Aurora sat quietly during the performance, intent on watching the show mostly, afraid to look away and miss some part of it.  Sometimes on stage, as in life, the stories weren't simple.  They could become twisted with heroes who look like villains and criminals who were heroes.  Sometimes love became hate on a dime and a dalliance with an amorous lover had the hope of being something more.

Guilia.  That was the woman's name.  A world away but no more forgotten than Billy.  It wasn't a problem for the moment, but if she became invested, she would be.  It was too soon for such thoughts though.  Far too soon.  Billy was barely cold in the ground.  She wasn't ready to even spend the night with Silvio... and yet the little one in her belly felt like a ticking bomb set to go off all over her life.  Everything would become harder when she began to show.  She was already a poor excuse for a socialite, making the sorts of connections she needed to make to be the sort of criminal her parents were was going to be harder when she was a 'tainted woman.'  

No one would care that she'd meant to marry Billy.  All they'd see was an unmarried woman who had shamelessly spread her legs for god alone knew who.  Aurora put a hand on her belly.  Her shame would be the child's shame.  A bastard.  Where she'd been born into a legacy twice, this child had only a mother with a besmirched name.  A harlot.  A criminal.

How she longed for the love potion in the opera to be real.  That she could pick a man for the job, she didn't need his security or money or even his love.  She just needed his name, for herself and her baby.  She would do everything else.  Her baby would want for nothing... she'd figure it out.  She had to.  What other choice was there?  Certainly not giving the child up.  This was all she had left of Billy and so long as the baby was with her, so was he.

She stroked the small roundness of her belly, not yet noticeable to the world - but obvious to her who had trained to keep her body in a certain condition all her life.  She imagined the life inside, imagined Billy beside her, and she smiled as her mind wandered away from the story on stage into one of her own making.  It was a story in which her beloved was still alive and they'd come here together tonight.  He had eyes as desirous for her as Silvio's but also his hand... it almost never left her belly as they sat together in moments like this. He doted on her as if the child could see and hear him now.  Always talking to the little thing within her, encouraging it, promising it the most ridiculous things - ponies and whole houses full of toys.  There was nothing Billy would not give this child who was so loved, so wanted.

Her chin fell to her chest.  She was doing it again.  Choosing to live in fantasy when reality wasn't so bad.  Right?

She looked to Silvio.  He didn't strike her a family man, or provider or anything at all really ... but she needed a name.  This baby needed a name and it was all either of them needed.  And he didn't love her in any account, yes?  Perhaps she could make it a business deal of sorts.  She wouldn't be the first wife to know her husband chased skirts.  And what did she really care if he did.  She didn't love him.

Silvio stunned her then by reaching out and taking her hand and giving it a squeeze.

Aurora swallowed, nervous that he'd somehow read her thoughts, as silly as that was to think.  No.  She didn't love Silvio... but she could see herself coming to care about him.  Especially after tonight.  

She sighed and squeezed his hand.

Could beggars really be choosers?  She was running out of time.  If it wasn't done soon, she'd fool no one.  As it was it would be a hard lie to sell.  Nonna had been right.  She should have listened faster.  Now the list of possible options was short.  So short.  It was her Wild-Card or Silvio.  Would either of them give over on such a thing?  Give up their name?  Tie themselves to her to give a name to her unborn baby?  And could she live with such a thing?

As the opera's music swelled to it's ending.  Aurora was no closer to an answer, but soon. Soon she'd need one.  And soon, she'd find herself acting on that answer, whatever it was, or face a future which she already knew the look of.  She'd seen too many shamed women, too many bastard children... she didn't want that for the next generation of Byrnes.  She didn't want that for her little bambino.  No.  She'd endure whatever she had to, walk whatever hard road, her & Billy's baby would not suffer for a moment in this life so long as she drew breath no matter the cost to herself.

Aurora rose and applauded.  In her head she kept going though.  A loveless marriage for a name or social pariah with limited options for a future for her or her child.  A marriage to a man who would not stop sleeping around and make her a joke - or lie to Alucard and tell him she'd let Billy go when she knew damn well she might never stop loving him?  Or tell Alucard the truth and hope he could see the spot she was in and give over to it anyway. 

She looked at her date knowing what came next and where Aurora had felt aroused earlier, the looming end of the night was feeling more duty now than pleasure as dark heavy thoughts held to her fast.  She smiled at him and said above the applause, "This one was a good one.  Better than some of the ones my Aunt took me to."

She chuckled.  It wasn't untrue.  Granted, what did a child know of Opera?  What did a child know of stories and the tragic turns they took which made them so entertaining?  Aurora supposed her life would make a fine opera.  Daughter of a King and Queen of rival kingdoms, one murders the other over betrayed love... how wasn't that the start of an opera?  Her life on Race Street.  Her lover's death.  Her mother's sacrifice.

It felt like a crescendo.  The question is, how would it all end?  

