𝑷𝒂𝒏𝒄𝒂𝒌𝒆 𝑭𝒂𝒄𝒆𝒔, 𝑺𝒚𝒓𝒖𝒑 𝑮𝒓𝒂𝒗𝒆𝒔
*Tuscany, 2004*
𝑾𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝒊𝒔 𝒇𝒐𝒐𝒅 𝒕𝒐 𝒐𝒏𝒆
𝒕𝒐 𝒐𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒓𝒔 𝒊𝒔 𝒃𝒊𝒕𝒕𝒆𝒓 𝒑𝒐𝒊𝒔𝒐𝒏
¶𝑳𝒖𝒄𝒓𝒆𝒕𝒊𝒖𝒔
Dawn bleeds into the room, a slow seeping gold that finds the three of us knotted in the sheets. Declan is a starfish between us, a limbed chaos of sleep, one heel digging into my spleen, his cheek smashed against Ian’s sternum. Tiger is buried, suffocating, beneath the weight of his absolute childhood. The air smells of us – sex and sleep and the faint, clean sweat of a dreaming boy.
In the kitchen, the light is a buttery knife, slicing the room into planes of bright and shadow. I am making coffee, the grounds bitter and dark. Ian is a study in contained force trying to negotiate our squirming, pajama-clad life form into a high chair. Last night… last night ... The memory is a live wire in my veins. Now, it has decayed into this: a domestic hum that is somehow more devastating.
“But I want pancakes!” Declan’s voice is a bell, shattering the quiet. “With faces! Laur makes the best pancake faces!”
Laur. The name is a hook in my ribs. Ian looks over, his coffee mug paused halfway to his lips. The look isn’t just amusement; it’s a slow, knowing possession. He saw Her. He saw Lauren last night. He tasted her. “Does she now?” he says, and the voice is Ian’s, but the warmth in it is for her. For the part of me that belongs to him. “Quite the hidden talent.”
“She makes them smiley!” Declan’s world is so beautifully, tragically simple. Laur equals smiley faces. “And the eyes are choc’lit! And choc’lit is… is the bestest!—”
“Fruit,” I say, and the word comes out like a decree from a stone-faced goddess. Emily’s word. “This morning’s pancakes will have fruit eyes. You’ve had enough sugar this week.” Control. Order. Nurture without spoiling. A mother’s calculus.
But he turns those eyes – Ian’s eyes, Christ, they’re Ian’s eyes – to his father. A master manipulator in training. “But Papa loves choc’lit. You love it, Papa. You do. You said, you said it’s the bestest too. So we can share, we can share the bestest.”
And Ian, the great Valhalla, the man who deals in death, whose name is whispered in bunkers and backrooms, melts. I see the roots of his resolve crumble. “Well…”
“Don’t. You. Dare.” I point the spatula, a ridiculous kitchen sword. My voice is steel wrapped in syrup. Lauren’s playfulness. “Back me up here or you’re both having plain oatmeal.”
He holds my gaze for a charged second, a smirk playing on his mouth – the mouth that was on my throat last night – before he capitulates, turning to ruffle Declan’s sun-kissed curls. “Sorry, son. Lauren’s in charge of breakfast artillery.” The surrender is a game. Our game.
“What’s… arti-leery?” The nose wrinkles. Another woman's nose.
“It means weapons,” Ian begins, the teacher in him, the merchant of war, before he catches my lethal look. “Er, kitchen weapons. Like spatulas.” He winks at me, and my stomach does something that is not part of the mission profile.
I hide the traitorous smile by turning to the stove, the sizzle of batter a tiny explosion. I listen to them – the deep rumble, the high chime – and I feel something inside me tear along a fault line. This is what will break me. Not the fucking, not the fear, not the lies straight to his face. But this. The syrup bottle, sticky under my grip. The way Declan says ‘Papa’ with such utter faith. The easy way Ian’s hand finds the small of my back as he passes. This performed, sacred normalcy.
