Aurora went down the hallway leaving Ori and Brigitte behind to check on other members of the family. 

As much as she wanted to run to Gavin and see that he was okay with her own two eyes, there was only one place she could be right now. Without knocking she entered the room which was now her own and found Billy there looking out the window on the backyard where the kids were playing under the watchful eyes of the guards.

He might have been sitting in a normal chair for how he looked, relaxed and even smiling a touch - lost in thought.  When he turned to her and that smile grew, Aurora's fears abated and she dropped her bags and ran to him with arms wide open.  

"Luce dei miei occhi, mio ​​toro, come mi sei mancato!"  

The first challenge was that he didn't stand to meet her and for the first time in her life she thought about how she meant to kiss him, him being lower than her now.  That was an odd change but she met it head-on by allowing herself to settle across his lap.  She wrapped her arms around his thick neck and began kissing him passionately.

"Ti amo.  Tia amo."  She breathed between each kiss, feeling nothing but warmth and comfort at having his strong arms about her once more.  Everything was going to be okay now.  They were safe.  They were together.  That's all that mattered.

"Il mio Billy..."  

Billy's smile met his eyes as his wife ran to him. Her touch and her breath, being real and not the things of dreams or nightmares any longer were instead everything to him in that moment.

"Welcome home Profondità della mia anima. I'm glad to see you had a good trip." He pulled her into his chest with all the force he ever did, and while he was shorter than she for the time being, he was still bigger and stronger. That's just how it was supposed to be.

"How are the girls?"

Aurora laughed already fiddling with Billy's tie, silently she wondered who had been helping her husband to dress. 

"Mi stai facendo apparire male, preoccupandomi prima dei bambini ..."

Surely someone had to help with his pants. 

"Quando tutto ciò a cui riesco a pensare sei tu!"

Thoughts of his pants and him needing help lead to other more troubling thoughts she hadn't considered in the car.  For a moment she hesitated her action of tugging his tie off.  She'd meant to undress him, to make love to him, it was natural to want such a thing after everything but... could he even?

She suddenly felt immense discomfort.  He had to know what she meant by what she said and how she said it, she rarely spoke in Italian and when she did it meant one thing really around the house... 

"They're fine."  She forced herself to say.  "Not so much as a scratch between them.  We're all okay.  If you want we can talk about it.  I'm sure you probably want to know all the details."

Billy watched as his wife refused to make eye contact with him. He knew the look she had on, she was being sheepish playful. He thought hard then, trying to will his legs into moving. Making himself take his wife the two feet to their bed.

It did not work.

He shook his head and with one hand wheeled around toward the bed. He picked her up and tossed her up then.

"As long as they're fine, we can tackle that in a bit." He smirked and climbed himself up onto the bed then, an effort that he had been practicing while she was away. If there was one thing he was going to be determined to be able to do, it was going to be getting in and out of bed. And so, now that he was there, and his wife was with him, he reached out and began to paw at her buttons on her pants.

"You know. I didn't." One button came undone. "Even bother." The second button. "To ask the doctor." The third button came undone, and now Aurora was helping him to tear at her own clothing. "If everything worked." He smiled up at her and winked as he kissed her newly naked leg, slowly dragging himself up the bed toward her. He stopped suddenly when he reached a bit higher and rather than pulling her undergarments as he had originally intended, he kissed the small swell of her belly.

"I know what your name is little one, but I don't want to tell your mama until she meets you. I'll whisper to you when you're sleeping. Promise." He kissed her again, and then did, with a single show of strength and power, tear Aurora's last remaining fabric from her into tatters.

Rora lay atop her husband's chest, hair dark hair splayed about him, her personal pillow.   Her finger traced circles and spirals lazily across his skin, amused by the goosebumps that sometimes appeared in response to her actions.  When she summoned them up, she'd kiss them away whispering her love for him again as they both recovered from love making, their hearts and breath slowing and returning to normal.