Silvio applauded as the opera ended; it had been an excellent performance. A comedy intended to raise the spirits- but had it done so for Aurora? 

"Something new, yes? I hope you enjoyed it. I had not been since..."

Silvio's blinked, chasing away thoughts of his father.

...for a very long time. But here we are in a new and exciting city. What is your pleasure, Aurora? Shall we see the Pacific? Check the local nightlife? Something else?"

Aurora was a bit surprised to find that Silvio hadn't suggested a hotel room be the place to which they retired, and she found herself relieved.  She considered for a moment how late it was.  A club of some sort would be open for a few hours yet so that was an option.  A walk on the beach would be nice, and might soothe her senses... or just remind her of home which she could not return to, though she supposed the warm beaches of the Pacific were likely very different than those of the Atlantic.

"If we go to the beach, I will find myself thinking... and talking, perhaps a lot about very heavy topics.  I hate to admit I've been somewhat distracted this evening."  She paused and turned to face him, "If we go to a club I can't drink and I won't dance - I'd be pretty much the worst company ever unless I was there to help you spot the prettiest women and make them jealous in which case I might be good in that regard.  Though, you'd likely end up going home with one of them instead of me."

A not entirely unpleasant thought considering my mood.

"I'm sorry I'm such poor company tonight.  I started out this whole trip thinking one way and slowly swinging the other... though, to be honest, it's no fault of yours.  Maybe it's the hormones, maybe it's my grief... I'm a woman of inconstant mind lately and its no end of annoyance to me.  I just know the thoughts and decisions of the next week or so may set the tone for a long time to come and some secrets, once known to the world, can't be hidden again.  In time, if I don't make some decisions for myself, the universe will make them for me and I don't play the victim gracefully."

She shrugged.

"I need to get my head on straight and I know how terribly unfair it's to you that I've invited you out for this rain check only to be ... enthusiastic one moment and cold the next, but I won't lie to you Silvio.  Just as I know I can trust you to not lie to me."

She forced a sad smile.

"So... I give you the choice: join me on the beach where I go through my melancholy motions until I resolve a course of action that will impact me for years to come, or take me to a club and I'll help you spot and pursue a lovely woman to retire with this evening so it's not a total loss for you, or perhaps something else... if you have other ideas?

Silvio seemed to consider both options.

"I can go to a club and meet a random woman on any night, no? But you are truly fascinating to me, Aurora Byrne. In action, how like an angel- in apprehension, how like a god. Your Shakespeare, yes? Although goddess, in your case. Or princess, rather than a prince of Denmark- caught in a melancholy mood as one considers their future? You seem more comfortable getting attacked by two large Irishmen than living for a few moments in your own mind. And in a body like yours, how can I resist this puzzle? I think I would like to go to the beach with you."

He slung an arm around her shoulder as they walked- comfortable and relaxed, not sexual. It was easy for him to be physically comfortable with her after kneeling before her in the desert. 

"The only poor company is dishonest company. I am no stranger to grief, and I understand it more than I would prefer. Let us go and talk and if I can be some small help in your thinking, as I was in the desert that night, then I will be happy for it."

Silvio smirked.

"However, you should know that my intention is to help you feel so comfortable with your decisions that their weights lift away from you out over the ocean. Free of your melancholy, it is possible that your inconstant mind will swing once again and you will once again become consumed with lust and we will make love under the moonlight. This is what I hope for- but there is no obligation of course. And if not tonight, then perhaps tomorrow. Carpe diem- this is another of Silvio's five rules. I simply hope to have many more diems to carpe."

_____

A half hour later, they were walking barefoot on a beach. Silvio had insisted on stopping to buy a blanket- just in case Aurora got cold, he insisted with a wink. 

The Pacific was gentle that night, lapping against the soft sand shores and whispering lightly under the full moon. The cloudless sky and the moonlight allowed Silvio and Aurora to see clearly as they walked, avoiding the occasional rock or crab. Silvio had ditched his jacket, tie, shoes, and socks and walked only in a loosely buttoned dress shirt and his slacks. 

"Do you know what I heard the Mexicans say about the Pacific? They say it has no memory. A tempting thought, sometimes. But without our memories, how can we know who we are?"

Aurora nodded. 

She'd been silent.  Thinking.  Times like this she could feel her mother and father's personalities within her.  Like the symbol her mother had created for her family, the tattoo on her back of the wolf head entwined with its beloved dragon, she could feel them pulling her so that the symbol had a strange forward motion, the dragon chasing the wolf, chasing the dragon and on and on.

She loathed it, but she was equal parts her mother with her over-thinking problems and her father... brutally decisive once her decisions were made and seldom swayed from her course & never regretting paths once taken.  Her mother could never master that and from what Aurora had seen, it was an endless source of pain for Isabella.  Like all things that caused suffering, Aurora tried to cut them from her life the way she cut down vile men and women - mercilessly.  It was this commitment to clearing the road of life before her which had caused her to burn bridges which she would never again cross back over and end relationships others might have been willing to return to.

