Sweet Love 2x: Miss Ruthless CEO for our Superstar Uncle

Chapter 407: What She Would Have Wanted

Arianne approached Amanda a few minutes later, Lexx now awake and blinking in her arms. "There’s a delivery at the front door. They said you ordered something."

Amanda’s expression gave her away immediately. "I may have ordered a few more things for Lexx. I couldn’t help myself. I hope you don’t mind."

"I don’t mind. But he already has more clothes than he can wear."

"Babies grow so fast. You’ll be grateful for the extras." Amanda turned to the woman beside her. "Arianne, this is my sister, Margaux. Margaux, this is Arianne."

Margaux stepped forward and, before Arianne could extend a hand, kissed her on both cheeks. The gesture was warm, continental, entirely unexpected. "It’s wonderful to finally meet you. I’ve heard so much about you."

"Have you?"

"From Amanda. From Franz. From the twins—Lily cornered me earlier. You should know she thinks you’re ’the most impressive person in the whole world.’ Her words."

Arianne almost smiled. "She’s biased."

"She’s perceptive." Margaux looked down at Lexx, who was gazing up at her with the unfocused intensity of a newborn. "He’s beautiful. And so calm. Most babies would be crying with all this noise."

"He’s been calm since birth. It’s unsettling."

Margaux laughed. Then her expression changed, growing more thoughtful. "You look like your mother."

Something in Arianne went tight. "You knew my mother?"

"We attended the same school. Years ago, when we were both young. We were in music club together." Margaux’s voice was low, the voice of someone sharing a memory she had carried for a long time. "Ysabella was the most talented musician I’ve ever known. She played violin and piano—the violin especially. She could make it sing. I remember she received several invitations to attend music school abroad. Prestigious programs. Everyone thought she would go."

"She never told me."

"She was humble about it. She never liked to draw attention to herself." Margaux paused. "She didn’t go, in the end. She married your father instead. I always wondered why. It seemed so sudden."

Arianne looked down at Lexx, her hand moving on his back in slow, absent circles. "She might not have been given a choice. The Conways weren’t known for letting their daughters make their own decisions."

Margaux nodded. "I suspected as much. The Ysabella I knew was kind and warm. Gentle. Like a flower that only cared about music and nothing else. She was the last person I would have expected to give up her dreams for a marriage." She paused. "But she had you. And I think, in the end, that must have meant something to her. Even if she couldn’t say it."

Arianne looked up. "I only recently learned that she cared about me. For a long time, I thought she didn’t."

"I didn’t know her well, not after school. But the girl I knew would have loved you. She would have been proud of you." Margaux smiled, a small, sad smile. "You should be happy. That’s what she would have wanted. For you to be happy."

The words settled into Arianne’s chest like something warm and unexpected. She had spent so many years believing her mother had never loved her. The journals had shown her the truth, but hearing it from someone else, someone who had known Ysabella before the marriage, before the misery, before the slow erosion of hope, was different. It made her mother real in a way she hadn’t been before. A person with dreams. A person who had been young, and hopeful, and full of music.

"Thank you," Arianne said. Her voice was low, but steady. "I didn’t know how much I needed to hear that."

Margaux reached out and touched her arm. "You’re welcome. I’m sorry I don’t have more stories. We lost touch after she married. But what I remember—she was lovely. Truly lovely."

Arianne nodded. She didn’t trust herself to say anything else.

Across the garden, Lily was explaining something to a cluster of relatives, her hands gesturing with full conviction. Leo was sitting at a table with a plate of cake, the whale retrieved and propped beside him. Franz was talking to Vincent near the dessert table, Lexx having been transferred back to Arianne’s arms, the baby gazing up at Margaux with the same unfocused attention he gave everything.

The fairy lights flickered on as the afternoon began to fade toward evening. The garden glowed. The laughter continued.

Arianne stood in the middle of it all, surrounded by a family she was learning to trust, carrying a piece of her mother she hadn’t known she was waiting for.

Ysabella had been a musician. She had had dreams. She had been lovely. And she would have wanted her daughter to be happy.

Arianne looked at Lexx in her arms. At the twins, arguing good-naturedly about something near the cake table. At Amanda, who was watching her from across the garden with the warm, knowing expression of someone who had been hoping for exactly this moment. At Margaux, who had given her a gift she hadn’t known she was waiting for.

She was happy.

It had taken her a long time to get here. But she was happy.

Franz appeared at her side a few minutes later, slipping his arm around her waist without a word, his presence easy and unhurried the way it always was when he wasn’t performing for anyone. He looked down at Lexx, then out at the garden, then at her.

"How are you doing?" he asked.

"Better than I expected," she said.

He didn’t ask why. He knew her well enough to understand that meant a great deal. He pressed a kiss to her temple, and she leaned into him, the way she did when she didn’t want to make a production of needing something.

The fairy lights glowed between the trees. The twins’ voices carried across the lawn. Lexx blinked at the lights with the grave consideration of someone encountering something entirely new.

Arianne watched her son discover the world, her husband beside her, and let the evening do what it wanted.