Outside and upstairs she could hear the children, a house full of them... what Billy and she had dreamed of from the beginning.  Lifting her head she looked into his eyes and smiled down on him before kissing his lips. 

"I suggest we spend the next twelve hours here.  We've earned it.  Have food and wine brought to us... well wine for you and something lighter for me maybe?  We can talk... and just stay like this, no one is expecting us today, are they?"

She kissed her husband again.  

Billy shook his head.

"Not today they aren't. Today I am all yours. Go ahead and grab the phone, or just yell out for someone. I'm in the mood for pasta myself, but you just came from Italy, so maybe a good steak would be more in order huh?"

He kissed the top of Aurora's head then. "And after we eat, we can talk about whatever you'd like."

It wasn't long before a full lunch was brought up by Effie.  Rora in nothing but Billy's shirt took the tray and brought it into a small table for the two of them to sit at.  Moving one of the chairs away she made a place for the wheelchair that took Billy a bit of effort to settle back into with his pants set to the right again. 

Aurora smirked at the tattered remains of her underclothing on the floor as her husband wheeled over to the table.  Billy could do far more than she was really giving him credit for, so it would seem.  Aurora moved to put her foot beside Billy's and realized then two things... the first was that his foot was not on the floor anymore and the second was gut-wrenching. 

He would never again feel her foot beside his own and know she was there, silently loving him.  Gently she lifted her foot from the floor and placed it alongside his.  He might not know it, but Aurora was always going to be there... right beside him.

"So... who did this to you - are they dead? And did we get the bastard who shot Gavin?"  She unfolded her napkin and inhaled the scent of the steak and pasta steaming before them, resisting the urge to pour herself some wine.

Billy did not waste time, he dug straight into the food. Legs or not, his stomach worked fine. He shook his head when Aurora asked him a question.

"That's a no on Gavin." He put his hand up. "I've got Mister Black and his entourage tracking the guy down. Not much more I can throw at it right now. They will find him, I'm sure. As for who did this. It was an accident. Should have never let it happen, but yeah, it's taken care of." He hoped his wife didn't pry further. She was likely going to, and he wasn't going to flat out lie. But he was certainly going to obfuscate as much as he could.

"So tell me about Italy. Everything go alright?"

If it had been an accident, Tara would have regaled her with the tale.  The girl had no problem dropping the sudden bomb of news on her that Billy had been paralyzed, why wouldn't she say that Dad had fallen or something similar?  And if it was 'taken care of' that seemed to indicate that someone DID do it to him... but he didn't want her to know who - that meant it wasn't Mattaranzi.  Was it really handled?  Or was he trying to stop her from going out again so soon after getting home?

Aurora stared at him and thought to speak but before she could find the right words, Billy asked about Italy.  Aurora sighed.  "It wasn't as smooth as I would have liked, but in the end, Giancarlo and his hands are down and we're home safe."  She nodded to herself,  "That I felt him breathe his last is as good of an outcome as I could have hoped for at my age and in my condition."

Now, it was time to come clean.

"I know I said that I was worried about my health... but it's a bit worse than I let on."  She began cutting into her steak.  "I'll need to see a doctor sooner rather than later.  Tomorrow.  I've lost consciousness a few times.  The swelling in my ankles is hell and the vertigo is unbearable at times.  I suspect he's going to put me on very light duty, if not ask you to tie me to a bed... in a not so enjoyable way."

She smirked but her amber eyes gave away her fear.

"I'm worried about the baby.  I should be feeling it by now, but I haven't.  I know there could be a lot of reasons, but I'm worried.  All I've wanted to do was get back here to you and the kids."  Her chin fell and her shoulders slumped slightly, "I've done everything I could to take care of her while trying to end this to protect the children we already have ..."  Aurora touched her belly gently.  "I'm just worried it wasn't enough."

