Loving My Enemy's Son

LOVING MY ENEMY'S SON Chapter 1 — A Family Marked for Death "I'm going to be a surgeon," Tiara announced, spearing a potato like the matter was already settled.  Her father laughed, the sound filling the whole dining room the way it always did, warm enough to reach every corner of it. "You'll be brilliant, *principessa*." He reached over and stole a piece of bread off her plate, the way he did every single night, the way she pretended to be outraged about every single night.  "Alessandro." Her mother's voice carried the particular fondness of someone who had watched this exact exchange happen a hundred times and never once tired of it. "Don't encourage her to be difficult."  "Too late," Tiara said. "I'm already difficult."  Her father grinned and mussed her hair on his way past, and she batted his hand away, laughing, because this was simply what dinner was in this house. Warm. Easy. Hers.  Her mother let her help with dessert afterward, guiding Tiara's small hands through the layers of tiramisu even though Tiara's version always came out slightly lopsided, the mascarpone never quite even.  "You could make it faster without me," Tiara said, licking the spoon.  "I know." Elena kissed the top of her head. "But it wouldn't be as good."  Tiara believed her completely. She believed everything her mother told her, the way children believe the people who have never once given them a reason not to.  She almost didn't notice the rest of it. Her father excusing himself twice to take calls he never took at the table, his voice dropping low in the hallway. Her mother glancing at the windows between courses, a habit that had nothing to do with the view outside them. When a member of the staff leaned down to whisper something near the end of the meal, her father's face changed for exactly one second — tightened, went somewhere she'd never seen it go — before he smoothed it back into place.  "Is everything okay, Daddy?"  "Everything's fine, *principessa*." He kissed the top of her head on his way out of the room. "Finish your dessert."  She didn't quite believe him. She finished her dessert anyway.  ---  Her mother came to her room later than usual, after Tiara had already brushed her teeth twice out of boredom, waiting for the house to feel normal again. Elena sat on the edge of the bed and pressed something small and cold into her daughter's hand.  A phone. Plain, black. One number saved inside it.  "If anything happens," Elena said, "you call this number. You don't hang up until someone answers."  "Mom, you're scaring me."  "I don't mean to." Her mother smoothed a hand over her hair, slow and familiar, the same gesture she'd used since Tiara was small enough to fit entirely inside her arms. "It's just a precaution, sweetheart. Keep it somewhere safe. Can you do that for me?"  Tiara nodded, because her mother's eyes had a brightness in them she didn't like and didn't know how to ask about.  "I love you," Elena said, and kissed her forehead, and stayed one second longer than usual before she turned off the light.  Tiara fell asleep still smelling like her mother's perfume, the phone tucked beneath her pillow, certain — the way only a child can be certain — that tomorrow would be an ordinary day.  She woke to the sound of an alarm.  ---  Red light pulsed through the hallway. Her mother's voice, closer and more frightened than she had ever heard it, called her name from the doorway.  "Tiara — get up, now—"  "Don't let go," Elena said, gripping her hand hard enough to hurt, and then they were running while gunfire rolled up from the floors below like thunder that never stopped rolling.  "Daddy—"  "He's fighting."  Two words that made no sense at all. Her father read the newspaper at breakfast. He was not a man who *fought*.  At the end of the hall, Elena pressed her palm to a wooden panel beside a painting Tiara had walked past a thousand times without truly seeing, and a hidden passage opened where there should have been nothing but wall.  "There isn't time," her mother said, and pulled her through.  The panel sealed shut behind them. Silence. Just their breathing, and the dark.  "Mom." Her voice came out very small. "Are we going to die?"  Elena knelt until they were eye to eye. "No. As long as I'm breathing, nothing will happen to you."  Footsteps sounded above them. Close.  Something in her mother's face folded shut.  "Come on."  They came out behind the estate, hidden beneath climbing vines, cold air sharp against Tiara's face while black smoke already curled from the roofline behind them. Elena knelt beside a hedge and pressed both hands around her daughter's.  "No matter what you hear. No matter what you see. Don't come out until you call that number."  "I don't want to lose you."  Elena kissed her forehead, hard, like she was trying to press the moment permanently into her daughter's skin.  "You won't."  A promise she prayed would somehow become true.  Then she was gone, running back toward the house, and the garden went unbearably quiet, and Tiara pressed both hands over her mouth and made herself as small as the dark would allow.  She had promised.  And somewhere on the other side of the hedge, she could already hear the doors of the mansion being kicked open.