4. 4 – Caterina
4 – Caterina
T he silence that surrounds us in the back of this car is peaceful, rather than tense. A silence that speaks of relief, and truth, and the feel of being together again after so long apart.
And I find myself reluctant to break it as I glance out of the window. Dante tightens his hands, still wrapped around me, at my movement. He leans forward to follow my look. “Morelli’s a fucking show-off.”
The corner of my lip barely twitches at his dry words as he scans the villa that rises up in front of us behind the security gates. But the fact that a smile threatens at all—
Little steps.
I need to remember who I am. To find myself again - that Corvo heir, the Crow , and I need to do it quickly.
I do not have time to mope, to lose myself in everything that has happened.
Instead, I take another breath.
I’m here.
I’m free.
Nothing else matters.
Maybe if I tell myself that enough, if I push away those fragments of memory every time they threaten to overtake my mind… maybe I’ll start to believe it.
Dante runs his hand over my back as the car slows to crawl through the gates that instantly close behind us. “Are you ready?”
The refusal hovers on my tongue.
No, I am not ready.
I’m not ready to meet my daughter. To look Alessia full in the face, to see the shared features that shine out so clearly on her face.
Today, I can feel her in my arms without the heaviness of everything they used to keep her from me weighing down my soul.
My chest constricts as I tip my head up to meet Dante’s gaze. “I wouldn’t let myself think of this moment. Not often. It just… it made everything so much harder. But when I did … I always thought that Bea would be there.”
I can imagine her so clearly. The way that she would step forward with a warm welcome, the way she would help us all adjust with gentle words and a no-nonsense attitude in that way she had – that way that made her my first and only choice for my daughter’s guardian.
And the thought is almost unbearable, the realization smashing into me once again as I turn my eyes toward the closed window - to where Dom sits quietly, giving us this space even as he nurses his own grief.
Because his sister , the only family that Domenico had left - she will not be there. Bea and Pepe are gone, murdered by Matteo and his men. Their small but strong family, broken and shattered in one hideous night.
“She was so good ,” I whisper. And my voice breaks. “I don’t know how to do any of this, Dante. Bea was… she deserved to be Alessia’s mother. And Alessia deserved to have someone like Bea.”
She deserves a mother who knows what she’s doing.
And me? I have no idea how to do any of it. Give me a gun, or a knife. Those are easy – but a living, breathing tiny human… she deserves better than me .
None of this is fair. None of it.
Dante’s heartbeat thuds against my ear. “You don’t think you can be a good mother?”
I suck in a shuddering breath. “I think that the Cosa Nostra isn’t a world that I would ever want to raise a child in. I always expected to have children eventually… I suppose. One day, in the future, once I had done everything I needed to.”
When I was the Corvo capo, perhaps. When I had built the empire I wanted, the empire that would keep our family strong for generations to come with me at the helm. I would have married a man who suited the needs of the family, no doubt nudged by my father, if not outright bargained away. Would have matched with someone for the power they could give me and given him children to bind the agreement in full.
How stupid I was.
And how blind, to think I could be happy with that, when these men exist.
“But not yet,” I force the thought away and focus on Dante’s face. “Not now, when there is so much to do.”
His nod is slow.
“These things rarely happen as we plan them,” he says quietly. “Sometimes too soon, sometimes too late, and sometimes never. None of us are perfect, tentazione . You do not have to be perfect. We will all need to adjust, to learn what life will look like with Alessia in it.”
He strokes his thumb across my face. “She deserves a mother who loves her, Cat. No more, no less.”
I can’t stop the flinch.
His voice gentles. “And she has that. She has always had it, from two strong, brave women, and everything else does not matter in the face of that.”
I stare at him, drinking in those words that warm up the ice still gripping my heart even as he shifts, lifting me back onto the seat as the engine cuts out. I’m still silent as the car door swings open and he climbs out.
A tanned, tattooed hand appears. An offering.
“Together,” Dante says quietly as his face appears. “We will face this together , Caterina Corvo. And I will be with you, as I should have been from the beginning.”
Together.
Another breath.
And then I reach out, and take his hand.
Dante wraps his fingers around mine, solid and warm as I step out of the car and look around. “Where did the others go?”
“Stefano and Gio got here before us. They went ahead, and Dom followed.”
Dante’s eyes are already on the large set of carved wooden doors, open to reveal a shadowed entrance hall. I catch a glimpse of brightly colored rugs covering gray flagstones before a silhouette fills them, blocking out the view.
A familiar silhouette, shadowed from the sun.
And as my breath catches in my lungs, he steps out into the bright morning light and holds up his hand to get a better look.
Luciano Morelli grins at me. There are shadows there, shadows behind his eyes and evident in the purple beneath them, but he raises one eyebrow at me as if we’re nothing more than the mocking rivals he pretended we were - pretended so well, for so long.
But his eyes are bright, suspiciously so.
“Little crow. You’re late.”
And if his voice breaks, none of us mention it.
Because I’m already running.