Billy leaned forward and reached out to take his wife's hand. "Roar. Everything is going to be just fine. We can go see a doctor right now if you want, or we can wait till tomorrow. You're right that you should take it easy, but God gave us a gift, and a man tried to take our little gift away. He wouldn't punish you by taking her away now, you wait and see."

He smiled then and took another bite of his sandwich.

"So, did Brigitte have a good time in Italy? How many times did Orianna want to ring her neck?"

"She had moments.  I think she got a real look at what it is we do... some of the harder parts at least.  She was actually quite capable and I do owe you an apology.  We might have been able to do it without her, but I'm glad she was there - for the sake of my bond with her if nothing else."  Aurora smiled.  "We're closer than we've been in a long while and... I gave her Dad's jacket."

Her smile touched her eyes, "You would have been so proud of her Billy.  She did good work.  She's not a child anymore.  So much wiser and stronger than I gave her credit for... and brave.  She's a good woman."

Aurora sighed.

"Oriana... well, I'm fond of her, but the girl has some issues she's working through and I'm not sure her problems won't eventually cross the ocean to come after her.  After all, I'm confident that members of her former team were the ones who struck at Will and Volkov.  These, of course, are facts I want to hand off to the feds.  If those assholes have a harder time coming into the country due to the government's suspicions of their involvement in killing William, that might keep Oriana and ... by extension ... our operation, our family... but most of all Tara safe."

Aurora chewed up and swallowed a bit of steak.  "And I'm increasingly confident that Tara's infatuation with our young friend isn't one-sided.  The girls spent hours on the phone together ... Oriana expressed concern over her well-being.  If nothing else she values Tara's friendship and she has few enough friends in this world... the girl needs a strong supportive family."

She met Billy's eyes, "She needs a positive father figure.  If Tara's heart is set on this girl, we're all going to have to play our part in helping Oriana through this and eventually maybe even helping her cut ties to this madman and his little government-funded operation."

Aurora shook her head, "I've seen women like her before Billy.  She's seen some shit, been through some really dark things, but the more terrifying thing to me is how she's struggling with it.  Some part of her, I think, didn't want to leave Italy.  Some part of her still wants to go back to that man and his team.  It's all she knows and maybe she's seeing how fucked up it is, but when it's the only family you've ever had... when it's what feels familiar and as if it's where you belong or what you deserve..."

Aurora frowned, "I don't know for sure that it isn't the romantic in me that hopes we can help her... maybe I'm ruined by my parent's love story, but ... I know that Oriana has better odds of a healthy stable future with all of us trying to help her and not just Tara alone.  And considering how many times she saved my life on this trip - I think we can safely forget about the whole trying to kill me nonsense, yes?  For Tara's sake, at least?"

Billy nodded slowly. "Yours isn't the only bond strengthened. Tara stepped in to fill a much needed role while you were gone, and not just for me by the way. Malcolm talks to her. Not much, but anything is more than he talks to anyone else." He sighed. "Alright, bygones be bygones when it comes to Miss Montini, as for my petit ange, well, I don't like her in leather, so she'll have to give that up right quick." He smiled and nodded as if that was the end of that.

He took a swig of wine then and looked toward the bed, and then toward his wife. "You know, I wouldn't be opposed to either of us being on bed rest for a while. We can relax, have food sent up to us. People can chatter about how we are weak, or about how we are always making love and nobody can bother us. Could be nice for a bit." He shrugged and ate some more. "Course, I give that two days before you get bored and wander off."

He stuck out his tongue at Aurora and finished his meal quietly.

"We really should make time though to meet with some folks, talk things over. Gavin wants to go into construction, did you know that? I think it's time the whole family sat down to have a talk about the future. What do you think? I mean, our biggest obstacles are behind us, why not make some plans?"

Aurora nodded.  

"We'll make time to have a family sit down.  Do some talking and planning... the kids lives back on track.  You and I will take some time to focus on our health and the household.  Get all our affairs in order..."

