Chapter 10 - The Gift
Six months had passed.
The spring sun warmed the terrace of our penthouse, overlooking the quiet blue ribbon of the river below. The city was alive with green leaves and blooming dogwoods.
My hair had grown into a gorgeous, textured crop that Laurent trimmed every six weeks—a style that had become so iconic it had appeared on the cover of two national philanthropic magazines. But on this Saturday morning, I wasn't thinking about magazines, gala boards, or courtrooms.
Today was Mateo’s thirty-second birthday.
The kitchen smelled of fresh roast coffee and warm sourdough. Mateo sat at the wooden breakfast table, wearing an unbuttoned linen shirt and gray trousers, going through the morning papers on his tablet.
I walked out from the bedroom, holding a small package wrapped in plain brown craft paper, tied with a simple twine ribbon.
I set it down on the table beside his coffee cup.
Mateo looked up, a soft smile immediately softening the sharp lines of his face. "What’s this?"
"Happy birthday, Mateo," I said, leaning down to press a kiss to his cheek.
He looked at the package, then back up at me with mock suspicion. "Clara... you didn't take another catering shift, did you?"
I laughed, the sound bright and free in the sunlit room. "No. No more catering shifts. I promise."
Mateo untied the twine with careful, deliberate fingers. He peeled back the brown paper.
Inside was an antique, leather-bound volume with gold-leaf lettering across the spine: *The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, London, 1862.*
Mateo’s hands stopped.
He looked down at the book. His fingers brushed against the aged, textured leather with deep reverence.
"The Boston auction," he whispered.
"I called the collector who bought it two months ago," I said, sliding into the chair beside him. "I didn't use our joint account. I sold a pair of vintage diamond earrings my grandmother left me—earrings that had been sitting in a safety deposit box for ten years doing nothing. I bought it with something that was entirely mine, to give to someone who is entirely mine."
Mateo didn't open the book. He set it down, reached across the table, and pulled me onto his lap.
He buried his face in my short, soft hair, breathing in the scent of lavender and citrus. His arms wrapped around me with the same fierce, protective warmth he had shown the night he stood between me and Ethan Marlowe.
"I don't need a book to know what strength looks like, Clara," Mateo whispered against my neck. "I see it every single day when I look at you."
"We won, Mateo," I murmured, resting my head against his shoulder, looking out over the sparkling river. "We took everything they tried to break, and we made it unbreakable."
May you like
"No," Mateo said softly, kissing my temple. "They didn't break you, so there was nothing to fix. You were already steel. They just made the mistake of testing the blade."
I smiled, closing my eyes against the warm sun, listening to the steady, unbreakable rhythm of his heart. The past was dust; the debt had been paid in full; and the life before us was our own to write.
