“I know, dear. However, there’s something I must do. I promise I’ll come back soon.”
“No.” I step forward in pain. “No, you won’t come back. I need you to be with us. I need to know Dad won’t hurt you again. I need to know you’re safe. Please, Mom.”
“I’m safe, amore. I’ve been safe for a long while but now there’s something I need to return to you. A child. Your child. I’ve been protecting her but now she must be yours again. Go on without me because I’m okay and she’ll be yours again.”
Addilyn.
My daughter’s name gets caught in my throat.
Valencia looks to me. “Addilyn is okay!”
When we turn back, my mother is gone. We search room after room but she isn’t in the house. She’s gone. Gone. Gone. But with her departure, she took with her a weight from my chest.
Her words echo; Go on without me because I’ll be okay and she’ll be yours again.
Addilyn will be ours.
“Baby?”
I rise up to sitting in bed and a hand is circling my back. Valencia. My darling. She’s here.
Scrubbing a hand over my face, I try to make sense of the dream that woke me. “I’m sorry…I…”
“Are you okay, baby? You were tossing and turning. Did you have a bad dream?”
“I’m alright now and I had the opposite.” I breathe and take a second to regroup.
Fuck.
It felt so real.
When I lie back down, I hold Valencia, breathing in her sweet floral vanilla scent that brings me back to real life. “I had a dream similar to the one you had about finding Addilyn. Instead, this one was with my mother. She was visiting us in this house and told us that she couldn’t stay, but she was safe and needed to go somewhere. She said that she has been protecting Addilyn but now she must return her to us.”
Lencia’s fingers caress my chest, drawing long calming strokes. “Maybe this is her way of saying goodbye. You said that you’ve never dreamt about her since her passing, right?”
“Right.”
“Well, perhaps that was your mother’s way of saying that she’s safe and all this time has been up above guiding Addilyn back to us. Your mother was an incredible woman. A brave one and although I never met her, I feel like I know her.”
Lencia’s wedding ring catches the moonlight and flares light up inside me. I kiss her ring and then her lips tenderly. When I pull back to brush strands of her hair away from her face, I smile knowing that it all makes sense…
That my life has panned out the way it was supposed to.
That life is already written out for us and at times we just have to let go and follow its motions.
That this right here is my given custom life and I will love Valencia and my children until my very last breath.
This I know.
I never thought a woman like this existed. Valencia Leitner, now Valencia Giannotti, was never in my plans as a young boy hurting from his mother’s death and father’s torment. Yet life gave me the most precious gift. The gift of sharing my life with the most inspiring woman and our three loving children. The gift of owning a successful architecture and interior design business. The gift of simply being me.
I will continue to thank the world every single day for these blessings.
“You know if we weren’t already married, I would marry you all over again.”
She giggles sweetly. “You have me, Giulio. You have me.”
“Thank you for always knowing what to say.”
“Thank you for making me sane.”
My lips perk up. “Our daughter needs us and I have a gut feeling she’ll be with us soon.”
Valencia jumps at my phone alarm that bursts through the room. “Sweet God!”
“Sorry, baby.” I laugh, reaching over to my bedside and stop the buzzing.
The smile isn’t wiped off my face at the 6:30 A.M. wake up, but rather at three texts from over half an hour ago.
Bryce: Since when did you make six o’clock meetings a part of the job? This meeting better be fucking biblical, mate. It’s far too early. Hurry your ass down here!
Lance: We’re all here. Just waiting on you, man.
Lance: Hey…you haven’t showed. Where are you? Is everything okay?
What on earth are they on about?
My brows furrow as I show Valencia the texts. We share a confused look seconds before her ringtone begins blears. She quickly reaches over and taps the answer button.
“Woah, Helena, slow down…” Valencia’s nose scrunches up cutely as silence takes over.
My sister-in-law isn’t even on speaker and I can hear her loud, panicked voice. I inch closer to my wife who hits speaker to Helena’s frantic words and hands me her phone. “I’m telling you they’re showing it everywhere! Put it on the news, it’s on right now.”
“What’s on?” I ask with a raging heart.
“Oh my good god! Giulio, switch on the TV and you’ll see it.” Helena advises with a sharp sigh. “Please let me know if there’s anything I can do to help. I’m just shocked and…so sorry.”
I switch on the television to the early morning news and my heart drops to my stomach at what I see. Beside me comes a shocked gasp as Valencia covers her opened mouth.
Oh my…
Fuck.
FUCK.
BREAKING:
NOTTI DESIGN WAREHOUSE ABLAZE AFTER SUSPECTED ARSON.
REPORTS OF FOUR EMPLOYEES CRITICALLY INJURED IN FIRE.
Shit.
Sure enough, the broadcasting is Live from my property. There are hovering helicopters shooting footage over the brightly burning design warehouse—my warehouse.
Helena hangs up and I remain paralyzed from the heavy words just muttered from the phone in my hands, staring at the television. Valencia is there to take the phone and when my eyes land on hers there is a strain in my heart that projects my greatest fear; more people getting hurt.
Suspected arson.
Four employees critically injured.
With our nakedness colliding, she straddles my hips and says the words I have said to her all along. I