She paused before continuing that thought, "I think we both know it's overdue.  We've been fortunate, blessed as you say, but we should make sure everything is set the way we want for when the worst does happen.  And... speaking of which, I need to find out when the state funeral for Will is.  We should take Malcolm to say his goodbyes.  If Will and Angie left a will, we'll need to see that whoever is set as executor carries things out correctly.  You know how sleazy these lawyers can be when it comes to the holdings of the dead."

She sighed.

"I won't have anyone cheating Malcolm out of whatever his father and mother left him."

Billy nodded gravely at that thought, but agreed, so he kept his mouth shut.

"So, we find the executor and get Malcolm his things, but as for school and everything I'm afraid we're going to have to move him up here. I don't see any other way of it. I would love to not have to uproot him, but what are we going to do?" He sighed.

A moment later he looked out the window again. "If I had my druthers it would be in Detroit. There's a nice little hill that overlooks the bridge at Port Huron. Quiet, out of the way and very unlikely to have any trouble for a very very long time. That's just me though."

He turned to his wife.

"I'm guessing you would like to be in Philadelphia with your parents?"

"I know I've spent a lot of years trying to get back there, but I realize now what I wanted wasn't a place... what I wanted is gone."  Her eyes darken and she stares off for a moment herself before rubbing the hand which held hers with her thumb.  When he looked to her, she met his gaze unflinching.

"All these years, so many houses and apartments, constantly setting up and tearing down our lives just to run with whatever we could fit in a bag..."  She sighed.  "It's taught me something."  She squeezed Billy's hand.  "That hill you describe sounds perfect.  We'll make calls to our lawyers tomorrow and make sure everything is set in motion to make it happen.  You're my family.  My home is wherever you are, in this life, and the next one."  

Billy nodded.

"So what's next? What else do you want to go over, or to talk about? Things have gone pretty smoothly on this end, and in fact we have a few new contacts thanks to Cat. I sent her up to Boston to take care of a problem, and instead she comes back with a deal. So we weasel a bit further and poof, now we have a small organization out of Boston who has a connection to, get this, the FBN!" He laughed and let himself flop backward onto the bed before sitting back up again. "Of all the things. Hey, at least we know how they were tailing us the whole time right? Could use that technique on a few folks if we ever had need."

Aurora tilted her head to the side and her eyebrow climbed up towards her hairline.

"I'm sorry you lost me there... you sent Catalina to Boston to handle something for you and she came back with a deal made with who exactly and ... they, this group in Boston, have an in at the FBN who they were using to watch us?"  

Billy nodded and smiled.

"Whole group of ladies actually. All run by a woman and everything. I had no idea, but it seems like there's a nice little women's group up in Boston. On the desk, go ahead, go grab the paper. I took notes!" He beamed from ear to ear.

"They all worked for a guy who apparently worked for Mattaranzi, but now that Mattaranzi is gone, they, through Gen there, have agreed to work for Cat, and since Cat works for me. Well. You do the math. I haven't met any of them yet, only talked on the phone with Gen, but she seemed like she had a good head on her shoulders, like she knew what kind of situation she was in. And Leslie? She must be good at her job not to get caught, she's been at the FBN for about a decade it seems."

He continued to take sips of wine as he talked and let it all sink in to Aurora, waiting for her praise at bringing these assets in rather than getting rid of them for no reason.

Aurora stared at the paper, listening to Billy prattle on like an overly proud cock strutting about the yard but her mind drifted back and details came together like pieces in a puzzle settling snuggly into place creating a terrible picture.  Aurora's complexion grew pale and she moved towards a chair gripping the paper tighter in her hands her lips moving silently as she began walking through the information as her own mother used to do.

"A team of women... run by a man connected to..."  Rora lowered herself into the chair.  "Using the feds... watching us... oh Billy..."

"Rora?"  Billy's voice was concerned.

