Chapter Twenty-Five

The elevator feels like it's taking forever to get to Kate's floor.

I give a tense nod to a nurse who got on the elevator with me in the lobby because I can tell that she is eyeing me.

By now, everyone at the hospital probably knows who I am and there has been a lot of speculative staring as Kate has worked her way through the recovery process.

I believed the doctor when she told us that Kate would have a long road ahead of her after everything that her body had been through. However, it has taken even longer than I expected for Kate to be well enough to move around, to take a shower, and to hug Mateo.

For a week, all she did was sleep in between the gentle physical therapy sessions and the brain function tests that she had to complete.

Happily, she did not seem to have suffered any kind of long-term brain damage, but her short-term memory was still a little iffy from time to time. She always remembered right away when prompted, but it was a little scary to see her having trouble keeping track of everything.

I realized now just how much she had been the organized, steady presence in my life before she went into hiding. She had kept track of everything while I had simply tried not to fall apart each day.

Mateo had been amazingly patient and helpful throughout the process, and I was immensely proud of him.

He was used to caring for his mother, but he seemed to have a caretaker's instincts. The doctors and nurses were so smitten with him that they offered to show him all kinds of things about the way that the hospital operations worked and how the treatment machines were used.

He helped his mother with her daily walks and worked with her on her memory training sessions as well.

I had been able to spend a lot of time with my kid over the past two weeks and found that I actually wasn't terrible at interacting with a small child.

Mateo seemed to enjoy spending time with me and he asked me lots of intelligent questions about whatever activity we were engaged in at the time.

I had called for my security team to assemble so we could take Mateo to a local amusement park, a museum, and a playground so that he could have breaks from taking care of his mother at the hospital.

He told me he had never been able to do any of those things before, a fact which broke my heart.

Each day that I spent with my child made me realize how much I had to make up for. And not just with regard to Mateo.

I had been through a lot at the hands of my father, but that was no excuse for the way that I had treated everyone around me for years. I had promised myself that I was going to start putting those that I loved first.

I would give up the entire business to the Baldini family if it meant keeping Mateo and Kate safe.

The elevator finally arrived at Kate's floor and I hurried out into the cool hallway. I nodded hello to the nurse behind the main desk on the floor and hustled past to go into Kate's room.

I had left Mateo with her while I went back to the hotel and took a shower and when I step into the room, I find him leading her slowly around the room.

As I watch, he draws Kate to a stop and she has to bend forward and touch the floor with her fingertips before standing back up. They walk forward a few more steps, and Kate stops again, this time hunkering down in a squat and then rising back to her feet.

"That's really good, Mommy!" Mateo praises her, a big smile on his handsome little face.

"Looks like therapy is going well today," I say as I step into the room.

They both turn to look at me and I'm warmed by the smiles and the love on their faces. I glance at the therapy nurse who is standing against the far wall, watching Mateo help his mother with her exercises. She gives me a small smile.

"Mateo has been a very good assistant throughout all of this work," she says. "Maybe he will grow up to be a nurse."

"Or a doctor!" Mateo says happily, guiding his mother as she starts to walk forward again.

The nurse smiles again at me, and then turns her attention to the tablet in her hand as she types something on the screen.

"Phew!" Kate says, halting for a moment and placing her hands on the small of her back. She pushes against her spine as she stretches taller. "Who knew lying in bed for a couple of weeks would take so much out of you."

"You're improving at a very rapid rate," the nurse assures her, still typing on the screen. "I'm actually really impressed with your progress."

"Patience, amore," I say to her, closing the distance between us and pressing a kiss to her brow.

She closes her eyes and leans into me for a moment. I wrap my hands around her shoulder and squeeze gently. I'm pleased to find that she doesn't feel as fragile and thin as she did a week ago.

"Oh good, you're all here."

We all turn toward the voice and see that Grazia has joined us. My brows lower ever so slightly. I hadn't seen much of Grazia the past week.

She had texted me to tell me that she was going to deal with her brothers, but then I hadn't heard anything else for quite a few days. Her sudden presence makes me nervous, even though she's been nothing but kind to Kate and Mateo.

"Don't look so pale, Elio," she says to me chidingly. She waves a sheaf of papers in the air. "I think you will like what you see here."

I gingerly took the stack of papers from her hands and started reading through them. Distantly, I heard the therapist go back to helping Kate with her exercises.

Mateo's bright, high voice hovered around the edges of my senses, but it receded into the background as I looked over the brand-new deal that Grazia had brought with her to the hospital.

When I had read enough to be sure of the nature and the intent of this new business proposal, I looked at Grazia with one brow lifted in inquiry. "Was this all your idea?" I ask.

She grins at me. "Mostly. The parts that involve Marco was his idea, of course."

"It's a good deal," I say approvingly. "For all of us."

"I thought so too," she says with a smug smile on her face.

"I'll send copies over to the lawyers first, but I don't see why we can't make this work for all of us," I tell Grazia, taking out my phone and starting to take pictures of the pages of the documents.

Grazia doesn't say anything back. She leans against the wall beside me, watching Kate struggle with her balance. Mateo jumps up and down as she manages to sit all the way down onto the floor and then climb back up with relative ease.

"I'm sorry that she was hurt," Grazia says quietly beside me.

I shoot her a quick glance before returning to the work of transferring the pages of the document to my legal team. "Why?" I ask in an abstracted way.

"It's my fault just as much as anyone's," she says regretfully. "I could have stopped all of this when you crashed my wedding." She eyes me closely and I feel her gaze boring into me. I refuse to meet it. "You could have just talked to us, you know," she says. "Marco would have let you see her."

