Chapter 19
Harlow
“I’ll see you at our next session, Signora Salvatore.”
The therapist offers a small, professional smile before turning toward the library doors.
She’s beautiful in that refined, understated way women of her age often are, early fifties, perhaps, with smooth brown hair cut into a neat bob that frames her delicate features. Petite, barely reaching my shoulder, dressed in a soft grey dress that cinches neatly at the waist, professional, composed, effortlessly elegant.
I don’t respond. I simply nod. Words still don’t come easily.
Not with her.
Not with anyone.
Most of our sessions pass in silence. Occasionally, I manage a response. She never presses, never pushes. I answer when I can.
But when it comes to my husband, to my family... the words vanish. Lodged somewhere between my chest and my throat, too heavy to release.
I don’t know what’s holding me back. Perhaps something in my mind. Or perhaps I simply no longer know what to say.
My gaze follows her as she crosses the room. I watch the way the door closes softly behind her, and only then do I exhale. A breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding.
It’s been over a week now.
Over a week since I let the voices win.
That’s what they were, thoughts, yes, but more than that. They existed inside me like a sickness, whispering through every waking moment. Shame. Guilt. Failure.
I still don’t fully understand what happened. One moment, I was sitting at the edge of the bed. The next, I was on the bathroom floor. The glass in my hand, shattered. Bloody.
I don’t know if it was intentional.
Maybe it was both, a moment of impulse and something deeper, something buried.
I wasn’t fully present.
They say trauma fractures the mind. That the body moves on instinct while the self detaches, silent, observing from a distance. Passive. Uninvolved.
A bystander.
Or perhaps I did make the choice, and I’m simply incapable of admitting it.
Either way, I remember looking down and watching my own heart spill in red across my skin.
When I woke, it felt like surfacing from deep water, disoriented, breathless, frantic. I couldn’t tell where the nightmare ended, or if I had ever truly left it at all.
And then I saw them.
Dante.
Mattia.
His small hands wrapped so gently around mine, as though I might break beneath his touch. That’s when the shame began to drown me.
They looked at me with a concern I didn’t deserve. And I gave them fear in return.
They tried to protect me.
All I did was hurt them.
I hated myself for that more than anything else.
I didn’t know if I regretted what I did, at least, not at first. But I regretted what it did to them.
Dante never pushed when I woke.
He gave me space. Days of it. No pressure. No questions.
And then, quietly, he mentioned the therapists.
Not as a demand. As a choice.
When I finally agreed, I realized he’d already brought them in. Fifteen of them, each with a different specialty.
It should’ve surprised me. But it didn’t.
Not with Dante. Nothing he does is ever improvised. Every move is intentional.
I chose one, slowly, cautiously.
To this day, I don’t know how he managed to bring that many professionals into the estate and convince them to stay. These were people with lives, careers, families, and yet they remained. No questions. No complaints. He must have paid them more than they’d make in a year.
I never asked.
I didn’t care enough to.
Some sessions, I can barely sit through. Others leave me worse than before. But on most days, I feel as though I might not be losing this fight entirely. Even if I still feel undeserving.
I’m never alone anymore. There’s always someone in the room.
Mattia speaks more than I’ve ever heard him speak before. Football practice. The goal he scored last week. He fills the silence with his voice, and I sit quietly, listening, watching him return to himself, little by little.
Sometimes, I catch myself smiling. When I do, I see the pride in his eyes. Like I’ve given him something rare.
This little boy holds my entire heart. He deserves everything. Not what I put him through.
The thought slices through me, sharp and immediate. I close my eyes and draw in a slow breath, to regain my composure.
Sofia and Elena are still here. They haven’t left.
I know they have lives waiting for them, but it feels as if they’ve put everything on pause just to stay close. As if nothing matters more than being near me right now.
My father… Giovanni. Even now, the word father, feels foreign in my thoughts. He and Darion travel back and forth to Sicily. They never stay long, but they always return.
Enzo and Niccolò never even left. And I know Dante resents it.
He carries it silently, like everything else, but I see the tension in him, coiled, restrained, waiting for a reason to act.
Niccolò, in his true fashion, seems to enjoy provoking him. Repeatedly.
But my husband holds back. For me.
Were it not for that, Niccolò would already be six feet under.
The nightmares haven’t stopped. But when they come, Dante is there.
He doesn’t ask. Doesn’t prod.
He simply draws me into the library in the middle of the night and plays for me until my hands stop shaking.
Then we walk. Just the two of us. Through the garden, beneath the stars.
I know he found Piero. He hasn’t said it. Not outright. But I felt it. That night. The shift in him.
He’s probably still alive, technically. But if I know my husband, it won’t be for long. And it won’t be easy.
Michael is visiting today, along with nonno, Giovanni and Darion. Apparently, they’re throwing me a birthday party.
The word alone turns my stomach.
Images flash, too fast to hold.
Blood.
Cold stone.
