Page 39 of Past Due

Chapter Eleven

Besian grimaced at the dust covering his dark boots. He regretted not choosing his clothing more carefully when packing. Two suits, two pairs of jeans, three shirts and assorted socks and other bits had seemed like plenty of clothing. Of course, he hadn’t expected to be in the country long, and he definitely hadn’t expected to traipse around the battered ruins of a castle. For anyone else, he would have refused. For Marley, he was willing to carry her on his back up the hill if she asked.

Despite his irritation with the dirtiness of their short hike up the winding path, he felt only happiness watching Marley explore the stone structure. She had her camera out and snapped photos of things she found interesting. Every now and then, she would glance around to find him and smile when their eyes met.

Her enthusiasm ensnared him, and he joined her as she walked between the heavy iron doors of the castle. She reached for him with her free hand and intertwined their fingers. It struck him as she grinned up at him that no woman had held his hand like this. He hadn’t ever experienced the feverish rush of a teenage romance. As an adult, he shied away from public displays of affection, not wanting any woman to have any claim over him.

He cast a sidelong glance her way as he considered how best to claim her. When they were done here, they were driving to Tirana. He was running out of time to ask her.

His stomach pitched with anxiety. Had he ever been this nervous? He couldn’t remember ever feeling this way. It affected his confidence, and he worried he would make an absolute mess of it when the time came. Even worse? What if she refused him?

“Can you imagine what it was like to live here?” Marley asked, interrupting his troubled thoughts. She let go of his hand so she could handle her camera. What she found so interesting about that particular stack of mottled white and gray stone speckled with lichen and moss, he couldn’t say.

“I imagine it was probably miserable,” Besian remarked. “No central heat or air conditioning. No running water or modern plumbing. Disease. Hunger. Fighting. Death.” He shook his head. “I’ll take my Houston penthouse any day.”

She rolled her eyes. “Way to ruin the fantasy.”

“You fantasize about living like this?” He gestured around crumbling castle. “You would have been married off at twelve to some old man. If you didn’t die giving birth to one of his twenty kids, you probably would have been murdered by a rival warlord or starved to death during a siege. And all of that horrible shit would be your life only if you were lucky enough to be born noble! God help you if you were a farmer’s daughter!”

Marley stared at him for a moment, seemingly shocked by his answer. Finally, she said, “Okay, so I guess we aren’t going to Ren Fest next year.”

He chortled at her teasing reply. Reaching for her, he tugged her close and kissed her temple. “I’ll take you anywhere you want to go.” He shifted to see her beautiful face. “But no costumes.”

She laughed and patted his chest. “Deal.”

They wandered through the ruins for another hour or so. A few times, she captured him in her photos. When he realized she wasn’t getting any photos of herself, he gently took the camera from her hands and made sure there were plenty of shots of her smiling face in and around the castle. He didn’t even put up a fight when she asked to snap some selfies of the two of them.

“You see these spots where someone has repaired the castle?” She motioned toward an area of a wall that had sandy bricks enmeshed in the stone. “I wonder how many times they had to rebuild these walls.”

“Dozens,” he figured, thinking of what little history he remembered about this area. “People have been fighting over this hill since the Romans. I think there was a siege here before World War I. The Ottoman Empire,” he added, “and the Balkan League.”

She offered a lopsided smile. “I’ll have to Google that later.”

He laughed. “Good luck with that.”

She strayed a few feet and found another spot that had archaic repairs. “I bet stonemasons were considered a seriously good catch. Marry a stonemason, and you’d never have to worry that your husband would be out of work.”

“Construction is a good side hustle,” he agreed, thinking of how much money he had made with the small company he owned. “Almost twenty-percent of my portfolio is construction.”

She laughed. “Why am I not surprised you’re in construction, too?”

He shrugged. “You have to diversify.”

“I’d have to have money to invest first,” she pointed out before lifting her camera to catch a sparrowhawk that had landed on top of the wall.

He frowned at her statement. Surely, Spider had made some kind of investments for her? He doubted Spider was flush with cash, but the man owned multiple rental properties, including the trailer parks around Houston. There was also that bar down on the coast, too. Most of Spider’s income came from illegal means, but he had easy access to laundering. There had to be something set aside for Marley!

Deciding that would be a difficult discussion they would have at a later time, he followed a few steps behind as Marley left the main ruins of the castle. She didn’t stop until she reached the highest point of the hill. He slipped an arm around her waist, pulling her close while he enjoyed the incredible view of the water. The Buna River snaked along on one side, and the Drin curved along the other.

“It’s so beautiful here, Besian.” She leaned her head against his chest. “I don’t know how you could stand to leave all this behind for Houston.”

“Money,” he said matter-of-factly. “I wanted more out of life than I could get here.”

“Money isn’t everything,” she murmured.

“No, but it makes life a lot easier.” He left it at that and was glad when she didn’t press him on how it made life easier. He didn’t want to tell her about the poverty of his childhood, the gnawing hunger and the fear of tomorrow. He didn’t want to tell her about listening to his grandmother’s hacking cough all hours of the day and night, or the agonizingly slow rot of cancer ravaging his grandfather. He especially didn’t want to tell her about the embarrassment of everyone knowing his mother traded her own body for money and food to keep their small family alive.

“Do you know the story of the castle,” she asked softly. “About the mother and the wall?”

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