Page 61 of Redemption
I have never seen him less than absolutely composed. Ruthlessly composed even.
My father, who allowed for no weakness of any kind, fidgeted.
If I were a child still, I would be concerned. As a man, I understand why he cannot restrain himself.
Change is constant in life, but when you have as much money as my father has always had, you begin to believe that you can control the changes in your world. That, somehow, money trumps fate. But today, I believe my father is learning that he is not in control. He did not foresee this change coming. He did not allow for the possibility that Luca could still be alive because of the hidden knowledge and secrets he has kept to himself all these years.
I know he wants to ask to see the picture again on my phone, but he doesn’t. Instead, he restlessly sits in the copilot’s seat, shifting constantly with fractured attention.
I can’t imagine what’s going through his mind right now. I do not envy my father his life. It is perhaps the reason I am so different from him, much to his great despair when I was younger.
The day I told him I was leaving Italy, perhaps for good, to follow my own path, I nearly broke him. One son had already been taken from him, and he was determined to make me into a son who could fill the emptiness left by my brother. Despite his constant molding of me, I could not be shaped into the image he sought.
Life doesn’t work that way.
I was destined to become what I became—my own man. Thankfully, when I returned, he ceased trying to force me to be what he wanted. I don’t know if it was the tattoos—the physical reminder that I made my own choices—or the sheer gratitude that I had come back and he would not have to live out the remainder of his life without either of his sons. I’ve often thought he finally learned to appreciate my differences after he was deprived of them.
And now, as I set the plane down on the water in a smooth landing, I can’t help but wonder what he will make of a man who is even less malleable than I was. Alessandro Giordano has never met a man like Lachlan Mount. No longer the infant who was taken from my mother’s arms, my brother is a formidable force of nature.
A smile tugs at my lips as I imagine what kind of result there will be when these two forces of nature collide. And that is before I consider the potential fireworks that could take place when my father and mother see each other after all these decades separating them.
My mother is also an unpredictable woman, who should never be overlooked or underestimated. I would do so only at my own peril.
“How long have you known?” My father asks his first question of the flight immediately after I shut the engine down and glide the plane toward the dock, using the momentum of the slowing propellers.
I look over to see the side of his face as he continues to stare directly ahead.
“How long have I known what?”
“That he was alive. How long have you known?” The without telling me hangs unsaid, but I hear it regardless.
“Over a year.”
His head jerks toward me. “And you kept this from me intentionally?”
“Yes. I didn’t know where he was. Just that he was alive. It was a DNA test result that led back to an untraceable post office box in America. There was nothing I could tell you, except that a person with my DNA was alive.”
“You made the right choice. I wouldn’t have believed you if you’d told me then,” he says, admitting the truth with quiet humility.
I meet his gaze with kindness in mine. “It’s why I didn’t tell you. It would have been agony for you to know that it was possible he was alive and not to know more.”
“And it was not agony for you and your mother?”
I let my smile fully unfurl. “No. It was cause for celebration. For hope. For more prayers. For believing that our dream would finally come true.”
“I would have spoiled that for you both. You knew this. It was good that you did not tell me until you did.” The honesty coming from my father is more shocking than anything I could have imagined being said today.
“To find him, the hope needed to be stronger than ever before. We did not keep it from you out of cruelty, but out of kindness. It was hard not to run to you to tell you the truth. I wanted to bring you concrete proof, and that I could not provide until I saw him with my own two eyes and determined for myself that he was truly my brother.”
The pontoon bumps against the dock as Marvin, one of the gardeners, ties off the bowline to the cleat.
After a few moments of silence, Father stares at me with his chin bouncing ever so slightly in agreement. “You made the right choice. Thank you for not letting me prevent this day from happening. I cannot imagine how overjoyed your mother must be to have both her sons alive and well and on her island.”
“You will see her joy for yourself, Father. Are you ready?” I ask as Marvin reaches for the door on the passenger side of the plane.
With a lift of his chin, he says, “I have never been readier for anything in my life. Please, let us go. I wish to see them both. It has been much, much too long.”
I don’t know what to expect as we make our way from the plane to the stone stairs. Mother would have seen the plane flying in. She must know we are on our way up. The electric potential of the moments to come grows with each step we take.
