seen from the air lay before them, glimmering under the glorious sunshine.
Stunned, she craned her neck to take in the thatched chalets nestled—but not too closely together—along the length of a high rock formation that ended on the shore of the beach. A long wooden bridge led the eye to a further thatched chalet that appeared to rise out of the ocean itself. On the other side of the thatched cottages and lower down, separated from the beach by a wall, lay the chalet designated for Massimo’s grandfather. Beside it lay a handful of smaller though no less beautiful chalets. To the right of all these dwellings was the centrepiece, the huge, multi-purpose lodge behind which, virtually camouflaged by the coconut palms and other tropical trees and foliage that thrived on the island, were the structures that housed the great kitchens and the island staff’s living quarters. Further to the right, where the beach curved out of sight, were the mangrove saplings, recently planted in their thousands to protect the island from erosion and rising sea levels.
Everything Massimo had envisaged for the island of his grandfather’s birth had come to life in spectacular fashion.
The driver stopped in front of the main lodge and said something to Massimo before jumping out.
Livia’s heart almost dropped to her feet when Massimo followed suit and held his hand out to her.
Confused at this unexpected gesture, especially since they’d spent the past four hours after she’d inadvertently walked in on him naked ignoring each other’s existence, she stared into the caramel eyes that were fixed on her with an intensity that belied the easy smile playing on his lips.
A child’s cry rang out and in an instant she understood. Massimo’s family were already there. He was holding his hand out because they must be watching.
She reached out and wrapped her fingers loosely round the waiting hand.
At the first touch of her skin to his, her heart flew from her feet to her throat and her fingers reflexively tightened.
For that one singular moment in time, the world paused on its axis as she stared into his soulful eyes and a rush of helpless longing swept through her, long-buried emotions rising up and clutching her throat.
And then the ground beneath her feet began to spin.
These were emotions she’d buried for a reason—because they had never been returned with the same depth with which she’d held them.
Turning her head and blinking the brief spell away from her vision, she was thankful to see Madeline on the steps that led to the main entrance of the lodge holding her infant daughter, Elizabeth. Dropping Massimo’s hand, Livia hurried over to them and embraced her sister-in-law, careful not to squash baby Elizabeth, who immediately grabbed at her hair.
Massimo watched his wife and sister’s embrace, watched them exchange enthusiastic kisses, watched his wife rub a finger against his niece’s chubby cheek before lifting the child into her own arms, and had to fight to keep a lid on the emotions threatening to overwhelm him.
Livia had laughed at his suggestion that they have a child.
Slowly he made his way towards them, bracing himself for the rebuke that was certain to be coming.
Madeline didn’t disappoint. After the obligatory kisses, she took Elizabeth back from Livia and hitched her to her hip. ‘Massimo, meet your niece, Elizabeth. Elizabeth, this is the uncle you’ve heard about who’s been too busy saving the world to meet you.’
Were it not for the large blue eyes of his six-month-old niece staring at him with fascination, he would have sworn at his sister. ‘It’s been a long journey here. Can you save the harassment until I’ve said hello to everyone else?’
His sister smiled beadily. ‘Sure. The others are in the lodge waiting for you.’
The others were, in fact, his grandfather and his army of carers, and Massimo and Madeline’s parents. Tomorrow night his grandfather’s surviving siblings and their spouses, children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren would either fly or sail to the island for the birthday party. It would be the first time his grandfather had seen all but one of his siblings since he’d left the island paradise, one of the remotest and smallest of all the Fijian islands, for Europe. He’d been the first Seibua to leave. In the almost seventy years since his emigration the rest of the Seibuas had, one by one, left the island of their birth too in search of better opportunities to raise their families. Most had settled on Fiji’s largest island, Viti Levu. The soon-to-be renamed Seibua Island had been uninhabited for over a decade before Massimo had purchased it.
The main lodge was everything the architect had promised. Massimo had wanted a space large enough to accommodate the entire extended family, whether it was for a sit-down meal or a party, and it had been created accordingly. Dining tables lined the walls to the left, plush sofas lined the walls to the right. A bar ran the length of the far wall. The space in between was large enough for a hundred people to dance or for an army of children to skid on and scuff the expensive flooring. He estimated that tomorrow evening there would be a minimum of fifteen children there to test it out.
For now, though, it was only immediate family there and the knotted weight of expectation that came with being them. Massimo hadn’t seen any of them in over a year. But Livia had, and he watched her embrace his parents as if she were the child of their loins and not a mere daughter-in-law. She had never understood where his ambivalence to his family had come from. In his wife’s eyes, he’d been raised with everything she’d wanted and been denied.
Livia’s childhood had been torrid; filled with violence and menace, her father murdered before she reached double digits, her mother the manager of a wedding dress shop who sold drugs for extra cash along with the white lace creations. Her mother also received a monthly payment from Don Fortunato, the mafia boss Livia’s father had protected. Blood money, Livia always disdainfully referred to it as. Money had never been an issue in the Esposito home. She’d told Massimo once of going into the back storeroom of her mother’s shop and finding wads of cash wrapped in elastic bands in one of the boxes that was supposed to store garter belts. She’d estimated it at half a million euros. Money that belonged to Don Fortunato, stashed away until he came to reclaim it and launder it back into the world.
It had taken more guts than Massimo could comprehend for Livia to claw her way out of that violent, narcotic-infested world. She saw his childhood as idyllic, had no comprehension of what it was like to walk rain-lashed streets with holes in the soles of her shoes or to be the butt of school tormentors’ jokes because the clothes you wore were two sizes too small and threadbare. He could have coped with being the butt of all the jokes if his parents had worked hard, as his one close friend’s parents had, the father holding down two jobs, the mother working school hours, but they didn’t. They hadn’t. His father had worked in a shoe repair shop. By mutual agreement, his mother hadn’t worked since Massimo’s birth.
Life was for living! his father would proudly proclaim. Not for being a slave!
What did it matter if they could only afford to eat meat once a week? Their vegetable patch grew an abundance of nutritious food!
What did it matter if they couldn’t afford to buy Massimo a new calculator when his was flushed down the toilet by his school tormentors? His brain was advanced enough to be its own calculator!
His brain was advanced enough to be its own calculator out of necessity, not design. And it had been advanced enough to know that if he wanted to make anything of his life it would have to come from him alone. From the age of thirteen, he’d worked for anyone who would employ him: running errands,
