Giovanni
I’m walking back to the house from the cliffs beneath a heavy sky. The air is cool and damp. How I’d forgotten this. Vegas couldn’t be more different and every moment I pass here the farther my life there feels. The emptier.
At that, I think of Sienna.
She’s become important to me. A part of me. And it has nothing to do with our arrangement.
My brother signed all the papers last night.
I got everything I wanted.
The house is mine as it should always have been. But even the text from Axel telling me they’ve finally picked up Williams doesn’t help.
I’m not in the mood for celebrating.
A sound breaks into the perfect silence. I stop, turn my face to the wind and listen. It’s coming from some distance, but it’s there. And I know where it’s coming from.
Without consciously deciding, I begin to walk toward the source of the noise.
The music grows louder and mixed in with it is the sound of a hammer pounding against wood.
As I near the peak of the hill, the broken-down mews comes into view. I haven’t seen it since the day I left. Growing up, this was a source of pride for my father. For my entire family.
Falconry has always been a part of our lives. It’s the reason for my name. My father’s name. His father’s name and so forth going back to the very beginning of our lineage.
Strange to think that I know every detail about every member of my family going back centuries and Sienna doesn’t even know who gave birth to her.
I give a shake of my head and look at the wooden structure. It’s smaller than I remember it being but maybe that’s because the roof’s caved in on the far end.
The music grows more distinct, and the hammering begins again.
I walk toward it, trying to place the song. AC/DC. I used to listen to them when I was growing up. I haven’t heard this music in years.
Declan walks out, oblivious to my presence, hammer in hand, two nails sticking out of his mouth. He heads to his toolbox which is resting on a boulder and swaps out the nails.
“You should turn down the music. Anyone can sneak up on you,” I say.
He turns his head like he wasn’t caught off guard at all. “What makes you think you snuck up on me, brother?”
Brother.
I look at him, at the man he’s become. Dark eyes, dark hair, built like me. A Scotsman. A Highlander. Nothing left of the friend I remember.
I think about James and what Declan said about the boy’s mother and wonder what his life’s been like.
“It’s early for this, isn’t it?” I ask, gesturing to the mews.
“Not too early.” He drops the hammer and nails into his toolbox and wipes his hands on his jeans. “We’ll be out of your house by the end of the day if that’s what you’re here for.”
Fuck.
“And if you’re just here to gloat, then you can go fuck yourself,” he adds on, hauling a plank of wood up over his shoulder and carrying it into the mews.
I follow him, take up the back half of it.
Declan glances at me, surprised, I guess.
“How long has it been like this?” I ask.
“Broken down?”
I nod.
We set the plank down and he crouches down to measure and mark the wood.
“More than ten years.”
I don’t speak, just watch him as he straightens, turns to me.
“He didn’t set foot in here but to release the hawks the day you left.”
My father loved the sport. He was a born falconer. And I was following in his footsteps.
Another part of my legacy gone.
“You shouldn’t have left like you did,” Declan says as if he just read my mind.
“I had no choice.”
“Yeah, you had a choice. Stay and fight. Or just stay.”
“My father chose.”
He snorts. “You know, after all those years, those last days, he thought I was you. Kept calling me Giovanni. My boy.” Something flashes in Declan’s eyes. It’s not anger or taunting or anything like that. It’s hurt. “I didn’t correct him or tell him it was me. Figured it didn’t matter anymore. And you’re right in that my mother had a grip on him that none of us could match, but he loved you. He would have forgiven you.”
“Forgiven me? I’m the one who told him the truth.”
“You always have to be right, don’t you? Let me ask you something. You think he didn’t know the truth?” Declan asks, stepping closer and cocking his head to the side. “You think our father was that stupid that he didn’t know his wife who was twenty-five years younger than him had lovers?”
“If he’d known, why did he let her get away with it?”
“What would you let Sienna get away with?” he asks, gesturing toward the house.
“What the hell does that mean?”