Piero’s voice. His unhinged laugh.
His gifts to me.
I shake my head sharply. My breath stutters. I feel the panic, clawing its way up my throat.
I force it back.
Lock it down.
Bury it.
A knock sounds at the library door, followed by the quiet click of the handle. My husband steps inside, dressed in black as always, sharp, composed and lethal.
His expression is impassive at first, eyes sweeping the room, alert. Always assessing. Then his gaze lands on me.
I see the breath he releases. The subtle shift in his features. A softening, barely perceptible, but there.
He starts to smile, faint and fleeting. But it fades the moment he catches my expression.
He sees the panic pressed into my chest, the shadow of memory still clinging to my face.
Two strides and he’s in front of me, lowering to his knees, his hands cradling my face with such reverence it makes my throat ache.
His voice is quiet, rough at the edges.
“Are you alright, leonessa?”
I nod.
It isn’t a lie, not entirely. He doesn’t believe me, but he doesn’t push either.
But I see it in his eyes, that need to know, to fix, to break through the walls I still don’t know how to lower.
Instead, he brushes his thumb across my cheek. He studies me for a long moment, then finally asks,
“Do you want to get ready for your party? Or would you rather rest a little first? Everyone can wait, if that’s what you need.”
His tone is even, controlled. But beneath it, I feel the restraint. Every instinct in him wants to cancel the entire goddamn thing, just to spare me discomfort.
I look at him. Into him. His eyes, so dark, so steady, never leave mine.
I open my mouth.
Then close it.
Then try again.
“Will you play for me?”
The words are barely there, rasped and broken across the edges of my throat.
Dante is still, unmoving, blindsided. I don’t think he expected me to speak.
There’s a glass of water on the table beside me. He reaches for it instantly, one hand steady beneath mine as he lifts it to my lips.
I drink carefully, grateful for the coolness, for the distraction.
He watches me, and when I lower the glass, he’s smiling. Not just with his mouth.
With his soul.
Blinding. Grateful. Completely undone.
“Of course,”
he murmurs.
He kisses my forehead, the warmth of it anchoring something unspoken deep inside my chest. Then he rises, sets the glass down with care, and walks across the library.
The piano waits in the far corner.
When he sits, the air seems to shift, subtle, but noticeable. And then the first notes begin.
Soft. Clear.
They move through the room. His music pulls the weight from my chest, note by note, and I can feel each one stitching me back together. Slowly. Carefully.
When the last note fades, he turns to look at me.
His fingers fall away from the keys.
I watch him.
And then, before I can second guess it, I speak again.
“You need to let Luka out.”
His expression shifts immediately, dark and sharp enough to cut. Beneath it, though, I catch the flicker of surprise. Confusion. Resistance. And there’s something else I can’t quite define, but it looks far too much like pain.
“I know he’s still here. Still locked away in that room like a prisoner. And I don’t like it.”
I say before he can protest.
He rises slowly. His eyes are impossible to read.
“He’s a child, Dante,”
I continue, lowering my voice but not my resolve.
“A teenager. Not a soldier. Not a threat, not in the way everyone wants to believe.”
The words fall from my lips easily.
I hesitate. Just for a breath.
“It didn’t sit right with me before... before Piero…”
The words catch, but I push through them.
The name lands like a blow he refuses to show, but I see it in the way his eyes darken, his body tightens, the grief locked behind control.
“I don’t trust him,”
he growls.
“He might not have taken action himself, but he’s tied to the enemy. I’m not gambling with your life. Or Mattia’s.”
His head starts to shake, refusal already forming, but I stop him before it’s spoken.
“Let me see him.”
His jaw tightens, so hard I can hear the muscle shift.
“I don’t understand your fixation with that boy.”
“Neither do I,”
I admit.
“I just know that what you’re doing isn’t right. I understand you think like a Capo. But to me... he looks like a boy swept into a war he never asked to be part of.”
I draw in a breath, trying to steady the pull in my chest.
I can’t explain it, not in any way that makes sense. When I saw him that very first day, it was like staring at a memory I didn’t know I’d buried. Me, at that age. Alone. Helpless. Just trying to survive in a world I didn’t understand. And all I wanted to do was pull him out of that room, to hand him something soft, something safe, something that felt like care.
I couldn’t rationalize it—but every instinct in me was screaming.
“He could be lying,”
Dante cuts in, his voice slicing clean through my thoughts.
“He could be a spy.”
“You’re right. He could be. But locking him in that room doesn’t give you answers. And even if he wanted to do something, he can’t. The estate is locked down. No outside contact, no access to weapons. He’s not a threat, not here.”
He doesn’t answer. I watch the tension build behind his silence, the trained, calculating part of him at odds with the man who would give me anything if I asked.
Several seconds pass. Then, at last, he gives a single nod.
“All right,”
he says, his tone decisive.
He extends a hand and I take it without pause. We leave the library together, our steps aligned, the silence between us saying more than words ever could.