Epilogue
Vito
The house is finally quiet.
Not silent—never silent, not anymore. There is always something now. We're still getting used to the sounds of the new house. All the little creaks and beeps that belong to some appliance or other.
Different birds chirping in the backyard. The sound of the fountain in the garden.
And above all of it, a sound I don't think I'll ever get used to: the soft little noises that come with having a baby in the next room. A sigh through the monitor. A rustle against the sheets. The kind of sounds that keep some part of me tuned and alert even when the rest of me is tired.
But quiet enough.
Quiet enough that I can stand in the hallway outside my son’s room and feel the weight of the last year settle over me in a way I haven’t let it before.
We’re back in New Jersey.
Back for real.
Not passing through. Not splitting time. Not counting down the days to another drive across state lines or another semester or another stretch of months in Pennsylvania, where our whole life had narrowed to the three of us.
Home.
The new version of it, anyway.
This house is new. Entirely ours.
Teresa and I picked the lot and spent the last six months designing it from a distance and then in frantic, detailed bursts whenever we could get back on weekends.
Every finish, every line, every room argued over and chosen on purpose. Bigger windows here. Warmer wood there. A kitchen that actually feels lived in instead of staged.
A nursery placed where Teresa wanted it, so the morning light comes in soft and gold instead of too sharp.
Space for family without feeling swallowed by them. Enough security to make everyone else shut up without turning the place into a fortress.
A life we built on purpose.
That part still hits me sometimes.
I graduated.
Even now, the thought can catch me off guard if I let it.
Graduated.
Walked across a stage in Pennsylvania with Teresa in the crowd and our son, too young to understand what was going on. And the rest of my family, of course, because they insisted.
I actually finished the program. Not secretly. Not in pieces. Not in the dark.
Out loud. In daylight. With my name attached to it and my family forced to deal with the fact that I was doing it, whether they knew what to make of it or not.
Teresa taught too, until Cristiano came and rearranged both our lives in the best way possible.
She’s taking time off now, which every person who has ever met her should know is not the same thing as resting. It just means she’s applying all that sharpness and energy to him instead of students or patients or the thousand other people who used to pull her in so many different directions.
I know she’ll go back to work in some form eventually. She’s too brilliant not to. Too driven. Too alive in that part of herself.
But for now, she’s here with him.
And I’m glad.
I’m glad for all of it.
Glad for the year away, for the distance from New Jersey, from my father, from the version of myself I used to snap into every time I walked into a room with certain expectations just waiting for me.
Glad for the time Teresa and I had to become what we are, without the whole damn family leaning over us and commenting on every step.
Glad for the small house in Pennsylvania, just off campus, and the takeout dinners and the nights studying while Teresa graded papers with her feet in my lap.
Glad for the mornings when she’d come stand in the bathroom doorway with one hand on her swollen belly, half asleep and beautiful, and I’d think, this is mine. This is my life.
Glad for the fact that when Cristiano came, this life was there.
Just us first. Just us learning him.
And now I’m glad to be back, too.
Because, despite all that, Cristiano deserves family. Not from a distance as some abstract idea. The real thing. Aunts and uncles and cousins and noise and Sunday dinners and too many arms always reaching to hold him.
He deserves to grow up knowing he belongs to something larger than himself without being crushed by it.
Whether it was the time away or the degree or the fact that I have a son of my own now, something has shifted between my family and me.
Especially between my father and me.
I don’t kid myself that Luca Conti became a different man while I was gone. He didn’t.
He is still my father. Still hard in the ways he has always been hard. Still a man shaped by prison, power, pride, and the kind of world that doesn’t reward softness.
But something changed.
Maybe because I left and came back by choice, instead of being a son he summoned.
Maybe because I did the thing he couldn’t quite stop me from doing, and came back stronger for it instead of embarrassed or broken.
Maybe because when he looks at my son, he sees something that reaches past all the old damage and old habits and old ways of reading me.
Or maybe because I do.
Maybe I changed first, and that altered the whole damn dynamic around me, whether anyone liked it or not.
I don’t know.
I only know that when we walked into Sunday dinner last week with Teresa carrying Cristiano and my father stepped forward to take him, there was none of the old edge in me.
