Emmy didn't even ask about my new bruises in the bath that night, but she did eye them critically. She'd long since resigned herself to the knowledge that it was just a part of who I was, and that was all there was to it.

She was very attentive to my desires, though. In fact, it's fair to say that Emmy was in a very amorous mood that night, and who was I to turn her down? She started in the bath and continued in bed, in a much more vigorous way than I'd grown to expect.

"That was wonderful," I said as we cuddled afterwards. "I was worried that you might still be hurt…"

"No, I do not think I am still injured at all," Emmy said, wiggling a bit to press herself deeper into my big spoon. After a thoughtful pause, she said in a quiet voice, "I think that it is more of an emotional issue. I still desire you every bit as much as I ever have, but I do not feel as sexy as I might have in the past."

"Em, babe, you're just about the sexiest thing on two legs!" I protested.

"I am pleased that you feel that way, but that is not what I meant," Emmy said, her voice still soft. "I meant that my own thoughts… do not turn to sex as often as they had, before…"

There was nothing for me to say to that, so I just gave her a reassuring squeeze and held her close, kissing her shoulder.

"I have not been the lover you deserve," Emmy added. "I am very sorry for that. What is worse is that I know it, and yet cannot make the changes in myself that I should. I worry that I may never again be able to be able to- to keep up with you."

"Em," I protested, but she continued.

"I would understand it if you took a lover, Leah. I would not resent it. This is my problem, but I have been making it yours, too. You should not suffer because of me, and my inability to recover emotionally from what has been done."

This was a familiar discussion, but I wasn't going to say that to Emmy. "Babe, you'll get there. It hasn't even been a year yet. Don't give up hope- these things take time."

"Sometimes I feel that there is no light at the end of this tunnel," Emmy said, so quietly I could barely hear her.

Knowing that discussion would be of no help, I kissed her gently behind her ear and whispered, "I love you more than I can say."

Jeremy and I skipped the gym the next morning since the program for the day was to meet Emmy's parents for breakfast, then spend the day with them. I didn't get the impression there was anything really planned, but then I hadn't been involved in the discussions. All I knew was that Alexandre and I needed to find some time to talk privately.

This chance came after lunch, when somehow we wound up at a rooftop botanical garden. While everybody else (and by that mean the two girls, Emmy, her mom, and Jeremy and Edouard) wandered around and chatted about whatever it was, Emmy's father and I found a park bench and sat down.

"Things are moving forward in Istanbul," I told him with no preamble. "We've been building our network as our assets come online, but that's an agent only every so often. Do you have a way to insert a team- say, twenty people or so- without any sort of legal footprint?"

"You're asking me if I have smuggling routes into the area?" Mr De Lascaux asked, amused.

"Essentially, yeah," I agreed.

"Of course I do!" he laughed, low. "Two dozen seems like too few for your plans, though."

"Oh, no, that'll only be the assault team. By that point we will already have quite a few in place. The thing is, it's easy to slip one or two people at a time, spread out over the course of months. It's much harder to do that with twenty guys all at once."

"What would you do if I had said that I did not?"

"The same as we've been doing," I replied with a shrug. "Most of our folks already in the area have Turkish passports, so there haven't been any questions. If we had to bring our strike team in through the front door, as it were, we'd just fly them in as tourists. It's not as if Istanbul doesn't get tons of visitors. It doesn't really change much other than extending the process a bit."

"I imagine not," he replied, thinking about it. "You really are going to do this thing, aren't you."

"Yes, I am," I told him. "If you want to maintain plausible deniability, that's fine. I'll keep you updated on our timeline."

"The final strike- how do you plan on taking out the entire family?"

"Careful planning and timing," I replied. "It'll look like a Turkish Mafia drug deal gone wrong. This won't be hard, since from what we can tell the Marfans are actually moving heroin. All we need to do is take what cash and valuables we can, along with any bulk drugs on the premises. We'll make sure to leave evidence that the drugs had been there. I have a strong suspicion that there will be little official investigation, since we've seen King Marfan meeting with a handful of politicians during the time we've been watching."

"It seems you've been doing your homework," Emmy's dad said, nodding appreciatively.

"We aren't going to leave anything to chance," I agreed. "When the moment arrives we will be ready, and he won't."

"There you are!" Emmy's mother said as the group found us, having circled all the way around the garden. "Have you been sitting here this entire time?"

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"Resting our feet," Emmy's father said with a smile as we stood up.

Emmy's mother's laugh was musical, almost as if she had been singing. It was just another reminder that Emmy definitely showed traits from both her parents in so many little ways.

As we descended to the street level, Emmy's mother saw a shop that advertised Swiss watches and insisted that she wanted to get gifts for Cecilia and Dulce. We all followed her into the store, which was otherwise free of customers. Emmy's mom picked a matching pair of inexpensive but nice Tissot watches in a pretty dark aqua green dial and leather band. The size was right on both girls, too. Big enough to be currently fashionable, but not big enough to look like a man's watch on their slender wrists.

It was a bit expensive for a casual gift, but on the very affordable end of brand-name watches at only two hundred pounds each. The girls, though, were both over the moon. They kept comparing their wrists to each other, admiring their fancy new hardware. They were both very good about showing their gratitude to Emmy's mom, who merely waved it off.

"Pretty girls deserve pretty things," she said, as if that was reason enough. I guess it was, as far as she was concerned.