Her mother never much cared for that aspect of her daughter and Aurora knew it.  But unlike Bella, Aurora did not see it good or kind to keep friendships on the merit of what they might do for you in the future so long as you knew what they did to you now.  Forgiveness was one thing, you might find a reason to forgive mistakes... but if there could not be forgiveness then it was far better to cut the rot from the wound than to suffer it hoping that it might serve a purpose later down the road and poison you in the present.

Silvio was hopeless, she supposed, in his pursuit of what he wanted.  She knew there had to be easier prey than she and so she wondered what made the man give chase to her.  Was it that she did not fall in love with him the way other women did?  She knew some men did not love women so much as they loved challenges to be overcome.  It was possible if she'd fallen for his charms so utterly in the first night he might not have come back for a second date.  Of course, it was also likely that he would have... like a glutton at a feast, perhaps Silvio did not know how to refuse temptation.

"You quote Shakespeare."  She couldn't help but smile.  "You are like my brother ... though I'd be willing to bet that he'd quote something less mainstream.  He's very well-read.  No doubt he reads voraciously just so he has fresh new pick up lines."

She shook her head wondering if Will would be that way anymore.  The young man sitting in that cabin in Montreal wasn't the boy she'd cut wise with while baking their mother's birthday cake.  That boy died at Hollowood with his mother.  The man she found at the cabin, she didn't yet know what he'd be like and it scared her to dwell on that fact. 

In truth, perhaps they all three had died there, after a fashion.  Here she was, walking down a beach with a stranger contemplating her future.  Will and Dad both sitting alone in a cabin in the Canadian wilderness doing much the same.  She supposed in a few years time, at some holiday get together, she'd be able to reflect on what part of them had emerged from the wreckage of their old life and the ruins of Race Street.

She looked down at the sand, she too had taken off her shoes and walked barefoot in the sand.  It was so pale in the moonlight it almost looked like snow in places.  The wind here was warm and really as nothing like walking along the Atlantic.  She was thankful for that, this place, she felt was a great comfort... and not a harsh reminder.  She resolved she'd have to come back here again.  Reaching up she pulled the band from her hair and let it fly free on the wind back behind her.  It felt good to relax, though she was not yet as comfortable as Silvio.

She considered his comment about her lack of comfort in her own life at the moment.  He, of course, was right.  She had found it easier hurting men than facing the things in front of her - if only all her problems could be solved with fists, knives, and guns.  Perhaps then the path forward would be a clear one.

She looked at the man walking beside her.  He was handsome.  It was the thing she always saw first.  He was jovial, he wanted to laugh and he wanted her to laugh... but beneath that, in quiet moments, she could see a true depth. 

"I appreciate that you ... have empathy for my state right now."  She looked up at the stars, she could not see them even half-so-well as she wanted to but she looked at them none the less.  "You've lost people.  How do you ... let go of the plans you had.  How do you..."

Aurora hesitated not sure how to say what she meant and not for the first time in her life she wished she was Tara, or Bella, or Will who had such a gift with expressing themselves.

"How do you change course, embrace the new truth and... decide which way to go?"  she looked down from the heavens and into his eyes, "That's my problem, well, the biggest one at least."

She looked down and kicked the sand, wiggling her toes as she stepped.  

"There's a lot of problems really."

She sighed and then looked up to him again.

"But, in my head I know what I had - I knew where I was going and I don't regret those things... but everything is different now.  I feel like I can't even walk the path for my own life now with all these holes in the road.  It's like... sometimes I feel like I died too.  And I don't mean to say that like a wish.  I don't want to die, but I feel like..."

She paused making sure this was the right way to say what she was thinking.

"A small scrap of paper in the bathtub and someone pulled the plug.  If you watch long enough the water goes down the drain and it'll pull the paper with it.  The paper had no choice.  Whatever it was going to do before the plug was pulled it can't fight against its environment changing.  In the same way I can't fight death and loss... I feel like I have to patch all the holes, or abandon my path completely but ... I don't do that."

She shakes her head.

"It's not who I am.  Aurora Byrne doesn't act on her fears... or she didn't before all this.  She didn't do a lot of things I've done these past few weeks.  I feel like I don't know myself let alone the world I'm living in.  Almost every person in my life is dead or gone.  Every face is new, my home is new... it's not even a home - it's a hotel..."

She winced.

"I have the money to have a home... I just... I need to see the path so I can walk it.  Once I know the way I'm going I think it'll all make sense again - but I don't know how to leave it behind.  I don't know that I want to.  I just want to get back to where I used to be, but it's like..."

Tears welled in her eyes.

