Chapter 10 - The Unfinished Canvas
Six months later.
The Rhode Island summer was glorious, washing the East Side in warm breezes scented with sea salt, blooming hydrangeas, and sweet clover.
The gardens of the Blackstone estate had been transformed.
A winding, smooth bluestone pathway meandered through beds of lavender and white roses, leading to a sun-drenched wooden pavilion overlooking the sweeping lawns.
Scarlet sat in the pavilion, wearing a light linen sundress of pale yellow that billowed softly in the June breeze. In her lap rested a set of architectural blueprints for the Bennett Academy for Specialized Learning—ground had already been broken on the five-acre campus in South Providence two weeks ago.
Across the lawn, Leo was running.
He was laughing—a bright, ringing, musical sound that carried across the gardens like church bells. He was chasing an energetic golden retriever puppy Garrison had brought home for his eighth birthday, his small sneakers kicking up bits of cut grass.
He didn't run like a ghost anymore. He ran like a boy who owned the earth beneath his feet.
Footsteps sounded on the flagstones of the pathway.
Slow. Measured. Unmistakable.
Garrison stepped into the pavilion. He wore no suit today; he wore dark trousers and a crisp white linen shirt with the sleeves rolled up, revealing the dark ink on his forearms. He carried a tall glass of iced lemonade with fresh mint, setting it on the small wrought-iron table beside her.
He stepped behind her chair, his large, warm hands settling onto her shoulders, his thumbs gently massaging the tension from her neck.
“He has more energy than an entire union local,” Garrison said, watching his son tumble into the grass with the puppy.
Scarlet smiled, leaning her head back against his chest, inhaling the clean, familiar scent of cedar, sun-warmed linen, and him. “He spoke three full sentences to the pediatrician this morning, Garrison. He told her his dog’s name was Barnaby and that he liked blueberry pancakes.”
Garrison’s hands tightened gently on her shoulders. He leaned down, pressing a lingering kiss to the crown of her head.
“That is your doing, my love,” he whispered.
“It was our doing,” she corrected softly, reaching up to cover his hand with her own, the platinum band on her finger gleaming in the midday sun.
Down the driveway, the crunch of gravel heralded the arrival of a vehicle.
Scarlet looked up.
It was not one of Garrison’s tactical SUVs. It was a sleek, silver vintage Jaguar sedan bearing consular diplomatic plates from the Italian embassy in Boston.
The car stopped at the edge of the motor court.
Dom, who was sitting on the veranda reading a newspaper, immediately folded the paper, his posture stiffening, his hand dropping casually to the inside of his jacket.
A man stepped out of the rear of the Jaguar.
He was tall, sixty-five years old, with immaculate silver hair, wearing a bespoke linen suit that whispered of Milanese tailoring. He carried no briefcase. He carried only a long, flat wooden box wrapped in oiled silk.
Garrison’s hands went completely still on Scarlet’s shoulders.
The air in the garden, warm and sweet moments before, seemed to drop ten degrees.
“Garrison?” Scarlet asked, turning slightly to look at his face.
Garrison’s jaw had hardened into iron. His dark eyes were fixed on the silver-haired stranger with an expression she had never seen before—not fear, but an ancient, unsettled wariness that went back decades before her accident, before Leo’s birth.
“Who is that?” she asked softly.
The silver-haired man walked across the lawn. He did not look at Dom. He did not look at the security cameras. He walked directly toward the pavilion, stopping at the base of the single low stone step.
He looked at Garrison.
Then his eyes moved to Scarlet, lingering on her face, before dropping to the wheelchair beneath her.
The man bowed his head—a slow, aristocratic gesture of profound respect.
“Don Garrison,” the man spoke in smooth, cultured English carrying the melodic cadence of northern Italy. “Forgive the unannounced arrival. But the Commission in Palermo has concluded its review of the Moretti files recovered from the Sakonnet River.”
Garrison did not answer. He remained standing behind Scarlet like an iron shield.
The stranger lifted the long wooden box, holding it out with both hands.
“Your father’s old associates send their congratulations on your marriage,” the stranger continued, his voice dropping into a softer, more dangerous register. “And they return what was stolen from the Thorne family forty years ago.”
The man placed the box on the wrought-iron table beside Scarlet’s lemonade.
He untied the oiled silk cord and flipped the brass latches open.
Scarlet leaned forward, her brow furrowing.
Inside the velvet-lined interior was not a weapon. It was not money.
It was an ancient, illuminated maritime ledger from the port of Genoa, dated 1894. And resting atop the yellowed vellum was a sealed wax envelope bearing a crest Scarlet had never seen before: a crowned falcon clutching two crossed keys.
Beneath the envelope lay a single, handwritten medical file from the Neurological Institute of Zurich, bearing the official stamp of the Swiss Federal Health Department.
Written across the top of the file in red ink was a single name:
SCARLET BENNETT: CASE FILE #409-B.
And beside it, dated three years before her car accident on Route 146, was a handwritten notation in German:
EXPERIMENTAL SPINAL RECONSTRUCTION: PHASE III CLINICAL TRIAL. CANDIDATE COMPATIBILITY: 99.4%.
Scarlet’s breath caught in her throat. The world seemed to stop spinning.
Three years before the crash?
A trial in Switzerland?
She looked up at the Italian emissary, her heart pounding with a sudden, dizzying roar.
Then she looked up at Garrison.
Garrison was not looking at the box.
He was looking down at her, his dark eyes wide, holding a secret so vast, so terrifying, and so beautiful that the breath died in her throat.
May you like
“Garrison…” she whispered, the word hanging suspended in the summer breeze. “What is this?”
Garrison Thorne reached down, his fingers hovering over the Swiss medical file, his scarred face unreadable in the bright Rhode Island sun, leaving the question hanging open over the edge of the world.
