With the toast about to be given and all of the teams as alert and on point as they always were, Roman begrudgingly plucked the earpiece out of his ear and placed it into the outstretched palm of his COO and partner, Glori Knight.
“Lord be praised,” she said, grinning as she stuck the piece in the pocket of her short, chic black dress. “Miracles do happen, si—Roman.”
As the new lead at Sheppard Security, she was getting used to calling her partner by his name.
“Yeah, yeah,” he said grumpily, although in reality, he liked seeing her dressed up for the celebration, curls high, big earrings, makeup on point. Giving her an equal stake in the company allowed her to have her own second-in-commands who were doing the legwork for securing this anniversary party on El Castillo’s grand front lawn. “You tell my sister I kept my promise.”
She gave a mock salute before turning and grabbing a glass of wine off a passing tray.
Watching her walk away, he fingered the spare earpiece in his pocket. It was more of a security blanket than a necessary tool. Taking a step back from Sheppard Security wasn’t easy, but his company and all the people it would continue to save were in the best of hands.
He turned and began making his way across the lawn crowded with villagers laughing, banners fluttering, children running and playing, and banquet tables groaning under wine bottles and tapas platters and fountains flowing with cava. It was a stunning mid-May day, warm but not hot, snow at the top of Pico Viajadora like whipped topping against the drenched blue sky. The vineyards were lush and leafy, with flowering just beginning to happen. For growers, this time was the deep breath and a prayer before the rush of the growing season.
If their father had ever given them a gift, it was dying so that they could have this one-year anniversary party of the new king’s reign on this gorgeous, calm-before-the-storm day.
Mateo, ever the penny pincher, had resisted having it at all.
In the past, he’d argued, celebrating a new king’s peaceful transition made sense when coups and plagues and gold goblets laced with arsenic made the transition less of a sure thing. But now, the only threat to his throne was a two-hour-older brother who repeatedly and vehemently declared he had no interest in the role.
It had taken arguments from Mateo’s older brother, little sister, powerful wife, and then the double-barrel blasts of his twin children’s puppy-dog eyes to change the king’s mind. They weren’t celebrating him, they said. (Even though they were, they were celebrating both the new rey and reina, because why wouldn’t they celebrate this hard-working, fair, empathetic genius of a couple who brought prosperity and excitement and the light of a bright future to this ancient kingdom?)
They were celebrating all of them.
With the children in bed, while the three siblings and their loves sat around Mateo’s massive dining room table and got slowly drunk on Sofia’s excellent wine, they convinced him that the party would be a chance to celebrate how far they’d come. How much they’d accomplished. How lucky there were. They gently tapped their glasses together and looked at each other and marveled.
Ducking behind a manicured shrub to avoid a group of village viejas who would trap him in conversation for an hour, Roman surreptitiously marveled now as he caught the sight of Daniel Trujillo and Bartolo sitting close together, their shoulders touching, at one of the many linen-covered tables as they quietly spoke with Father Juan, the Catholic priest who all but raised Roxanne. Since meeting Father Juan at a small family event a month ago, the two men had been considering asking him to officiate their vows.
For the last month, Cenobia had been serenely supportive in their company and going crazy with impatience when they weren’t around. For her sake—and for his—Roman hoped they made a decision today.
They hadn’t shared what they meant to each other with anyone but close family and friends, wanting to wait until the vows were spoken to tell the greater world. But Cenobia had nearly lifted off with happiness when, during an after-dinner stroll in the village, Daniel had slipped his hand into Bartolo’s and they’d walked the lantern-lit granite streets hand-in-hand.
The Monte had a way of making what once seemed impossible come true.
For example, the impossible image of his sister, Princesa Sofia, leaning against her husband’s hip, as she chatted animatedly with her mother, Dowager Queen Valentina in all her platinum blond hair and slinky dress glory. There’d been a time when the Queen would have no more talked pleasantly with her daughter while standing among a crowd of villagers than she would have flown to the moon. But since repairing her relationship with Sofia five years ago, she’d taken an active role in getting to know her people and advocating internationally for Monte wines.
Now, she greeted him with a kind nod and a “Señor Román” as he approached their little group.
“My wife says I have to stick my finger in your ear,” Aish Salinger said, looming over Roman by a couple of inches with his shit-eating grin.
“Try it and say goodbye to your guitar-playin’ days,” Roman said with his smile-not-smile.
Aish used a lanky hip slide to hide behind his tiny spitfire of a wife.
Roman gave her a real smile and a put-upon sigh. “Yes, I gave Glori my earpiece.”
Sofia pushed all of her glorious tawny-colored hair—it almost reached her waist now—back behind her shoulder and grinned. “I don’t know why you resist me,” she said haughtily. “I always know what’s best.”
Yeah, she kinda did. She used her best knowing for her kingdom, its winemakers, her winery, the villagers, and her family. Especially her brothers. When she wasn’t here taking care of all of them, she was opening a new factory that produced her wine chemical or in California helping to support Aish’s new status as a partner in his uncle’s vineyard or simply on the road with Aish, enjoying the rock-n-roll lifestyle. He was glad she sometimes got to come up for air from being so universally needed.
“Is it time?” she asked.
Roman nodded and they took their leave of the Dowager Queen, Sofia on Aish’s arm as they strolled across the lawn.
An eight-year-old tornado suddenly grabbed him around the waist.
“Tío,” his nephew Gabriel said, already sweaty and dirty, his tie knocked askew, as he hung off Roman. “I thought you were going to be late.”
Adán, equally sweaty, gave a look that his recently acquired teenager status allowed him. “I told him that you couldn’t be late when you’re one of the reasons they’re giving the toast.”