“Look! Look, look!” The plate is a wobbly offering, thrust toward the heavens. “ Laur maked Tiger! It’s Tiger!” A grotesque, beautiful mess.
“Very artistic,” Ian intones, solemn. “Though I don’t recall Tiger having a… charcoal crispy skin color.”
“It’s abstract,” I hear myself say, defending my cookery, leaning into Lauren’s gentle pretension. “Very avant-garde.”
“Using fancy French words doesn’t make it look more like a tiger, love.” The ‘love’ is a brand.
“Everyone’s a critic.” I slap a new pancake onto his plate. It is a gesture of profound domestic ferity. “This one’s abstract too. It’s called ‘Ungrateful Man Gets No Chocolate Chips.’”
Declan giggles, a sound like shaken bells. Syrup glazes his chin, a sticky amber beard. “Papa’s in trouble! Trouble, trouble!” He chants it, a merry little dirge.
“Papa’s always in trouble,” Ian says, and his hand snakes out, pulling me down into a kiss that tastes of coffee and him and a shared, unspoken joke. It is sticky and possessive. “Luckily, he knows how to apologize.”
Kiss me too!” Small hands bat at the air, not covering eyes but reaching. “My turn! Papa, my turn!” The ocean eyes are alight with the game of it, with the sheer joy of love being a visible, physical thing he can demand a share of.
“Aye?” Ian’s eyes glitter with a mischief reserved solely for this – for the joyful torment of his child. He lunges, a great predator, and gathers Declan up, peppering his face with loud, smacking kisses until the kitchen rings with shrieks of pure, unadulterated joy.
“Laur! Save me, save me!” The shriek is pure theatrical delight, not fear, as Ian’s mock-growls vibrate against his neck.
“Sorry, love.” The pancake I flip is perfect, golden. A little circle of lies. “Papa’s artillery outranks my spatula.”
The morning spins on, a gilded record of sweetness. It is perfect. It is a cancer. Emily watches from behind her own eyes, screaming. He’s a monster. You are lying. This child is a prop. But She… Lauren is soaked in it. Lauren feels the press of Ian’s arm over the back of her chair, his fingers twisting a strand of her caramel hair. Lauren sees the dust motes dancing in the sun and believes they are holy.
A tear escapes. A single, treasonous drop.
“Love?” Ian’s thumb is on my cheek, catching it. His gaze is a searchlight. “Everything alright?”
Declan looks up, his world instantly dimmed by the shadow on mine. His brow, a perfect miniature of his father’s, furrows. “Did the… did the tummy monster come back?” he asks, the words soft and rounded with concern. My monster. My guilt. My other self.
I force Lauren’s smile. It feels like stretching torn skin. I catch Ian’s hand, weave my fingers with his. A union of liars. “No, sweet boy. Just… happy.” The ash of the lie coats my tongue.
Ian studies me. He sees everything and nothing. He sees Lauren’s moment of overwhelming feeling. He squeezes my hand, a silent pact, and returns to the pancake fortress. The professional in my skull hisses: Catalog. The scar on his knuckle. The way his throat works when he swallows coffee. The exact pitch of Declan’s laugh. Vulnerabilities. All of them.
But the woman, the broken mother-thing howling inside, cries: Memories. These are my memories.
Somewhere in Prague, a team waits. Somewhere in Langley, a file defines me. Here, I am defined by the weight of a child in my arms, smelling of sugar and trust, and by the heavy, warm hand of his father on the nape of my neck.
The clock chimes. Time, the one true enemy, advances.
But for now, I let myself believe. Just for this morning. Just a little while longer. Let the world outside this villa be a fiction. Let the woman named Prentiss be the ghost.
