Chapter 22 - Nico #2
Through the screen, I watch my family reorganize around this new arrival. The way they instinctively form a protective circle, fierce and proud. The noise of them, the love beneath the violence, the perfect chaos of Rosettis welcoming another generation.
And I’m here. Watching through a screen because I chose the woman beside me over family protocol, and she’s crying for the family she lost and the family I have.
Marco’s phone buzzes, and the temperature in that hospital room drops twenty degrees.
He checks the screen, and I watch my brother shut down and reboot. The warmth evacuates, replaced by winter. The Don returning with lethal suddenness.
Alex sees it first. “What?”
“Nothing.” Marco’s voice flatlines.
But Valentina caught a glimpse of the screen, saw the message before he turned the phone face-down with finality.
“Marco—”
“I said nothing.”
The silence that follows cracks through the connection. Everyone processes it. Joy compromised, something wrong infiltrating the celebration.
I know before anyone confirms. Only one person could trigger Marco’s complete shutdown.
Sofia.
She found out about the birth. Of course she did. She keeps tabs on the family she chose to leave for Alexei. And she reached out. Not to me, the brother who trained her. To Marco, whose forgiveness carries the most weight.
And he’s dismissing it as nothing. Deleted without reading.
Alex’s mouth opens, preparing to push, because Alex always pushes, but Dante catches his eye with a sharp negative. Not now. Not during Luca’s moment.
But the damage is done. The crack spreads. The empty space where Sofia should be standing becomes visible, acute. She should be here, making inappropriate comments about Luca reproducing, analyzing Theodore’s features, bringing her particular chaos to the celebration.
Instead, she’s somewhere else, with Alexei, living the life she chose over blood, watching our family from an even greater distance than mine. And Marco won’t even acknowledge the message. Over a month of silence, and he holds the line.
The call winds down quickly after that, the warmth forced now, everyone processing the ghost in the room.
“When this is done,” Marco says, eyes locked on mine through the screen, “bring her to Chicago.”
Not ‘return to Chicago.’ Not ‘come home.’
Bring her.
Two words that acknowledge Marisol’s importance, register her as someone attached to me. From Marco, that’s practically approval. But it communicates something else too. He sees what’s happening, recognizes I’ve chosen her over protocol, and accepts even without endorsing it.
The screen goes dark.
Dawn breaks over the horizon like a slow explosion, painting Biscayne Bay in gold while we sit processing my family’s chaos.
The coffee’s cold. The laptop’s closed. The penthouse feels like a tomb after all the Rosetti noise.
“That’s what family looks like,” Marisol says quietly. Not the chaos agent, not the party girl. Just the woman recognizing something irretrievable.
“It’s not perfect.”
“I know.” She curls into my side, her body warm against me. “You all miss Sofia.”
The name lands soft between us. She says it simply, understanding without needing a briefing. Marco’s reaction. The fractured celebration. The sister who should have been there.
“He’ll come around,” she says.
“You don’t know Marco.”
“I know stubborn men who love harder than they know how to show.” She pauses, her hand finding mine, fingers interlacing like she’s claiming me too. “They disappoint while still loving underneath.”
I look at this woman carefully.
“They dismissed you,” I say.
“They don’t know me.” She shrugs, and I feel the movement through my shirt. “They have the tabloid version. The disaster profile. I’m used to it.”
“Marco ordered me to bring you to Chicago.”
“That terrifies me more than Cesar.” She tries for humor but doesn’t quite land it. “Meeting them. Being assessed in person instead of through a screen.”
“They’ll come around.”
“Like Marco with Sofia?”
The parallel hangs between us. Two women choosing love over protocol. Two brothers holding impossible positions.
“That’s different.”
“Is it?” She pulls back enough to meet my eyes. “She chose Alexei over blood. I chose you over… what? Terminal isolation? Drowning in champagne?” She touches my face, and my body responds to the contact despite everything. “Maybe that’s what family is. Choosing each other despite the costs.”
The words embed themselves in my chest. Theodore Rosetti breathing his first breaths in Chicago. Sofia somewhere, loving from a distance, locked out by the brother who won’t bend. And Marisol here, having watched everything, understanding more than she should.
“You want to belong to a family like that?” I ask. “Even seeing the broken parts?”
Her thumb traces my jaw. “Perfect families are fiction. Real ones are chaos and bad love sometimes. But they show up. Even through screens. Even from a distance.”
She’s right. Despite the fractures, we show up. Everyone except Sofia, who can’t get past Marco’s walls.
Unlike her brother. Gabriel, the priest who is never there when his own sister needs him.
“She’ll come back,” Marisol says, thinking of me while I’m thinking of her. “Sofia. Maybe not tomorrow. But when Marco’s ready to stop punishing them both.”
“You sound certain.”
“Three AM calls used to mean someone was dying. Tonight it meant someone was born. Things change.” She settles against my chest, her ass pressing against me through the sheets. “Even stubborn Rosetti brothers who think the world runs on their timeline.”
Dawn floods the penthouse now, painting everything gold. In Chicago, my family is probably still camped out in hospital chairs. Faith holding Theodore. Luca standing watch. Marco pretending Sofia’s message meant nothing while it burns through his phone’s memory.
And here, the woman who watched everything curls against me, already drifting toward sleep.
She’s wrong about one thing. She already belongs. Marco confirmed it, even without saying it. Bring her to Chicago. Not a suggestion. A direct order.
When this is over, when Cesar is neutralized, when Miami is secured, I’ll bring her home. Let them see her properly. Let them observe what I see. Not the disaster in the headlines but the woman who understands broken families and loves anyway.
For now, she breathes against my chest, and I count each one. Not days since Sofia left. Not pull-ups or threats or kill assessments.
Just breaths. Hers and mine. Proof we’re here, together, belonging to each other even if we don’t belong anywhere else.