"People didn't just die... my whole damn world did.  Does that make sense?  I mean, how the hell do you go forward when all you want to do is look... no... run back.  Only, there is no road behind me now.  I know that logically... but heart... god my heart is screaming at me that I can't give up on that life.  I made a choice.  I want to fight for something but I think it's gone and I feel stupid for wanting to fight for a life that can't be."

"No doubt he reads voraciously just so he has fresh new pick up lines."

Silvio grinned.

"Your brother is a wise man. Or at least as wise as I am."

He watched in his peripheral vision as she let her hair down, thinking of how she'd pulled his hair in her ecstasy under the stars. Still, he had to admit that his attraction was more than simply physical; perhaps it was the wounds she carried with her, buried in her beauty, that pulled him in.

"When I was a young man, fifteen, my mother received her diagnosis. My father took her to four different doctors, but they all said the same thing. Nothing to be done. Quella dannata distruzione di vite umane, il cancro. It took her 7 months to die, slowly wasting away. At first there were good days and bad days- then there were just bad days. Soon, those days were the 'good' ones."

He sighed, serious in a way he'd seldom seemed before- perhaps only when discussing Giulia. 

"I read to her every day, the English books she'd taught me how to die. And then she died. Her sickness and death changed my father. He'd been a good man, but he lost himself in the abyss of grief."

"Have you ever heard the tale of the oak and the reeds? Aesop. In a tremendous windstorm, the oak stands proudly upright, scorning the reeds who bow over to the wind. Yet when the storm reaches its crescendo, the oak is toppled- but the reeds remain. I think my father fought to keep himself whole, and he was destroyed by that fight. As for me? I allowed myself to break. Once I allowed that pressure to destroy me, it left me. Later, I was able to rebuild myself."

Silvio paused, tracing a pattern in the sand with his big toe.

"When someone you truly love- someone who is so essential to you that their fabric is stitched into your heart- you die with them. You can no longer exist as you did before, and I think then one must allow themself to break. From there, you pick up some of the pieces and build again."

"If you feel like you cannot walk your path... pick a new one. And you are not a piece of paper, Aurora Byrne. Despite your name- you are the water. Water that can grow and change to fit a limitless number of shapes. Do not let your conception of who you think you should be, or who you going to be, distract from who you are or what you would like to be."

He took her hand and led her closer to the surf. As the water rolled in, it moved effortlessly around their feet, filling the imprints in the sand and sliding around the rocks. 

"I owe you an apology." She said taking his hand.  "I never spoke the words but until tonight I had thought I knew who you were and what this was that we were doing.  And while I can't speak to what will come, I do realize now that I don't know the first thing about who you really are Silvio... but rest assured you a much more than a just a man out for a good time with the ladies."

She squeezed his hand.

"Thank you for being here for me."  She said sincerely, watching the water at their feet do it's work and for a time, she was again silent as the thoughts in her head slowed, slightly.  His words, and her own, repeating in her mind.  

Not the paper, the water

Aurora Byrne doesn't act out of fear

"The reeds accepted what it was they couldn't control."  She said finally.  "It never did anything that it hadn't meant to all along... but accepted the world as it was despite how painful."

Her free hand touched her belly.

"Maybe that's the point.  Maybe... maybe I need to be okay with what happened and with where I am and see that nothing really has changed.  Everything has, sure, but I'm still me.  I'm still here.  The sun will come up tomorrow and I can do what I want with that... but I can't control what the world will do.  And ... I don't have to." 

She whispered, "A Byrne is defined by her scars."

She sighed a sigh that sounds like a release of tension, a woman coming through a dark place and putting her burden down.  A smile tugged at the corner of her lips.  "Could it be that simple?"

She was silent again, for a long while.  She and Silvio walking along the moonlit beach, Charlie forgot in the shadows, silent and keeping watch to ensure nothing happened to either of them.

"I'm sorry your father didn't know the lesson of the reeds."  she said to him at last.  "But I'm glad you did.  And I'm glad you shared it with me."  She paused and turned to him.

"I'd like to kiss you now, and see what I think about that... I know it's an odd thing to ask, but... could I kiss you once and maybe it's only once?  Just... to see where my head is at?"

"You owe me nothing, particularly not an apology. I am very much a man out for a good time with you- but, as you said, I suppose I can be more. At least when the inspiration strikes, no?"

They walked together for a while, and Silvio could see the thoughts dancing around in Aurora's mind. He waited patiently.

"I'd like to kiss you now, and see what I think about that... I know it's an odd thing to ask, but... could I kiss you once and maybe it's only once?  Just... to see where my head is at?"

"This is putting quite a bit of pressure on me, no?. Fortunately for you, I think I would very much enjoy you putting pressure on me. One kiss- and then you decide if you want more. But first, the mood. We must step away from melancholy. The moon is shining. The waves, desperately reaching to become one with the sand in their rhythmic dance. The sand beneath our toes. Our perfectly acquired innocent blanket. The canopy of constellations, arrayed as always for your pleasure."