In the large Underground station (I'd been surprised earlier when the Lascauxs had suggested we take mass transit, but pleased that it gave the girls another taste of a classic London experience) Emmy's mother seemed gravitationally pulled to the guy playing the public piano near the escalators. In some ways it was a terrible location- the acoustics were atrocious- but it had very high visibility and the guy's hat had a decent amount of money in it. I wasn't sure of the legitimacy of busking using a public piano like that, but I wasn't going to ask.

The man at the keys looked as if he might be a refugee from an Eastern Bloc orchestra, and was playing classical music with obvious skill. His touch might have been too subtle for the noisy location, but passersby were being respectfully quiet to let the music fill the space as best it could.

Madame De Lascaux casually dropped a one hundred pound note into the man's hat as he finished the piece he was playing.

"My dear lady," he said, looking up at her from the keyboard. "What would you like me to play?"

Emmy's mom thought for a moment, then handed her bags to her husband and her overcoat to Edouard. "La Habanera, from Bizet," she said, confident that he knew it.

Of course he did, and my suspicion was confirmed when she sang the aria to his accompaniment. She wasn't shy about singing it any way, either. She sang at full voice, which, if you've never been to an opera in real life, you just can't appreciate how loud that really is. This required the piano player to work the keys with authority, but the two did an amazing job. About halfway through the aria there is a section where the chorus responds to Carmen's singing about love. Emmy and a random passerby chimed in with that part, making it a whole production.

Of course everybody coming through the station had stopped to watch, most of them were filming with their phones. Sure, people had been staring at us all day, but with some degree of decorum. Now, though, everyone was free to gape. Of course they all recognized Emmy and could put two and two together and conclude that those were her parents. The obvious next conclusion was that Emmy must have gotten her singing talent from her mother, who was clearly classically trained to a very high level.

Once the crowd's applause died down, the piano player leaned in to talk to Emmy's mother. The two talked a bit, before he started in on something just a touch less classical, but still very much a classic. I'm not sure how to describe what Emmy's mom did with her voice, but somehow she toned down the 'operaness' of her singing, so when she sang, "Des yeux qui font baisser les miens," she still sounded extremely talented, but more in a torch singer fashion.

She really leaned in at the start of the second verse, filling the line,

"Quand il me prend dans ses bras," with yearning emotion.

'La Vie En Rose' is a true international favorite, and plenty of the gathering audience sang along to themselves.

I'd always assumed that Emmy's mother was a singer from the way she spoke and hearing her clear tone came as no surprise to me, but the two girls were unprepared for the whole experience. They were both clearly mortified by all the attention, as only teenagers can be.

Emmy's mother thanked the pianist and told him it was a pleasure to sing with him, and he responded in kind.

Following along behind, I asked Alexandre in a quiet voice, "Emmy does that kind of thing a lot- does her mother, too?"

"No. This is the first time I have seen her sing like that in public," he answered, keeping his voice low.

"She has an incredible voice," I said.

"She does," he agreed. "She sings at home to herself, but this was the first time I've seen her perform for any sort of audience."

"She should do it more," I told him.

"I might suggest it, but she will only ever do what she wants to do," he said with resignation.

"Emmy and her mother have a lot in common," I said with a little laugh.

Emmy's parents came back to the apartment with us, and made appreciative noises when Emmy gave them the tour. Emmy explained to them that Angela had been responsible for the decorating, with the help of a couple of professionals.

"You'd said that buying here was her idea," her mother said. "I'm pleased that this apartment shows her personality so clearly."

"It really does," I agreed. "I just wish she were here to appreciate it."

"We all do, my dear," Zaffira replied, resting a hand on my shoulder. "Angela was a shining light, a joy for the whole family. We all feel her loss."

There was really no response for that, so I just nodded that I agreed. Words weren't up to the task.

Jeremy really outdid himself with dinner that night, doing his very best to impresser guests. it was the largest gathering we'd had for dinner so far in that apartment, and all eight of us at the table. felt like the family gathering it really was. I was pleased that neither of Emmy's parents even blinked at the idea of Jeremy and Edouard eating with the rest of us. In fact, both acted as if it were absolutely normal, even though the dinners I'd had at their houses had been very different affairs. Much more formal, for a start.

Even Edouard laughed at the story Dulce told about the lingerie boutique we'd passed on our shopping spree two days earlier. She explained that we'd all looked in the window and seen the lacy underthings on the mannequins, but when Cecilia suggested we go in, Emmy had laid down a hard no.

"'Imagine the looks on your parents' faces when they see the sexy negligees you bought on a trip with two of the most famous lesbians in the world', Emmy said," Dulce explained. "Cecy and me, it took us a moment, but then it hit us that she was right. My parents would have heart attacks and die right then and there."

"You know my parents," Cecilia added. "They love Emmy and Leah. They really do. But there might be… limites?"

"Limits," I supplied with a chuckle.

It was late by the time that Emmy's mother and father left with promises to spend more time together soon. It had been a much more pleasant day than I'd expected, and good for family bonding. While Emmy got ready for bed I did a quick search of social media and sure enough, there were several videos of Emmy's mom singing in the Canary Wharf underground station up already. When Emmy joined me in bed I showed her one, and she spent the next few minutes reading through the comments.

"I should send this to my mother," she said, handing my iPad back to me.

"You should get her to sing on your next album." I suggested. "She has a great voice."

"She does," Emmy agreed. "But she only sings for herself or family."

"Up to now," I replied.

"Up to now," Emmy agreed.

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