Chapter 8 - The Border Crossing
The sun was high in a pale blue winter sky by the time my car pulled up to the curb outside an unassuming clapboard bed-and-breakfast in Newport, Rhode Island.
The town was quiet, the harbor waters dark and choppy beneath the winter wind. Snow was piled high against the picket fences, and smoke rose in neat white curls from the brick chimneys.
I stepped out of the car, feeling an exhaustion so deep it settled into the marrow of my bones. I hadn't slept in thirty-six hours. My suit was rumpled, my knuckles bruised from the vault door, but for the first time in my adult life, the suffocating band of pressure around my ribs was gone.
I walked up the wooden porch steps and pushed the door open.
The front parlor smelled of cinnamon apples and fresh coffee.
Sitting on the floor near the bay window were the four boys.
They were wearing clean flannel shirts, their dark curls freshly combed, huddled around a wooden train set that circled a miniature track on the carpet.
Nico was making low choo-choo sounds under his breath. Mateo was carefully arranging small wooden cows in a pasture. Julian was reading the back of a puzzle box.
And Leo was standing guard near the window, his arms crossed over his chest, watching the street.
When the front door clicked shut, Leo’s head snapped toward me.
"Dad!" Nico screamed.
The train was instantly forgotten.
Four pairs of small sneakers thudded across the pine floorboards. Before I could even take off my coat, eight small arms wrapped around my legs, my hips, and my waist with a collective force that nearly sent me backward onto the porch.
I dropped to my knees on the wooden floor, pulling all four of them into my arms, burying my face in the soft wool of their sweaters. They smelled of laundry soap, sweet milk, and clean snow.
"You came back," Julian murmured, his small chin resting on my shoulder.
"I told you I would," I whispered, my voice breaking. "I will always come back. Every single time."
Mateo looked up at me, touching the bruised knuckles on my right hand with gentle, curious fingers. "Did you fight the bad men?"
"The bad men are gone, Mateo," I said, looking into his hazel eyes. "They aren't ever coming back."
Footsteps clicked softly down the wooden stairs.
I looked up.
Elena stood on the third step, wearing an oversized ivory knit sweater and dark jeans. She looked exhausted, her hair falling loosely around her shoulders, but the hunted, terrified expression that had haunted her face in the brasserie was gone.
She looked at me holding our sons, her eyes filling with warm, quiet tears.
"Is it finished, Dominic?" she asked softly.
I stood up, holding Nico on my hip while Leo, Mateo, and Julian stayed pressed against my legs.
"It's finished, Elena," I said. "The warrants are served. The accounts are seized. Vincenzo is in federal custody."
I reached into my inner pocket and pulled out the crisp, white document bearing the gold embossed seal of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts that Agent Vance had couriered to me two hours earlier.
I handed it to her.
Elena opened the folder.
There, stamped with the permanent authority of the federal district court, were the amended, verified, and unsealed birth certificates for our four sons.
Beneath each name, typed in clean, unyielding black ink, were the words:
Father: Dominic Valerio Moretti.
Status: Full Legal Custody / Paternity Established.
May you like
Elena touched the embossed seal with trembling fingers, let out a long, shuddering breath, and leaned her forehead against my chest.
I wrapped my free arm around her, pulling her and our boys tight against me, the winter cold completely locked out of the world we were about to build.