She shook her head and looked up to him, not sure if she was more piteous of him or angry that he had not put it all together.  

"We couldn't figure out how they knew Brigitte's route home from school, remember?  It was after Vegas when they took her... our daughter.  They took our little girl after his daughter died on our watch!"  she snarled her heart increasing in speed as all the moving parts locked together like gears turning inside a great engine.

"We couldn't figure out how they had planned a surprise attack on to take her at the exact moment when she had the least protection... or how they knew exactly where the Feds were going to stop the train."  Aurora's lip quivered as she realized then they'd missed it, the first attack against them they'd put it all on one cog but they hadn't been skilled enough to see the greater engine driving it to devour them all.

Aurora couldn't deny it now.  Mattaranzi was masterful, and now even in death he had parts in play that could take them down in a counterstroke from beyond the grave and her husband had welcomed them right in the front door as the old man expected... the old man -OR- maybe Francesco.

The old man had all the reasons to strike at them, the motive and means... but what if she was wrong?  What if the old man wasn't the mastermind, but the tool.  What if the reason they never saw Mattaranzi's hand in Brigitte's kidnapping was because it wasn't there... what if Oriana was wrong? 

And then her mind went to a darker place... Volkov's words came back to her.

"... I've got a few friends in the business who mentioned your name has been floating around lately as a big-money target. You'll have lots of mooks with their first gun trying for you, and I know you can handle them without much trouble. But I've heard of at least three real pro's considering the job. A Swede. An Italian. Wasn't sure about the third one, but maybe Eastern Europe or a Slav. Don't know the details, but the person who passed along these rumors said that I should be careful dealing with them, if we crossed paths. Now I'm not as good as I used to be, but someone who could cause me trouble... well, just be prepared. I'll keep an eye on Will."

What if Francesco had his team working for criminals all these years?  

"Oh... shit." 

Aunt Tara and several key operators in Europe had fallen in the last few years creating vacuums... holes easily filled by a man with money, connections and a will to make himself an emperor legit or otherwise.  In the wake of the Great War he wouldn't be the first man to think it... set governments and criminals against each other, use both to grow his own personal power and with no one like Aunt Tara around to spot it?  What person or power could hope to stop him when everyone his hiring him and his girls to be their own 'edge.'

It was inspired... wicked but inspired.  It was just the sort of thing Aurora would have run to join when she was 20, before Billy... before everything that mattered in her world.  She would have been as good as Ori, no better - and she would have thrilled for such a life.  Infiltrating the top levels of government and the most powerful criminal empires... and toppling them for shits and grins just because she could?

This is real.  

She wanted to cry, to grab her children and run back to Canada, but the woods wasn't far enough away from a man who had already seeded his people so deeply into the hearts of multiple nations criminal empires.  An army of women, beautiful, deadly... outwardly unassuming - ready at a word to do what was necessary for a singularly ruthless master.  Not the Godfathers and Crime Lords they worked for but a single god-like mentor to whom they were all blindly loyal.

Mattaranzi was a man who did monstrous things because of a broken heart.  Like Volkov.  Francesco... the jury was out on him but from what she could see in that poor girl's eyes... he was a monster pretending to be a man because it suited him to do so.

"He used the French.  He used the Italians.  He's using the Sweedes - FUCKING HE USED THE DAMNS SWEEDES!"  she pounded her fist on the table realizing then how easy it was to hire those swiss mercenaries, cursing herself for not thinking of any of this sooner!  They had walked into Mattaranzi's hold because Francesco was done with the old bastard!  They had cleaned up any evidence that the Italian government was using both sides of their war on crime!  Francesco was puppet mastering the crime lords and the man who would drive them out - Il Duce.  Why have one group's power when you could steal from them both while neither is the wiser?!?

"Who Rora..."  Billy tried to keep his voice calm, she could hear the panic there as he pulled himself back into his chair again.  "Rora.  RORA!  Take a breath, listen to me... it's okay.  We're okay."

