Chapter 1
Bianca shoved the little boy through the glass doors hard enough that his bare knees struck the frozen stone step.
“Take your junk with you,” she said, and flung a wooden airplane after him.
Six-year-old Theo Rinaldi scrambled for the toy. Its pale-pink ribbon dragged through the snow, and one small wheel snapped against the edge of the porch. He wore a thin beige shirt and shorts. The air outside the Aspen mansion was so cold it hurt to breathe.
Behind the glass, Bianca's champagne-colored gown glittered beside a towering Christmas tree. She laughed when Theo tried to stand.
“Please,” he whispered. “Mom made that.”
“Your mother is gone.” Bianca slid the door shut. “Maybe you'll finally learn.”
The latch clicked. Theo pressed the airplane against his chest. Snow worked between his toes.
A black SUV rolled into the circular driveway, stopped, and remained silent for a heartbeat. Its rear door opened.
Dante Rinaldi emerged in a long black overcoat. At sixty-three, he still moved with the deliberate confidence that had made men in Chicago lower their voices when he entered a room. His silver hair was combed straight back. A green stone flashed in the ring on his right hand.
He had come to deliver a Christmas present, not to find his grandson kneeling outside in the dark.
“Theo?”
The boy flinched before he looked up. That single movement struck Dante harder than any threat he had faced in forty years.
“Grandpa?” Theo tried to rise. His legs shook.
Dante crossed the snow, stripped off his coat, and wrapped it around the child. He knelt and pulled Theo close. Beneath the cloth, the boy was trembling violently.
“Who put you out here?”
Theo stared at the doors. “I was supposed to practice being quiet.”
Dante lifted his head. Bianca was visible inside, one hand pressed to her mouth. Her smile had disappeared.
He carried Theo over the threshold. Warm air washed across the child's cheeks, but he kept shaking.
Luca, Dante's thirty-six-year-old son, stood near the fireplace in a navy sweater patterned with white geometric shapes. He looked at the coat around Theo and then at Bianca.
“What happened?” Luca asked.
Dante set the boy on a cushioned bench by the entrance. “That's what I'd like to hear.”
“He had a tantrum,” Bianca said quickly. “I was showing him that actions have consequences.”
“In the snow?”
“For one minute.”
Theo's eyes moved toward the polished floor. The airplane lay there, its ribbon wet and one wheel crooked. He must have dropped it as Dante carried him inside.
Dante picked it up. Elena, Theo's mother, had sanded the wings herself before she died two years earlier. She had tied that ribbon around the body because Theo said airplanes should carry something beautiful wherever they went.
Dante knew. He had been there when she gave it to him.
“You threw this?” he asked Bianca.
“It's a cheap piece of wood.”
Before Luca could speak, Dante noticed a row of tiny wet footprints leading from the doors across the stone. Theo had apparently tried to come back inside before the SUV arrived. There were marks where his fingers had brushed the glass, just below the handle, at the height of a child who could not reach the lock.
Dante had seen men beg him to open doors. He had once felt nothing at all. Standing there, he understood that he had brought that same cold arithmetic into a family where people with less power learned to endure whatever the powerful decided.
Theo leaned forward on the bench, one hand still trapped inside Dante's enormous coat. He watched the adults with the careful attention of someone trying to predict a storm.
Dante wanted to tell him that the danger was over. He couldn't. He hadn't yet understood its shape.
Luca stepped between them. “Dad, don't make a scene.”
Dante looked at his son. “Your boy was barefoot outside.”
“He was never in danger.”
Dante moved toward Luca. Luca grabbed his arm. Instinct took over: Dante struck him once, a fast, brutal blow that sent Luca stumbling into the drinks trolley. Crystal shattered across the stone.
Bianca lunged for the airplane. “Give me that!”
Dante turned sharply and thrust his arm between them. She collided with it, lost her balance, and fell among the wrapped gifts beneath the tree. Boxes tumbled. Red ribbons scattered.
Then everything stopped except the crackle of the fire.
Dante stood holding the airplane. Luca gripped the edge of the ruined trolley. Bianca stared up from the floor, stunned.
From the bench, Theo made a tiny sound.
Dante turned. The boy wasn't watching the broken glass or the fallen woman. He was staring at the pink ribbon.
“Grandpa,” Theo said, barely audible, “she'll make me do it again if you leave.”
Dante's fingers closed around the damaged wing.
May you like
Again.
That word changed everything.