None of that instant bracing for impact, for criticism, for some version of myself I’d have to defend or fight against. I just handed over my son and watched my father hold his grandson.
That did something to me.
Not forgiveness. Not exactly.
Something more subtle than that.
Peace, maybe. Or the beginning of it.
I push open the nursery door with one hand and step inside.
The room is dim except for the lamp in the corner, turned low. Enough light to soften everything. Pale walls. Warm wood. The glider by the window. The bookshelf already too full because Teresa and Caterina apparently believe a five-month-old should have a personal library.
The crib centered under the far wall where the shadows don’t fall too harshly.
And Teresa.
She’s standing over the crib, one hand resting lightly on the rail, looking down at our son while he sleeps.
For a second, I just stop and take her in.
She’s in one of those soft lounging sets she favors at night now, hair twisted loosely up but already half fallen down around her neck. Bare feet. Tired in the way only a mother of a five-month-old can be tired, but beautiful enough to stop me cold anyway.
She hears me before I say anything.
She doesn’t turn. Just lets out the smallest breath and says, very quietly, “He just went down.”
I cross the room on silent steps.
Cristiano is asleep on his back, one little fist tucked up near his face, dark lashes against his cheeks, a head full of dark hair that everyone says came from me, and I’m vain enough to enjoy hearing. His mouth is slightly open.
I smile despite myself.
Then I move in behind Teresa and wrap my arms around her waist.
She melts back into me immediately, like she’s been waiting for it.
That gets me every time, too.
No matter what else has changed in the last year, no matter what was hard or terrifying or uncertain, this never stopped being the thing that settles me fastest.
Teresa in my arms. The fit of her body against mine. The quiet trust of her leaning back without looking.
I drop a kiss against the side of her head.
Her hands come to rest over my forearms, fingers lightly tracing the skin there.
The wedding ring I slipped onto her finger in the church where we met—shortly after Cristiano was born—catches the lamplight and glints.
For a minute, neither of us says anything.
We just stand there like that, looking at our son.
Looking at the life we made.
Looking at the room in the house we built after a year that changed everything.
And because the feeling in my chest is so full it’s almost hard to contain, I say the first truth that comes to mind.
“I’m content.”
She tips her head slightly, resting it against my cheek.
“Happy too,” I add.
That gets the smallest shift out of her, almost a smile.
“It’s all because of you,” I say and hold her a little tighter.
She lets out a soft huff like she wants to argue with that.
“It’s not all because of me,” she murmurs.
“It is.”
She tilts her head back just enough to look up at me from where she’s tucked against my chest.
“That seems like an oversimplification.”
“Maybe,” I say. “Still true.”
Her mouth softens.
The light from the lamp catches in her eyes, and I get one of those quick flashes of all the versions of her that brought us here.
The furious one. The brilliant one. The exhausted one in a federal office refusing to let a Bureau agent define her.
The woman who chose Pennsylvania. The woman who chose me. The woman who lay next to me in bed and made me want to spill everything in my heart to her. All the things I’ve never said before.
I kiss her temple again.
“Just think,” I say. “None of this would’ve happened if I hadn’t kidnapped you.”
She stifles a laugh and smacks me with the back of her hand against my stomach.
It’s not hard. But it is absolutely judgmental.
I grin.
“You are unbelievable,” she whispers.
“You married me.”
“You look really good wet,” she says, as if that explains it all. “It was really hot. I was all confused.”
My grin widens, grows wicked, as my hand slides up from her stomach slowly to cup her breast. I feel her nipple harden under my palm. Her breath hitches.
I massage it slowly.
"You look really good wet too," I whisper in her ear.
“Vito.” Her breath is shaky. “He’s right there.”
"He wouldn't be there if it weren't for this."
She makes a small, helpless sound as I roll her nipple between my thumb and forefinger. Her back arches a little, pressing her ass against me.
I want her.
Right here. Right now.
That hasn't changed. In fact, it's gotten stronger, more potent in the past year.
I love that she still wants me just as much, too. That she can't hide it. That her body betrays her as soon as I touch her.
She tilts her head back, her lips parting slightly as she looks up at me. Her eyes are heavy-lidded, dark with wanting. I can see it all there.