“Yes,” Augustine answered without hesitation. “For real. Forever, if they want to.”
Rafael looked up shyly. “Do you want us?”
Augustine’s throat ached. “I want you more than I have ever wanted anything.”
The discharge papers were signed. Augustine did not return to his mansion immediately. First, he drove to an office downtown and told the board of Harrow Consolidated that he was stepping down. They stared at him as though he were speaking a foreign language.
“You are walking away from a billion-dollar empire,” one executive sputtered.
“I am walking toward my sons,” Augustine replied.
He sold three of his companies. He used the funds to renovate an old community center near the district where he had found the boys. It became a children’s haven with hot meals, beds, counselors, and tutors. He named it Sofia’s Place after the woman who had given him three lives and paid for it with her own.
He moved into a smaller house. Not a mansion. A home. Rooms painted in soft colors. Bunk beds for the boys. A kitchen that always smelled like cinnamon rolls and tomato soup.