They walked in silence for a while before Silvio paused. He stepped close to Aurora, holding her hips with his thumbs pointed inward, curious if the waves and the sand and the night sky and the words would be enough. He hoped for a second kiss- but if there was to be only one kiss this evening, he would put everything into it. As he charged himself, he imagined focusing his energy into his hazel eyes, into the wind lightly blowing against his hair, into his words, and most of all into his mouth, his hands, his body. He'd been holding back, and he began loosening the straps of his lust as he looked at her. Her hair, blowing in the wind. Her eyes. Her bare shoulders. Her body. He would worship that body with the dedication of a Trappist monk. He would explore every inch of it with his fingers, his tongue. He would have her scream so long, so loud, so throat-fully that the next morning she would find her voice pleasurably raw. And he would see her unleashed as well; he had no intention to dominate this woman, but to share with her. He would read the situation and dominate or submit as she demanded, as her body would speak to him. He simply wanted the chance to listen to it- to speak the language of sweat and flesh and teeth and tongues.

Silvio found that his breathing had changed as he looked at her, and he didn't trust himself with a longer poem.

"At the touch of you
As if you were an archer with your swift hand at the bow
The arrows of delight shot through my body.

You were spring,
And I the edge of a cliff,
And a shining waterfall rushed over me."

Leaning forward, he kissed her as he opened up every ounce of passion that he'd been trying to hold back. The floodgates were opened, and as his mouth and tongue gently met Aurora's, she could nevertheless sense the waves of desire lapping against her, only hinting at the ocean that lay beneath.

Just... Breathe.

She'd been holding her breath.  Silently, she urged herself to find the air again between the passing of his lips over her own.  Had she been holding her breath out of nerves?  Had she been holding it out of excitement?  Had she been holding it out of guilt at her willingness to allow someone other than Billy to kiss her this way?  

He'd kissed her in the desert, but it had been pure lust, desperate and empty for her part.  She had no commitment to him, no connection or delusions of a future that even featured him as a player; but now?

She could taste the ocean and Silvio, a unique cocktail of nervous tension and amorous desire for release mingling with a sense of adventure and freedom that Aurora had never considered chasing before.  She'd always known who she was, Aurora Byrne the loyal daughter and Soldato, an over-achiever who never rested when work had yet to be done.

And yet, in this briefest of moments, in the span of a kiss that would never have been had these horrible events not come to pass; she thought about it: a life on the sea, far away from the Cosa Nostra.  It had been the first time she'd ever really considered it, in her whole life she'd never once thought about life away from the family 'business' ... she'd always thought of the Cosa Nostra as part of her.  The way she used to think she'd feel about Sicily when she finally went there. 

And yet... none of that was true.

 

She wasn't Sicilian.

I am an American.  

She wasn't a Luciano or a Conti. 

I am a Byrne.

She wasn't just Cosa Nostra.

I am a woman of flesh and blood.  I'm still alive and I have all the power - all the strength I need to follow my own stars to whatever destination they lead all on my own.

His hands on her hips, her mind wandered to the pleasures he might again give to her. Her skin prickled, and she found herself pressing into him the longer the kiss went on.  His arms tightening around her.  She could break free... she could break him if she wanted, kill him without a thought and that should have bothered her.  Aurora had never really been attracted to a man she considered her lesser physically and yet, here she was prolonging a kiss that never would have happened a few months ago.  Not just because of Billy but also because of Guilia.  

"No."  She muttered against his lips.

And that was when her kiss slowed.  No matter how much had changed, somethings were core to her being.  Pillars her parents had painstakingly built up within her over the long years of her life making her into the woman she really and truly was.  And she wasn't the sort of woman that destroyed other people's happiness in favor of her own.

Her forehead against his, she asked him softly, "Giulia?" 

She put a hand on his cheek, her amber eyes meeting his. 

"You love her?  You told me how much you love her.  Silvio, I can reunite you with her.  I have money, power, and resources I don't share with people outside the life I live... not outside The Family."

The last was said with significance that could not be mistaken for familial ties.

"But I have much more than you know which I could bring to bear.  And... in any case, I could ever be is a shadow of this woman you want to write sonnets about... and I deserve better than that and so does she." 

She gives him a chaste kiss. 

"I can't bring my Billy back.  I fear I must accept that I'll always love him and be waiting for my journey to whatever underworld lay beyond this life but I can bring you your love and if I didn't - I wouldn't be me.  I don't... hurt good people and Silvio... you assuredly a good man & she, no doubt, an amazing woman."

Silvio's mouth opened as he listened to Aurora. He'd never been so confused in his entire life- and he had had many confusing moments.

"I... You... But..."

He blinked.

"You... I... and..."

