Epilogue #2
“Two years is forever when you’re my age.” She crosses herself and looks heavenward. “Thank you, thank you.”
“How far along are you?” Talia demands. “When did you find out? Does this mean you’re going to slow down at the restaurants? You should slow down at the restaurants. Let me handle more of the Florence location.”
“I’m not slowing down. I’m pregnant, not dying.”
“You should rest more. Eat more. Let other people do things for you.”
“I let other people do things for me constantly. Niccolo washes dishes twice a week.”
“That doesn’t count. That’s just marriage.”
The conversation spirals outward, overlapping and interrupting, everyone talking at once.
I sit back and watch it unfold - this family that has become mine, this life that we’ve built from the wreckage of what used to be.
My mother moved to her house in Fiesole over a year ago, and I haven’t spoken to her since.
No calls, no letters, no attempts at reconciliation.
The boundary I set was absolute, and she’s respected it - or at least, she hasn’t tested it.
I don’t know if she’s changed or simply accepted defeat, and I’ve stopped wondering.
Charlotte left Florence entirely, moved to Milan where the social circles don’t know her history.
I hear updates occasionally - she’s engaged to someone, apparently, someone her own family chose - but it feels like news from another lifetime.
And here, in this house that used to be cold and formal and suffocating, there’s warmth everywhere I look.
Photographs on the walls. Laughter echoing off the high ceilings.
The smell of good food and the sound of people who love each other arguing about nothing important.
Danielle catches my eye across the table, and she smiles - that private smile that’s just for me.
“I love you,” she mouths.
“I love you too,” I mouth back.
Then Emil says something that makes Talia throw a bread roll at his head, and Pia starts scolding them both, and Danielle laughs so hard she has to put down her fork, and I think: this is what I was supposed to build.
This is what all those years of legacy and obligation were actually for.
Not a name. Not a reputation. Not the cold preservation of wealth and status.
This. Family. Warmth. A house full of noise and love and the promise of a future I never knew I wanted until I almost lost everything.
***
Later that night, after the dishes are done and the family has scattered to their various corners, I find Danielle on the terrace, looking out at the moonlit gardens.
“What are you thinking?” I ask, wrapping my arms around her from behind.
“I’m thinking about the woman I was three years ago. The one who couldn’t speak up, couldn’t take space, couldn’t believe she deserved to be here.” She leans back against me. “I don’t recognize her anymore.”
“Good. She was trying too hard to fit into something that didn’t deserve her.”
“And now?”
“Now you’ve built your own thing. And it’s better than anything that existed before.”
She’s quiet for a moment, watching the stars.
“Our child is going to grow up here,” she says softly. “In this house. With your name and my food and all the people we love around them.”
“They’re going to be so loved.”
“They’re going to be so spoiled. Pia has already started planning the nursery.”
“I know. She cornered me after dinner and asked about paint colors.”
Danielle laughs. “Of course she did.”
“She already has opinions.”
Danielle laughs, turning in my arms to face me. “I’m happy,” she says. “I don’t know if I’ve ever actually said that out loud, but I am. Really, truly happy.”
“So am I.”
She kisses me - soft and slow and full of promise - and I hold her close in the garden of the house she transformed, under the stars that have watched Morellis for four hundred years. The kiss deepens by degrees.
Her mouth opens. My hand finds the back of her neck.
Somewhere in the house a dish clinks as someone finishes the last of the cleanup, and then even that sound fades, and there is only Danielle in my arms and the new knowledge humming between us like a second heartbeat.
A baby. Our baby.
I break the kiss just far enough to rest my forehead against hers. “Come to bed with me.”
“It’s early.”
“I didn’t say sleep.”
Her smile is slow, wicked, soft. “Careful. I’m in a delicate condition.”
“I’m going to be so fucking careful with you,” I promise, and the filth and the tenderness tangle until I can’t tell them apart. “I’m also going to take my wife apart in the most reverent way I know how. If she’ll let me.”
“She’ll let you.”
We leave the terrace hand in hand. The estate that used to feel like a museum now smells like garlic and rosemary and her mother’s knitting wool.
I lead Danielle to our room - our room, not the cold master suite my parents used, but the one she filled with linen curtains and a reading chair and a window that catches morning light on her side of the bed.
I close the door. Lock it. Turn to find her already watching me with that private smile.
“Nervous?” she asks.
“Terrified. Ecstatic. Hard.” I take her hand and press it between my legs so she can feel the truth of the last word through my trousers. “You told me we’re having a child and my body apparently decided the correct response was devotion with a side of raw want.”
She laughs and squeezes me through the fabric. “Multitasking. I raised you well.”
“You ruined me in the best way.”
I undress her slowly, piece by piece, pausing to kiss every newly revealed inch - shoulder, the inside of her elbow, the soft underside of her breast. When I peel her dress down and see her bare in the low lamplight, my throat closes.
She doesn’t look different yet, not really, but knowing changes the way I see her.
I drop to my knees and press my mouth to her stomach, open and reverent, and feel her fingers slide into my hair.
“Hello in there,” I murmur against her skin. “I’m your father. I’m going to make a lot of mistakes. I’m also going to show up for every one of them. Your mother is the bravest person alive. You’re already lucky.”
“Niccolo.” Her voice wavers. “You’re going to make me cry before you make me come.”
“I can do both. I’m talented.”
Before I put my mouth between her legs, I make her sit on the edge of the bed and I kneel between her knees and just look - really look - at the woman who remade my world.
The freckle under her left eye. The flour-scar on her wrist. The way her breathing has already changed, subtle, as if her body is already negotiating space for someone new.
“What are you staring at?” she asks, half shy, half pleased.
“The mother of my child.” Saying it out loud makes my cock twitch against my thigh, absurd and holy at once. “The chef everyone in Tuscany wants a table from. The girl who left a ring on my counter and forced me to become a man worth marrying twice.”
“You’re getting sentimental.”
“I’m getting hard and sentimental. Hold me accountable for both.”
I kiss the inside of each knee, then higher, then higher, until she’s tipping back on her elbows and swearing at the ceiling.
Only then do I give her my mouth properly.
I take my time building her up - soft flicks, firmer suction, fingers stroking her open without urgency - because urgency feels wrong tonight. Joy doesn’t rush. Joy savors.
When she comes the first time, she says my name like a secret. I climb up and feed it back to her in a kiss.
I lift one of her thighs over my shoulder and put my mouth on her - gentle at first, then surer as her breath hitches.
She tastes like Danielle, like home, like every Sunday dinner we fought to build.
I lick her open with long, patient strokes, circling her clit without rushing, sliding one finger into her heat and then a second when she rocks down asking for more.
“Soft,” she whispers. “God, your mouth is soft tonight.”
“I’m worshipping.” The words vibrate against her. “I’m on my knees in the house you warmed up, tasting my pregnant wife, and if that’s not a religious experience I don’t know what is.”
“Blasphemous dish boy.”