It was then Rora realized her vision was framed in bright white.  Her hand went protectively over her belly and she focused on her breathing, trying to obey her husband's instructions for her own sake as much as the baby's.

Rora's vision slowly coalesced.  Billy's face took up the whole of her line of sight, he was holding the top half of her body across his lap.  

"Welcome back."  Billy said brushing the hair from her face.  She must have fainted.  She'd done it plenty of times during her pregnancy for Gavin and nothing was to be done for it but wait it out and try to stay calm.  No point to running off to a hospital, it was probably why Billy hadn't called out for help.

"Calmer now or we're not talking about this."  He cautioned.

"Francesco.  The man who controls Oriana's team... they were supposedly not working for any criminal group but come to find out Olimpia Mattaranzi and he were working together.  I and Ori came to think she had training as an assassin.  It's possible she was in the first group of girls that Francesco worked with... this would explain how it was that Mattaranzi's girls came to be the ones who killed Will and Volkov... and how Ori was given me as a target."

Billy nodded.  "Deep breaths." He reminded her, the rumble of his voice in his chest soothed the lioness.  Aurora did as he instructed, three good breaths before continuing.

"I think Francesco is working both sides of the fence - legit in the government and with criminals.  If you had a group of girls who could do what Oriana is capable of, you would make a mint hiring them out to do work to the highest bidder in the underworld and to whatever government would fund your project so you always had a new group of skilled and pliable young women - young because they are easier to keep control of with the least amount of resources.  Women like Oriana start thinking for themselves and stop needing parental figures and they are suddenly rabid dogs that need putting down... which is why Oriana had to run no doubt."

Aurora shook her head, "Which is why I don't get why he came to retrieve her and not just kill her..."  She blinked, remembering Oriana's words, words she'd dismissed as the delusional words of a brainwashed young woman.  Words, that ironically, might hold some small ring of truth.  "Unless he does care for her on some weird level... or need her at least.  That might justify why he didn't cut his losses and instead tried to bring her back in."

Aurora drew breath slowly as Billy pet her hair again. 

"Why I got upset was this team of women you've acquired, Billy, they have someone in at the FBN.  All I could think about was when Brigitte had been taken from us.  Somone knew our routines.  Someone knew how to take Brigitte when she was least guarded.  Someone warned Brigitte's father where the train would be stopped by the Feds so his men had time to escape the checkpoint.  We never found out who that was."

She drew another breath, exhaling before continuing, "I thought Mattaranzi was using Francesco, hired his team, but what if I have it backward?  What if Francesco has been going to crime lords ... Mattaranzi in Italy, Brigitte's dad in France and using his teams of well trained and placed women to put these powerful men in his debt?"

"The FBN secretary... she's part of an all-woman team. Billy, that's all this man runs with.  Teams of women, infiltrating governments and crime syndicates - what if this man has been a part of everything from the beginning?  Volkov, the last time he met with me gave me a list of different assassins based on a location that he knew to have accepted the contract on me.  One of those was Oriana, but he mentioned others from other countries.  How did he get such information?  Ori was only ever affiliated wth Francesco before us.  That seems to suggest that Volkov's informant had to be inside Francesco's operation if not Francesco himself... which considering my brother's placement in the Russian Mafia and his uncanny ease at hunting Aunt Tara and killing her people...  my God Billy, it would make more sense than thinking that Volkov did all that by himself.  Even Aunt Tara thought it had been next to impossible."

She shook her head.

"If Francesco is allowing crime lords to hire his girls as mercs they wouldn't know it.  He'd be handling the details.  He'd be telling them they were working for their government and they'd be none the wiser, the girls follow orders like good Soldato - no... not soldiers, slaves."  She shook her head. 

"You haven't said a word.  Is it possible we've just gotten into bed with a group of women working for this man... or do you think I'm crazy?"