He opened his mouth to say more. Instead, he just looked at her for a long time. Then he looked out at the water for a while. Then back at Aurora, who'd taken a seat in the sand on the blanket he'd brought for innocent purposes. With a long, deflating sigh, he sank down next to her. For a moment, they sat next to each other and looked out at the Pacific. Then Silvio leaned over, lightly kissed the top of Aurora's head, took a deep breath, and flopped back on the sand dejectedly to look up at the stars and think about what she'd said.

"My mother, my father, my aunt, my adoptive mother... were all Godfathers."  She said quietly.  "My adoptive father is one of the most feared and respected hitmen in the entire country.  I have inherited enough money to set myself, my children, and grandchildren up comfortably in this country for years to come... generations more if I were to move to some 3rd world nation."

"I could have a dozen of the best guns in this side of the Atlantic ready to move and do whatever I asked of them, with a word from the right member of my family."  

Aunt Tara, of course.

"This isn't something we can just go do tonight Silvio... I can understand that it might be... hard to imagine a world with her in it again, but... please know I'm not taunting you with impossible dreams.  I can make good on my promise.  I would never offer to do something I couldn't do."

She took his hand and gave it a squeeze.

"Please say something, ask something, I'll try to answer ... whatever it is."

Silvio sighed- again.

"I would trade all of that to have you tonight, you know. I think it would be a fine trade."

He shrugged, laying back against the sand.

"Even with all your resources, you would find yourself well matched against the Mattaranzi dynasty. They are your equals in resources, manpower... and they control their city, their home turf."

He shifted his pants uncomfortably, sighing again as his mind finally picked up another thread.

"It is not hard to imagine a world with her again. It is impossible. She is a dream. The brief time I spent with her was... transcendent. But do I even really know her? Does she know me?"

A hint of smirk appeared on his face.

"And bullshit, Aurora Byrne. Bullshit I say. You would absolutely offer to do something you couldn't do."

He recited from memory.

"I figure I owe you for the first date anyway so... let me make it up to you tonight"

An arm snaked out and rested comfortably under Aurora's head. For a while, they just looked up at the stars together, then Silvio glanced over at her.

"I would like to be your friend, Aurora Byrne. Mostly, I... have very brief relationships with people. You are the person I have talked to the most in this country without sex-depending on the definition, I suppose. You are a very stubborn woman, and I know that as long as Giulia is unresolved for me, then you will not act on your obvious well of attraction for me. Therefore... yes, we will try to handle this Giulia plan. Either I win Giulia. Or I lose her. If I win, and it works, I am happy. if I lose her because she is not interested, then you will be able to screw me without the slightest pang of guilt. I win either way, yes? Can we meet in three days or so? We can discuss my plans. We can discuss how you are feeling. Be friends."

Silvio blinked, standing up slowly and wiping stray grains of sand off himself before offering a hand to Aurora.

"But for tonight... friend... I am going to go seduce a waitress. Would you like to come with me? We will find a bar with chocolate; I will hire you with it. If not, capisco."

"I'd like to be friends."  She said warmly but a bit of color was coming to her cheeks.  "Though... to be clear, are you... inviting me to help you seduce a waitress or inviting me to enjoy chocolate while YOU seduce a waitress."

She laughed nervously.

"Aurora Byrne, there is nothing that would make me happier than seducing a waitress with you. Our tanned and tangled arms and legs intertwined as we explore the bodies of each other would be heavenly bliss. And what better way to kick off our friendship than to share a beautiful woman together?"

Silvio stretched, cracking his neck.

"Perhaps that would be more palatable to you than just my mere self, eh? But no, I mostly jest... I would do these things, of course, but certainly not expected..."

He noticed the blush on her cheek. Embarrassment? Shock? Excitement?

"But no. Happy to simply enjoy the pleasure of your company, buy you some chocolate, and use your formidable beauty to provoke the jealousy of a lesser woman."

Silvio extended his arm to Aurora. 

"There seemed to be a suitable club back that way. Shall we?"

"Formidable beauty?  Oh... I do like that."  She said with a smirk.  "Not that you should need much help, good looking guy like you, sexy accent... you'll have the local girls lined up around the block."

She picked up her shoes and began walking.  Once they reached the car she put them back on and Charlie finally seemed to re-emerge from wherever he'd gone.  He had been every bit as professional as he said he would be, Aurora hadn't been so happy with a guard since Cassandra left her so long ago.  

She sighed wondering if the woman was still alive.  Maybe she could find her and hire her?  But no.  A 40-year-old woman by now, what would she want with coming back here to the states to guard the woman who once was a child in her charge.  Dangerous work, long hours, it wasn't an ideal thing to offer a woman on the back end her prime.  No, Kassandra like so much of her childhood was gone now.

The club in question, which they reached in no time at all, was a lower key place than she expected.  Soft blue lights, sexy jazz music that she felt in the base of her chest rumbling.  To say the mood was set in this place was an understatement.  One could wallow in sorrows happily here or find someone to go home with easily - the music just had that sort of feel.  Silvio held the door open for her and as Aurora entered she looked around for a seat.  Instantly her eyes found a corner booth and made a beeline for it.

