Epilogue
Maria
One Year Later
Sophia is walking now.
Toddling around the apartment on unsteady legs, getting into everything, saying “Dada” and “Mama” and “no” with equal enthusiasm.
She has my eyes and Luca’s stubbornness. She hates peas and loves bath time and thinks the cat from the apartment downstairs is the most fascinating creature in existence.
She is perfect.
“Dada!” She toddles across the living room, arms outstretched. “Dada, up!”
Luca scoops her up. Swings her in a circle. She shrieks with laughter.
“Again! Again!”
“One more time. Then breakfast.”
“NO!”
“Yes. Breakfast. Then more spinning.”
“No no no no-”
“Yes yes yes yes.”
I watch them from the kitchen doorway, coffee in hand, heart full to bursting.
This is my life now. This is my family.
***
Luca still burns the coffee.
I still drink it anyway.
Tommy is in prison. Five years for fraud, embezzlement, and money laundering. He sends letters sometimes, to Sophia, not to me. I don’t open them. Maybe someday I will. Maybe someday I’ll be able to read his words without wanting to scream.
But not yet.
Victor died three months after the trial. Heart attack. The empire he built turned to dust - restaurants closed, accounts frozen, the Moretti name synonymous with scandal and disgrace.
Rosa never recovered. She lives alone in the countryside now, tending her garden, pretending none of it ever happened.
And Giuliana-
Giuliana brings Elena to Sunday dinners. Amanda comes too sometimes, with her daughter. The three women Tommy wrecked, rebuilding something new from the ashes.
We’re not friends. We might never be friends.
But we’re family.
And that has to count for something.
That Evening
Sophia is napping. A rare moment of quiet.
I find Luca on the balcony, looking out at the city. The sunset paints everything gold and rose, and for a moment, standing there in the fading light, he looks like something out of a dream.
“What are you thinking about?”
He turns. Smiles.
“Everything. Nothing.” He pulls me close. Wraps his arms around me from behind. “How different my life is from what I thought it would be.”
“Good different or bad different?”
“Good.” He rests his chin on my shoulder. “The best kind of different.”
“Same.” I lean back against him. “A year ago, I was crying on my bathroom floor, thinking my life was over. And now-”
“Now you’re a wife. A mother. A warrior.” He presses a kiss to my temple. “A woman who threw wine in her sister’s face and lived to tell about it.”
I laugh. “Is that going to be in my obituary? ‘Maria Moretti - wife, mother, wine-thrower’?”
“Absolutely. I’ll make sure of it.”
We stand there in silence, watching the sun go down.
“Do you ever regret it?” I ask. “Any of it?”
“Not for a second.” His arms tighten around me. “I’d go through all of it again - the exile, the fights, the sleepless nights - if it meant ending up here. With you. With Sophia.”
“Even the custody battle?”
“Even that.”
“Even the terrible coffee?”
“My coffee is not that bad.”
“Your coffee is a war crime.”
“You keep saying that, but you keep drinking it.”
“Because I love you. And love means suffering through war-crime coffee.”
He laughs. Turns me in his arms. Kisses me softly.
“I love you, Maria Moretti.”
“I love you too, Luca Moretti.”
“Think we’ll make it?”
I look at him - this man who found me at my lowest and never left, who stood in front of his whole family and declared me his, who holds my daughter like she’s the most precious thing in the world.
“After everything we survived?” I smile. “We could make it through anything.”
“Is that a challenge?”
“That’s a promise.”
He kisses me again.
In the other room, Sophia starts to cry.
“Your turn,” I say.
“It’s always my turn.”
“That’s what you get for being the favorite parent.”
“I’m not the favorite-”
“She literally screams when you leave the room.”
“That’s separation anxiety, not favoritism.”
“Keep telling yourself that.”
He grins. Kisses my forehead. Goes to rescue our daughter.
And I stand on the balcony, watching the last light fade from the sky, feeling something I never thought I’d feel again.
Peace.
Not the absence of problems. Not the promise that nothing bad will ever happen. But the deep, abiding knowledge that whatever comes next - I won’t face it alone.
I have Luca.
I have Sophia.
I have a family.
And for the first time in as long as I can remember, I’m not afraid of what comes next.
I’m ready for it.
THE END