Merciless Union by Faith Summers
40
Aria
I’m actually nervous about opening the letter.
I hold it in my trembling hands and sit on the edge of the window bay with the box before me.
I contemplated opening the box first. It’s a fancy shoe box-looking thing that I think Mom must have bought specifically to hold the mystery items in.
Since the letter feels like it’s calling to me, though, I decide on looking at that first.
I was hoping Lucca would be back by now. I didn’t think he’d want to sit with me, but his presence in the house would have balanced me to some extent. It’s just gone nine, so I’m assuming I won’t see him before tomorrow.
With that reasoning, I release the breath burning my lungs and open the envelope. Once I pull out the handwritten letter from my mother, a warm glow surrounds my heart, and I feel her presence.
This is really from her.
I rest my back against the window casing and start reading the last words my mother wished to impart on me.
My dearest daughter,
I fear to say that if you are reading this, it means I’m dead. I’m so sorry to have to write such a thing. You’re probably wishing I did something better to protect myself and you.
The answer to that is I simply could not.
There is more you will probably hate me for by the time you finish reading this letter, but I pray I may make up for it in some small way with your box of treasures.
I knew you would have questions about the company, so I wrote this to try and explain why I did what I did and also to tell you the truth about who you are.
The first thing I’m going to start with is the most shocking of truths and let you know that Raphael De Marchi is not your real father. Your real father was a U.S marine called Brian Turner.
Shock slams into my soul, and I stop reading so abruptly the words collide in my brain.
Dad…
My God in heaven. He’s not my real father.
The first thing I think of is that’s why he treated me so badly. I wasn’t his to care for or to love. That’s why it was so easy for him to treat me like shit and sell me to that animal to abuse.
Some of the other things I remember Mom saying to Dad before she died make sense now too. There was mention of another man. It crossed my mind that Mom might have had an affair, but because there were so many other things to figure out, I never dwelled on it. Now I know.
Despite my racing heart and the tightness in my chest, I snap my eyes back to the letter to keep reading.
Brian was a very good man. He was killed in Afghanistan while on duty. It
happened before he knew I was pregnant with you. The day I heard he died
killed me too.
He would have loved you with all his heart. The same way he loved me. I saw him in secret, and the only person who knew about him was your Aunt Vera.
I married Raphael because of the years-old alliance our family had with his. It was business. I never wanted to marry him because I was in love with Brian. The plan was to run away, but of course, that fell through with his death.
Raphael fooled me senseless at the beginning of our relationship and continued to do so throughout our marriage, but I didn’t know the kind of monster I married until it was too late. I never realized how badly he wanted Cervantes or his plans. I never knew he was counting down the days until my father died and handed over the company to me. I never knew how evil he was or that we’d have to fear for our lives.
When he found out I was pregnant with you, he promised to do everything he could to be the best father and husband he could be. He promised to love us both, and I believed him. The worse part was I think some of that was true. I think I’d be a liar if I didn’t acknowledge my love for him and his for me.
But in the same breath, there was a side to him I was blinded to.
I won’t go into too many details for fear that this letter might get into the wrong hands, but I came across a big secret your father was hiding.
I knew if the secret got out, it would destroy everything. I also didn’t want your father getting the company to further his business goals with dangerous, evil men who would destroy everything my father worked for to set the company up.
Your grandfather started Cervantes from nothing. I am writing this letter only a mere two months after his death.
He entrusted the company with me and hoped Raphael would be the leader of the family he made everyone believe he would be. That was not the case. So, I give Cervantes to you. I give it to you, knowing you will do the right thing and you will do exactly what your grandfather intended by keeping it in the family.
That is the explanation I never wanted to give you, and I pray you don’t suffer too much.
Most of all, I don’t want you to hate me for keeping such important secrets from you.
With that, I leave you with the box of treasures you entrusted to me.
The box contains eight years worth of letters to a boy you called Peter. I
never met him, but he was important to you.
He disappeared from your life when you were ten, and you looked for him everywhere. We came up with the idea that maybe he moved away. I told you to write to him and give the letters to me to keep, and you could write as many letters as you wanted and as often as you wanted.
The last letter was written on your eighteenth birthday, the summer before college. You decided it was time to stop.
There are over a thousand letters in that box.
I give them back to you for safekeeping and hope that you find love and all the happiness the world has to offer.
All my love,
Mom.
My spine stiffens, andmy blood thickens to a slow flow as I read over that last part. I’m so overwhelmed with emotion I read it three times before I bring myself to open the box and look at my letters to Peter.
My God. Inside the box are three stacks of white envelopes with over a thousand letters in an eight-year period.