Most everyone in here was drinking something that was likely alcohol, Aurora's craving was instantly at the front of her thoughts but the sight of indulgent sweets helped a lot.  Settling into the booth she leaned to Silvio and said, "You haven't been to this city before, right?  How do you know about places like this?  Do you have a magic instinct for finding the best place to pick up ladies?"

She chuckled, she was joking, but only a little.  It was uncanny he'd found a place like this on sheer luck alone!

"Flattery will get you everywhere, volpe delle stelle. As you know."

They traced their way back to their shoes.

"It is hard to think of Giulia now. She seems so far away, like I loved her in another life, yes? All I can do is continue to love, to savor what pleasure I can find. You are the closest I have met to her- you and one other- and yet..."

Silvio opened his palms, shrugging.

"What else is there to do? A few days, we will discuss your plans to help me and you will see the futility."

He seemed as despondent as Aurora had ever seen him, with the except of the split second after she'd said "No" on the beach. But as they approached the club, the lost man began to listen to the music and his feet found a rhythm once again. With a sigh, he smirked and walked inside. The place was full of people, talking and listening to the music. The band was skilled, and waitresses and patrons darted through the many tables. Silvio scanned the room for a full minute and Aurora followed the path of his scrutinizing hazel eyes. He saw a lot- that much was clear from her conversations with him. He read the room, let his eyes wander over the people before he grinned and spoke to the host. 

"That corner over there. The booth that just opened, per favore."

They settled into their seats and skimmed the menus.

"I was watching as we drove. I always keep an eye on the streets. Ah, some sort of chocolate sampler- that is yours, yes? And something to drink with no kick?"

Silvio sighed, trying to exhale the last of his melancholy and just breathe in the excitement of his unexpected evening. He seemed like an athlete limbering up before a game. He talked to Aurora a bit about the red wines he'd had to drink in Venice when they were interrupted by their waitress. Aurora looked up and blinked; she hadn't been aware that Aphrodite was taking drink orders.

The woman had a slim build that accentuated her curves. She was wearing tight black pants that left little to the imagination and a black blouse with the top button undone. She had long, straight golden hair and sparkling blue eyes. She was the sort of woman who appears in a movie for the male lead and his sidekick to stare at; considering that they were in LA, maybe she was.

Silvio stared at the menu for a bit, considering before he glanced up and flashed a grin.

"Buonasera. We would like to try the chocolate sampler. My friend will have a shirley temple. As for me..."

He paused, tilting his head like he was weighing a difficult choice.

"I fear that tonight I will put you to the test. Red wine- one of your strongest flavors- but your choice."

The waitress smiled back, accepting the challenge, but as she turned Silvio called her back.

"I am sorry- what was your name?"

"Hazel."

"Ah- bene. You match my eyes."

Silvio grinned, mirth returned to his eyes once again.

"Thank you, Hazel."

Aurora watched Hazel walking away.  "Damn."  She said.  "I'm glad we didn't come here for drinks first or I never would have gotten that kiss to figure shit out."

She chuckled.

"I mean, I don't like girls or nothing but... you can't argue that she's beautiful.  Like... one of those statues in the roman ruins or something.  Aphrodite level."  She shook her head.  "She could be out of your league."

She smirked.

Silvio watched Aurora watching Hazel walk away. He smirked, inhaling the scent of the bar as he felt himself returning to normal after his surfside failure. Although... perhaps it was good to have at least one friend in this city where the friendship wasn't... complicated. He could do a lot worse for a friend than a beautiful, rich, connected woman like Aurora. 

And if someday she succumbed to his charms, wouldn't the long delay make it all the sweeter?

"You will always get a kiss, Aurora Byrne. Perhaps more. You have only to ask. Until you do, I am quite content to be your friend."

He took a straw off the table, adroitly sliding it out of its wrapper and beginning to absentmindedly tie it into knotted patterns.

"Hazel is a beautiful woman. I also saw her watching me as I walked in. Or you, I suppose, but my ego has taken enough hits this evening, has it not? And there is no such thing as a league. Do you know what happens to a woman who is 'out of one's league'? She is rarely serious approached. Is she watched? Yes. Is she flirted with? Only crudely. Men assume they will be rejected when they speak to her, and thus they steel themselves against what they perceive as the inevitable. They are thusly doomed to fail. How often are they approached as human beings? I am a confessed hedonist, but I do not use women as objects of pleasure. If anything, it is the opposite."

He raised an eyebrow, tossing his straw wrapper and the straw aside.

"As you know."

Silvio smirked as he watched Hazel picking up their drinks from the bar; she'd glanced back over her shoulder towards them once, but it was unclear what she was looking at. Silvio continued speaking.