Liliana finally arrived, making her slow progress on pink flats without a scuff on them. “Sí,” she said. “Adán tried to tell him.”
Roman held on to his nephew and brushed grass off Adán’s sport coat and ached for his poor, sweetheart of a niece.
Silent, sustained crushes were the worst.
“Look, gang, just hold it together for five more minutes. Then y’all can change and enjoy yourself. Adán, I put a bag with your NASA T-shirt and your Abercrombie shorts in the car.”
“Yeah?” he said, the teenage falling off him like the tailored sport coat would in a few minutes. Okay, maybe the kid wasn’t going to be the clothes aficionado that he and Cenobia were. Roman didn’t care.
Adán was safe. He was happy. And he didn’t seem to mind Roman joining the already impressive ranks of his dads. Roman would keep picking out the kid’s clothes and hanging them in the closet down the hall from his own bedroom and, he thought with a touch of selfish gladness, he’d be the dad most often saying goodnight.
“Let’s go find your parents,” he said. As Sofia inserted Liliana between her and Aish and whispered consoling words in her ear, Roman slung his arm around Adán’s shoulders and tugged him against his side.
At last, next to a small stage set up on the lawn, he saw who he’d crossed a lawn and an ocean and a lifetime of mis-thinking to find.
As his nephew slipped out of his arm to run to his parents, Roman sighed, “How does your mom keep getting prettier?”
“You’ve got it so bad,” Adán said, turning and grinning up at him. It was Cenobia’s wide, teasing grin, complete with dimples. “Do you want to set up a Pinterest board? I can show you how to do it.”
That earned Adán a precise, militaristic tickle under his expensive sport coat. The boy laughed and giggled then wiggled away.
Roman let him go so he could take the boy’s beautiful mother into his arms.
“Adán knows how to break that hold,” Cenobia said as she slid her arms around his neck.
“I know,” Roman said, nuzzling her and recharging himself on her summer-flower sweetness. “But because y’all raised him to feel safe, he knows he doesn’t always have to.”
Working together, as a family, they were training Adán to protect himself, each move practiced in their home gym led by the philosophy that it was only to be used as defense and as a last resort. But neither Roman or Cenobia were willing to let Adán—young, wealthy, powerful, and soon to be heartbreakingly gorgeous—go into the world without realistic tools.
Those tools would never need to be used against PazYGuerra. He’d disappeared into the bowels of Interpol where he would stay, monitored by Roman’s many trusted sources.
With the help of a counselor, Cenobia had told Adán the reality of the man’s identity. It had been...an awful two weeks. Roman hoped to never watch his boy suffer through weeks like that again. But with constant interaction, open answers to every question, and a repeated refrain from Cenobia, Daniel, Bartolo, and Roman—We love you. We would change nothing. He doesn’t define you.—Adán’s pain eased. They met with their own therapists as well as a family counselor every week.
In a quiet one-on-one interview with a journalist Cenobia respected, Daniel and Roman just outside the camera’s eye while Bartolo stayed back at the house with Adán, she told the world who Adán was to her. She let people assume their own suppositions about his conception. But telling the story had freed her voice to become a fiery advocate of sexual assault victims and a bill with her name on it that would change the way Mexican police investigated crimes against women was already working its way to Congress.
With the eye-popping success of La Primera, and Mexicans hailing her as a new Adelita leading the revolution for improved industries, better wages, and a cleaner environment, the bill was certain to pass. Her name was already being bandied about for soon-to-be-vacated political seats. But when she’d celebrated her one-year anniversary as CEO, she’d declared publicly that she had no plans to take on politics.
Right now.
“Mi amor, it’s time,” she whispered in his ear.
He gave one last, fortifying nuzzle before he turned, keeping an arm around her.
At the top of the stage stairs, his brother—his arm around his own hard-won billionaire—gave his Golden-Prince smile and beckoned. So did his sister, in the cozy arms of her husband. The three kids, Adán included, squirmed excitedly.
The rey, reina and princesa of the Monte del Vino Real waved Príncipe Roman and his new bride to join them. That small family event a month ago? That had been their wedding.
His baby girl was now Roman’s warrior queen.
Can you believe it, Mama? he said in his nightly prayers.
Ten years ago, pure angry curiosity dragged him to a kingdom he’d never heard of to take stock of siblings he didn’t know he had. Duty and responsibility kept him here longer than he’d planned. He’d done what he was good at and surmised that this little kingdom and his well-intentioned but emotionally mixed-up siblings needed a soldier around to kick a few asses.
Or maybe, just like when Cenobia had stepped off the plane, it had been love at first sight.
Because as he walked to the stage with his wife on his arm, it wasn’t duty or responsibility driving him there. Duty or responsibility wasn’t why that ring fit on his finger now, wasn’t why he was stepping back from his company to focus on advising the king.
It was choice. It was love. He wanted this woman and this family and the Monte del Vino Real.
At the top of the steps, he took his brother’s and his sister’s hands and the group of them exchanged smiles and kisses and hugs like they hadn’t seen each other in a year. They’d all come so far. They all had so much to look forward to. They were all so lucky. The crowd was starting to notice and gather, starting to fill up their wineglasses with the glorious past, present and future of this vine-rich kingdom.
Up on the stage, they all wiped their eyes and grabbed wineglasses.
Then they turned to face their people.
Here, his siblings and in-laws and wife and the squirming future of the Monte would raise a glass and toast not only the last successful year, but the miracle of the last ten. They’d toast the exciting potential for the future.
Roman would toast the fact that he was home.
At long last, as Mateo’s voice boomed over the crowd and their people looked up at them and the vines shushed in the breeze and the mountains encircled and protected them, they were home.