to speak, but in the end he only stayed silent, his head turned toward the window.

I didn't need his answer. I'd said what I wanted to say. I stood, pressed a kiss to his forehead, then turned and walked out of the ward.

The day of the wedding, the weather was fine—late spring, neither cold nor warm. Sunlight sifted down through the treetops of the garden and scattered flecks of gold across the lawn. I didn't wear anything elaborate; I chose an ivory-white gown, its train trailing over the grass, lifting gently in the breeze. The garden was filled with flowers, white and pale pink, glowing softly in the sun.

Jason led Lowell to the center of the garden. He wore a dark suit, his tie knotted neatly. The only regret was that he could not see those flowers, nor hear the wind passing through the branches—but he could feel my footsteps as I drew near, because when I stopped in front of him, he tilted his head up slightly, as though sensing me there before him.

I took his hand and laid it gently against the fabric of my gown, guiding his fingertips slowly over the fine lace. "This is my wedding dress. Feel it. In this whole life, I'll wear it for you alone."

His fingers paused against the fabric, his fingertips brushing over the soft material, and then the corner of his mouth curved—a faint smile on his face. He didn't speak, but his fingers pinched the hem of my gown and drew it toward him, as if to confirm that I was truly standing there.

For Lowell's sake, the setting was grand, but the ceremony itself was simple. Grandmother sat in the front row. Megan and Katherine stood beside me; Jason stood behind Lowell.

When it came time for the vows, I turned to face him. He lowered his head slightly, straining to catch each word, so I slowed my pace and spoke the vows through one line at a time. Then I slid the ring onto his ring finger. His fingers stirred faintly, and then he lifted his other hand, feeling his way to mine, and slipped the ring onto my finger.

The moment the band touched my skin it was cool, and then it warmed quickly against me. I glanced down—the silver-white ring caught the sunlight in tiny scattered glints.

At the sharing of the cup he was a little awkward, his vision blurred. When the rim of his glass met mine it gave a clear, bright chime. I steadied his hand gently, and we drank together. From the guests came a scattering of applause and laughter. Sunlight leaked through the gaps in the leaves and settled on the faint upward curve of his mouth.

The days that followed were as plain and quiet as a slowly flowing river.

I managed the affairs of two families at once. On the Charlie-Cross side there were still plenty of loose ends to tie off, and on the Vadarich side there were holdings to reorganize. Sometimes I came home very late, and when I pushed open the door, Lowell would be sitting on the living room sofa, facing the entrance. I knew he was waiting for me.

I read to him—documents, the news, all the things he would once have skimmed off a screen himself but that I now had to read to him line by line. He listened quietly, sometimes giving a slight nod, sometimes cutting in with a word or two. As time passed, and with the accumulation of his rehabilitation, his hearing slowly began to return. It never reached the level of an ordinary person's, but at least I no longer had to speak right against his ear.

As for his eyes, I still helped him with his rehabilitation every day—those light-point tests, the visual-tracking exercises. I did them with him, round after round, and he cooperated well, never asking questions, never complaining.

Only later did I learn that he had recovered far faster than I'd imagined. He simply hadn't said so.

That evening, I attended a banquet.

A joint project under the Charlie-Cross family had run into some detail problems, so I went. I'd expected it to wrap up in two hours, but a few of the partners kept me tangled up a while longer, and by the time it ended it was nearly midnight. As the party broke up, I came across a woman in a dark evening gown. She walked out of the entrance hall, came straight up to me, and looked down at me with a self-satisfied condescension. "So you're the one they call Alina? The one the Charlie-Cross family took in off the street?"

I turned my head and glanced at her. I didn't know her, but anyone who could appear at an occasion like this came from no simple background. "What do you want?"

"You think you're fit to be godmother to two families?" she said, chin high. "Watching you at the table just now—your abilities aren't much, are they?"

I looked at her a while, then said, "Who's your father?"

I wanted to know exactly who had raised a woman this ignorant of her own place.

"A woman who climbs up by leaning on men—this is about all you'd be capable of." As she spoke she took a few steps closer and raised her hand, swinging it toward my face.

But the hand never landed. It was caught midair.

Lowell, who had been standing behind me all along, stepped forward. His gaze fell precisely on that face, bright and sharp. "Who gave you permission to touch her?"

He released her hand, and the woman stumbled back two steps, her expression shifting from fury to shock. Her eyes swept over his face twice, as if to confirm whether they could really see.

For a moment the air around us went still. Someone recognized Lowell and let out a hushed sound.

"My God—isn't that... the man called Lowell? Didn't he go blind ages ago?"

"A rumor, surely. Look at him—he doesn't seem blind at all..."

"He has to be blind—otherwise, why would that Alina woman have been running both families all these years..."

I stood where I was, staring at Lowell in astonishment.

His eyes were bright in the night, not vacant, not clouded by that unfocused blur. He shifted his gaze, then let it settle on me, and in those ever-deep eyes was a trace of a helpless, caught-in-the-act smile.

"When did you recover?" I asked.

"A while ago," he said, coming up to me and reaching out to straighten the collar of my coat, disheveled by the wind, his fingers grazing my cheek as if by habit. "I just wanted you to take care of me a few days longer."

I looked at him, exasperated by his scheming, and slipped my arm through his as we walked together toward the car parked at the curb.

The driver visibly froze when he saw us approaching, his eyes lingering a moment on Lowell's face, stunned at how unexpectedly his sight had come back. He opened his mouth to say something, but in the end said nothing.

Lowell opened the passenger door and turned his head toward me. "I'll drive. Let me take you for a spin around the nearby cities."

I got into the passenger seat and watched him round the front of the car and slide into the driver's seat, starting the engine with the same crisp ease as before. Outside the window, the streetlamps swept past one after another. He freed one hand to take mine, his knuckles locking into the spaces between my fingers.

In the days after that, he no longer needed the rehabilitation exercises, and yet now and then I would still sit beside him, reading aloud the things he could, in truth, already see for himself.

In the early autumn of our third year of marriage, we had a daughter. She was lovely, and Lowell and I named her Carissa. Outside the window the ginkgo leaves had begun to yellow, and sunlight leaked through the gap in the curtains to fall on her tiny fingers. Lowell sat by the cradle, cradling her carefully in the crook of his arm. I sat beside him, my outstretched finger caught in Carissa's small hand—and my heart, like the leaves drifting outside, having wandered adrift for years, at last came to rest.