“You don’t even know how lucky you are, do you? Life is short, brother, and you’ve wasted enough of it, haven’t you?” He turns back to the wooden plank. “Get the other end.”
I pick it up, help him line it up and slide it into the slot. I walk out to pick up the hammer and a couple of nails.
He watches me as I secure the plank of wood.
“Are you staying?” he asks.
I don’t look at him. “Don’t know. I’ll repair the house. Make it like it was before.”
“So you can sell it. More money for the man who has enough to burn,” Declan says, stepping outside and watching the sun peek around a dark cloud.
I follow him. “Just as I don’t know you, you don’t know me.”
“And isn’t that a shame.”
We look on in silence and I don’t want to walk away but I’m not sure how to continue.
“You’re not the only one who lost when you left, you know,” Declan says. “And neither was he. I lost, too. I lost my brother.”
And I mine.
I look down at the glen, remember the stories grandfather would tell about fairies and the like.
“You tell James the stories?” I ask.
Declan follows my gaze, smiles. “He loves them. I’ve promised to take him camping down there when he’s older and big enough that the wee people don’t snatch him up.”
“You scare the boy.”
“He’s not so easy to scare.” He walks back to the mews.
“You don’t have to go,” I call out, my voice sounding strange. Thick.
“I won’t live on your charity.”
“No, you won’t. You’ll run the distillery like you’ve been. You’ll more than earn your keep. Even if I stay, the house is big enough.”
When I turn, I find him watching me. “What about all that talk of murdering me?”
“I didn’t think I would care when he died. Didn’t think I cared about anything. Being back here has shown me how untrue that is. You’re right about wasting life. Wasting time. I’ve lost too many years. Lost my father. Never got to meet my nephew’s mother. I don’t know the man you’ve become. I don’t know my nephew. And I’d like to.”
He studies me, doesn’t answer just yet.
“I may still want to kill you, though,” I add, my lips trying for a smile.
He smiles back. “Same goes for me, brother.”
We stand like that for a minute in that perfect sunshine just before the clouds come and obscure the light again, dumping rain onto our heads.
“Uncle Giovanni! Uncle Giovanni!”
We both turn to find James running madly toward us, Alice trailing so far behind she’s a dot in the distance.
“What is it?” I call out, and Declan and I go running toward him. He’s out of breath and wet from the icy rain when Declan reaches him, wrapping his arms around his boy.
“What is it, James?” he asks.
James looks up at me. “Sienna,” he says, tears welling in his eyes as he casts a guilty look to his father. “She fell on one of my toys and she must have really hurt herself-”
I don’t hear the rest. I dash to the house, running at full speed, almost knocking Alice over as I charge past her and into the house.
“Sienna!”
No answer. I run to the steps, call out.
“Sienna!”
“She’s gone, sir,” Alice says from the door. “She took the car you came in and left.”
“What? Did she say where she was going? Why?”
“She dropped this,” Alice says, handing me Sienna’s passport.
Fuck.
She found the printouts.
“Poor James thinks it’s his fault,” she starts. “He’s very upset.”
Why did I put those papers in there? I shouldn’t have even brought them with me. I should have destroyed them.
Declan walks inside, looks at me.
“How long ago did she leave?”
“Maybe an hour. Not long,” Alice says. “James wanted to come get you sooner, but I told him to wait until-”
“Go,” Declan says, cutting her off.
He picks up his keys from the table beside the door and tosses them at me.
I catch them, look at them stupidly.
What must she think?
“Go get her. The roads will be slick and she’s not used to driving here.”
I nod and as I walk out, I hear James softly cry.
“It’s not your fault, James,” Declan says.
No, not his fault. My fault.
“I’m sure Sienna will explain.”
Once outside, I get into Declan’s Range Rover and start it up. I switch on the tracker, glad I had the chip put on her bracelet when I’d had the clasp repaired. She’s got a head start, but I can make that up.