The syrup drips onto the marble countertop, a slow, golden bleed. It pools, thick and obscene, beside Declan’s furious, joyous artwork. His tiny fingers are glued with it, his laughter a sound so bright it burns. Ian’s hand is a brand on the small of my back, warm and possessive, as he leans over, his breath a whisper against my ear before he steals a bite from my plate. The gesture so casually – sickeningly – intimate...
This is what it could have been. The thought is not a whisper but a scream that echoes in the hollows of me. If the bones beneath my skin were really Lauren’s. If the soul I’m selling was truly my own to give.
Declan’s blue eyes – Valhalla's eyes, a genetic theft, a haunting – sparkle as he shoves his plate forward. “Look, Laur! I maked you! I maked your face!” The pancake is a lopsided, grinning specter. Banana eyes slide into a syrupy grave. His pride is a perfect, unmarred sun. My throat closes. A muscle ticks in my jaw.
God, he looks like his father when he smiles like that.
The thought, a slow, twisting gut wound. She – I – reach out on a reflex to smooth his wild, sleep-tossed curls. My fingers linger. They memorize the silk of him, the fragile architecture of his skull beneath. A last rite.
Ian chuckles, the sound low and rough, vibrating through me where his chest presses against my shoulder. He presses a kiss to my temple, his lips lingering. A claim. “Our little artist,” he murmurs.
Our.
Family.
Love.
All lies. Lies. Lies. LIES. Not sweet lies. Not white lies. Black lies. Rotting, festering lies. Lies with teeth. All temporary. All kindling. All destined for the match. To burn this villa, this peace, this child’s smile, to cinders.
But for now – just for now, Christ, just let me have this – I let myself pretend. I let Lauren’s hand, which is my hand, squeeze Ian’s. I let her smile, which is my betrayal, widen as she leans into the solid, terrible sanctuary of his side. I let her bend, her lips finding the sticky-sweet crown of Declan’s head. The scent of maple and innocence rises like a poison. “Perfect, sweet boy,” she whispers, and her voice is a stranger’s, soaked in a love I cannot afford. “Just perfect.”
And for one more morning, we are. We are the dream. We are the perfect, beautiful disease.
This is how they get you. The professional, the Emily-thing, whispers from her bone prison. Her voice is dry as a file. This domestic fantasy. This constructed normalcy. This… exquisite crap.
“More coffee, love?” Ian’s voice cuts through the acid whisper. He is already pouring, his thumb sweeping over the delicate bones of my wrist in a casual arc. A tiny, devastating circuit that sends a traitorous heat, low and deep, coiling in my belly. A reminder. A promise for later.
This is how you fail.
But then Declan, syrup-handed and trusting, is climbing into my lap. “My Laur,” he announces, a sticky, solemn claim. His weight is the only truth I want to know. He smells of maple and childhood and unconditional faith. And Ian’s hand shifts, settling warm and heavy on the back of my neck – a benediction, a collar. In that double anchor, in that beautiful, suffocating hold, Emily – just for this suspended moment – lets go. She dissolves. She lets Lauren be complete.
The mission can wait until the pancakes are gone. The world can hang.
I catch Ian watching me over the sun-kissed tangle of our son’s hair. His eyes, usually chips of ice, have softened. Not into weakness, but into something far more dangerous: quiet contentment. A peace he has carved from blood and money and me. The realization does not dawn; it strikes. A physical blow to the diaphragm. This dangerous man. This ruthless, brilliant, violent dealer in death… loves me. Not just the performance of Lauren. He loves the woman who argues with him, who laughs with him in the dark, who cries at this kitchen table. He loves the seamless, monstrous whole. He loves the woman behind the mask, because for him, there is no mask. I have become my own forgery.
And the ache of that – the glorious, horrific truth of his love – is the final, perfect wrench of the knife. It is what will make the burning, when it comes, a mercy.
(...)
𝑻𝒖𝒔𝒄𝒂𝒏𝒚'𝒔 𝑩𝒖𝒓𝒏𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝑬𝒎𝒃𝒆𝒓𝒔