"But I didn't know that," I reply, my tone a little vague as I type up an email with directions for the lawyers to review the documents and compare the business assets in the deal with the real value of the routes.

"Because you didn't talk to us," she insists, her tone stern.

I sigh and finally meet her gaze. "Yes, I guess I could have talked to you. However, Marco had spirited her away and hidden her from everyone, including her family. I hadn't heard from her in seven years. I didn't know what your intentions were and I didn't want to expose her to the chance that she might get hurt."

Grazia sighs. "I suppose that's fair." She's watching Kate again, but then she meets my gaze. "Promise to at least ask what's up next time you want to be angry about something?" She holds out her small, slim hand to me. I see that her nails are painted bright red.

I look at her hand for a moment, then shake it. "Deal," I tell her. But then I hold up a hand. "But that deal is only good with you. I refuse to make any such deal with your brothers."

She laughs. "That's fair," she says in reply. "I don't make deals with them directly either."

"How did you trick them into agreeing to this deal?" I ask her, leaning back in my chair and holding out the documents.

She sighs. "My brothers aren't very detail-oriented. I saw a lot of potential in the deal that was much more promising than what we would get if we just stole your trade routes from you. We will be making a lot more money with this arrangement. Once they saw the numbers, they had to agree that I was right."

"Why aren't you running the family business, Grazia?" I ask her, honestly curious. She was much smarter than her brothers.

It seemed stupid to let them run the business when she was clearly far more capable than they were.

She shakes her head a little. "I guess I don't really know. My Nonna always said that ladies did their best work in the shadows, though. I think she knew that I would secretly pull all the strings in the long run anyhow and it's safer not to be the face of the business, you know?"

I nod. That I did understand all too well.

I thought of my brother and my stomach soured.

I would never want anyone to have to go through the kinds of things I had just to keep control of our company.

Grazia was probably right that her brothers might as well bear the brunt of all the toughest decisions so she could have a better life and a much clearer conscience.

"So," Grazia says abruptly. "Are we invited to the wedding?"

At the word "wedding", Kate's attention is captured and she looks over at us. "Are you letting Grazia plan our wedding now, too?"

I laugh at this. "Should we? She seems to be very good at planning things."

Kate smiles a little and chuckles. "She has certainly proven her worth in that department lately."

Grazia's eyes are wide in her face. "Are you serious?" she asks me. Then, "When is it?"

I look over at Kate, who is climbing back into her hospital bed. She settles in and pulls the blanket over herself again to keep her bare legs from getting chilly.

She looks too frail to walk down the aisle now and I'm not sure what to say. I don't want to rush her.

"Well," Kate says with a soft smile, "we've been engaged since we were teenagers. I don't think we need any time to decide if we really do want to get married, do we?"

"When are you getting out of the hospital?" Grazia asks, glancing between us. I feel like I can see the wheels turning over in her mind at a million miles an hour.

"It appears that I am just in time to answer a very important question," Doctor Gregory says, coming into the room. "I was just coming by to tell you that I think you can be discharged three days from now. You'll have follow-up care to schedule and you'll need to continue your physical therapy, but otherwise I think you can be released to go back home."

Kate's smile looks relieved more than anything else. I know she has been chafing at being in the hospital. She was always the kind of person who loved being outside and being active.

Being cooped up in a hospital room for this long has been hard on her. Worse even than being a Baldini captive or in a Mexican hideaway.

"How exciting!" Grazia exclaims, clapping her hands. "What if I set the wedding for two weeks from now? We could rush order a dress and I can find the perfect venue. You just need to tell me the budget."

I glance at Kate who just shrugs with a smile. I am having a tough time wrapping my head around the changing tides of our relationship with the Baldinis, but Grazia's enthusiasm is catching.

"The budget is pretty much limitless as far as I'm concerned, so long as Kate is happy," I tell Grazia. I raise a hand, "But I absolutely refuse to be married at your family home. I'm sorry, but it is one of the ugliest houses I have ever visited, in my entire life."

Grazia stares at me for a moment, blinking. Then she bursts out laughing. "I hadn't even considered that we would have the wedding there," she assures me. "Actually, I was thinking about asking if you wanted to have the wedding in Mexico. We could invite your parents." She glances at Kate, waiting on her reaction.

Kate's eyes are shining with tears and she nods. "I have missed my parents so much," she whispers. "I hadn't even considered that we could finally tell them that I'm alive."

"It's okay Hun, you've had enough on your plate with healing. Oh, this is going to be amazing!" Grazia says excitedly. "You'd better call your parents right away and tell them the date! I have a lot of things to pull together in a short number of days!" Grazia is on the phone before she even leaves the room and I laugh.

"Do you want me to call them?" I say to Kate, getting up and coming over to the bed to hold her hand.

She swallows hard, tears on her cheeks as she struggles with the realization that she can finally talk to her parents again after so many years, she's finally safe. "You'd better start the conversation," she whispers.

I nod and squeeze her fingers. "Are you sure you're okay with me not, well, proposing properly or anything?" I ask her.

She laughs, and wipes at the tears that are still slipping down her cheeks. "Oh, Elio, I never needed that from you. I just wanted to know that you loved me. That was all I ever needed to be sure that we were meant to be together."

I look down into her face, realizing that I could have made so many things easier for both of us if I had just been honest with her all those years ago.

I could have just told her that I loved her, I could have just admitted that to myself and we would have been together all of these years.

"I love you," I whisper to her, kissing her soft lips. "I have always loved you. I'm sorry I didn't tell you sooner."

She shakes her head and sniffles. "It's fine. I have everything that I ever wanted now." She looks down at Mateo who is snuggled into her side, playing a game on my phone.

She looks up at me again. "All I ever wanted was for my family to be together."