This was what I did. This was how I got through not seeing Lucca.
There were so many truths in Mom’s letter, so much I realize Mom still didn’t know about Raphael De Marchi, and so much to make my head spin, but this is…
It’s everything.
I reach for the first letter. As I do, the memory of writing it bores into my mind.
Dear Peter,
I don’t know where you went. But I’m looking for you. I tried to check on the birds, but the gates were closed.
I’m so sad and scared I won’t find you.
Please come back to me,
Aria.
I don’t even have to reach for the next one to know what it says, I remember. I actually remember.
With my memory unfolding, I take out the stack and look through a few others, but I remember each of them.
And when I close my eyes to savor the words, memory like pure starlight pushes through the darkness in my mind, shining brightly with scenes of the past I forgot.
I remember my mother, my family, and I remember Lucca.
That last letter was me promising myself that if I ever found him again, it wouldn’t matter what reason took him away from me; I’d still love him the way I always did.
The last thing I remember was seeing him three years ago and him promising to see me after he rescued me.
I was in a hospital bed, and I remember promising not to tell my father it was Lucca who rescued me from the kidnappers.
As I remember everything, the person I was before and the person I am now fuse together to form one whole.
I am Aria again, and when I stare at the rings on my finger, I know what I want.
An hour later, the hum of a motorcycle catches my attention. The house is quiet, so I can hear a pin drop.
I’d already neatened the letters and put them back in the box. I pick it up now and leave the room.
I know he’ll go straight to his office because it’s extremely late—like two in the morning late—and I’m sure he’ll still be avoiding me. He’ll think I’m asleep and probably see me in the morning.
I wait a few minutes, then head to his office, where I find him wrapping a bandage around his wrist.
He lifts his head and looks surprised to see me walking through the door.
“Aria, what are you doing up at this hour?” He walks over to me and looks from me to the box in my hands.
I don’t know what to say first, so I allow my heart to do the talking.
“These are yours; they aren’t mine,” I begin and hand him the box.
His brows knit together, and his gaze flicks back up to mine. “This is the box from your mother.”
I nod. “It contains all the letters I wrote to you over an eight-year span.”
“You wrote to me?” His gray eyes widen, and in them, there’s a sheen of purpose.
“I didn’t know where you went, so this was what I did. It was her idea. In her letter, she said there were over a thousand letters in the box. I didn’t need to check because I remember writing every single one of them.”
“You do?”
“I do, and I remember other things too.”
“Like what?” He looks at me like he’s now desperate for me to remember him.
“It was a Saturday morning at nine o’clock sharp on the 8th of February 2003. I was early for my lesson, but my father…” My voice trails off at that word, and I draw in a breath. It’s okay. That’s who I knew him to be. I’ve placed my mother’s letter in the box for Lucca to read too so he too can know the truth. I don’t want to talk about that man more than I have to. “He told me to get to class early and practice playing the piano. I was on a mission to learn it as quickly as possible so I could start playing the violin. The class started at ten so I wanted an hour before to myself but when I went inside the hall, there was a boy playing the piano. I’d heard the music from outside and thought the teacher was early too, but it was you.”
“You remember,” he breathes.
I nod and smile. “I remember the next hours that followed, the days and the years. We changed, but there was one thing that always stayed the same. It was how I felt about you. I lost my memories from an accident that probably could have killed me, but my heart held on to you so much that you were the only thing I remembered. That is not something I can turn my back on.” My heart frees me further to speak, so I continue. “I still feel the same way about you, so I can’t believe we aren’t supposed to be. What I see is chances after chances for us to be together. What I see is us finding each other every time we get lost. What I feel is all the love I’ve ever felt for you willing me to hold on and never let go no matter what happens. What I feel is the freedom to finally be with the boy I love. So, I’m not going anywhere. I love you too much to not want to stay with you forever.”
When a tear slides down my cheek, he catches it and cups my face.
The air expels from my lungs when a tear tracks down his cheek, too, and he presses his forehead to mine.
“Aria,” he whispers my name, and I feel the sound in my soul. “Forever sounds like everything I ever wanted. But I only want it if you really do. Things have changed again.”
I clutch onto his shirt, and he looks down at me.
“I want it, Pakhan.”
“You know?”
“Yes.”
“And, you still want to be with me?”
“Yes, I do. I still want to be with you.”
He sets the box down and holds me. As he leans in to kiss me, I move to him too, and when our lips meet, I recall our very first kiss.
The kiss he gives me now is one I’ll never forget because with the kiss I give him, I also give him my heart.