"Why do beautiful women wind up with rich men? With athletes? Yes, some like the wealth or the lifestyle or the status. But I also suspect that they are the only men confident enough to pursue them. Surely you have experienced this? You have been hit on quite often, I'm sure- but not as often as you would be if you were slightly less beautiful."

He shrugged.

"Also, some men may be intimidated by your incredible capacity for violence. I suppose that may be a factor as well."

Aurora thought about his words and then admitted, "I've had a handful of serious relationships.  The first few turned out to be real jerks.  One of them dangerously so.  Maybe that's why I've always felt I had poor taste in men.  Every guy but Billy turned out to be a real creep.  I just figured maybe there was something about me or them that made them my type... maybe their lust for violence or something?  But perhaps it was the confidence... granted, I'm not sure Billy could be called confident.  Our first few dates were an exercise in awkwardness."

She thought about that for a moment.

"Granted, he was the first man I chased, so maybe that's why?"  she arched an eyebrow.

"I know WHY a man tries to learn about women, I guess it's a means to an end in most cases, but you seem wiser than many men I know with regard to women and how we work.  How the hell is that?  What secret do guys like you and my brother have that other men don't?"

Silvio sighed, scratching the short stubble on his jaw.

"Well, I have a great deal of lust, but no violence. I think there are many who read 'violante' as violent. But it is actually violet. The color, the flower?"

He shrugged.

"As for the secret... I cannot speak to your brother. For me, I love every woman I am with. Not just physically, but I find a way to love her person. The world is full of a great deal of merda. And shit people too. But I have a genuine interest in people. Hazel has a fantastic body. But what sort of music does she like? What is her favorite season? How does she like to be kissed? Did a wise man not say that all love is curiosity, and the death of curiosity is the death of love?"

Silvio paused, considering the words.

"That was me just now. Are you not blessed to know me, Aurora Byrne? But yes, my point is that while I would love to explore her body, she is not an object to me. She is an entirely new universe waiting to be discovered. My other secret is that I am fiendishly attractive and keep myself in good shape, albeit not fighting shape."

He had lowered his voice as Hazel approached with their order. The shirley temple and plate of chocolate sweets- a wide variety- were placed in front of Aurora, and then the wine was placed in front of Silvio. He accept it like a king accepted his goblet.

"We must use as many of the senses as possible at all times- that is the key to pleasure, yes?"

He held the wine up to the light before smelling it and finally tasting it. A wide grin broke out on his face. 

"You have most excellent taste, Hazel. Tell me, what else should I sample here?"

Silvio allowed the hint of smirk as he looked up at her. She seemed amused and match his smirk with a good natured one of her own. Her voice was confident and clear.

"Well... we don't have that much in the way of food... I would say... well, you already have some chocolates there, but perhaps the chocolate covered strawberries?"

Silvio raised his eyes and looked at Hazel for a moment, studying her, impressed.

"Bene! An excellent recommendation. Those, per favore."

This time, Aurora watched Silvio watch Hazel walk away.

"I like her. We have already proven to be most excellent patrons. She has dispensed sound advice and seems to have good taste, especially in me. My conversation is not unwelcome to her. Now is the most dangerous step- we must begin to bridge the gap between the professional and the personal- make it clear that I see her as a human rather than a servant. But we do not pry- that would cause her to close up. Instead, when you wish to make a connection you must invite someone into your life in a genuine way. First innocently, and then we begin to walk the line."

He shrugged.

"But part of it is purely observation. Did you see her nose?"

Aurora smirked. Her own acute powers of observation were more focused on who was carrying weapons and where or whether they moved aggressively, but she'd perhaps looked at Hazel's face longer than she did with others. 

"So you're going to ask her about books, Silvio?"

He grinned.

"You are very good, Aurora Byrne. Do you know that?"

"I am. The glasses, right?"

"Si. She had the indents near the top of her nose- but was not wearing them for work. Perhaps she simply does not like how she looks in them- this would be a shame. Or perhaps she gets more tips without them? Or simply prefers not to wear them? Either way, she has been wearing them recently. She must be reading something she finds very interesting."

Hazel came back with another glass of wine for Silvio and chocolate strawberries. Silvio made a somewhat humorous show of sampling one immediately, ensuring that in doing so he showed off the dexterity of his tongue, mouth, and fingers rather than look clumsy. He applauded her so much for the recommendation that Hazel felt compelled to take a mock bow to play along. She laughed, and it had an enchanting musical quality to it. Silvio and Aurora found themselves matching a chuckle, although depending on how well Aurora was truly enjoying herself, Silvio wasn't sure how forced it was. 

"Tell me, Hazel... my friend and I are having a discussion. She prefers Hemingway- so direct and straightforward, you see? As for me, although his best days might be past him, I like Fitzgerald. What do you think? Or if this is all nonsense to you, give us a different recommendation, yes?"