Chapter 48
ALMOST HOME
Matteo
The lane out of Noreen’s is a green tunnel, hedges shouldering in like they’re trying to keep us.
I sit in the back seat while one of Leo’s locals, Brian, whose soft-spoken eyes are always on the mirrors, guides us toward town.
Leo wanted to drive me himself, but I told him to stay with my girls.
The sudden possessive streak still startles me in the best way.
We hit the main road and the countryside trades peat and quiet for petrol and damp brick. My phone vibrates once, twice, then lights up with Ale’s name across the screen. I stare at it like it’s a sin I haven’t confessed to yet.
I’ve spoken to him a handful of times, but I’ve yet to tell him about Liv. It makes everything too real. I just wasn’t ready…
“You should take it in case it’s important,” the driver says without looking back.
I swipe. “Hey, cuz.”
“About time,” Ale breathes, the city in his voice even from an ocean away. “When are you coming home? Your papà has packed twice and your mom is going crazy. Nico says he will fly over there and drag you back by your ear if he has to.”
My laugh is a low thing. “I’m sure you’d love that visual.”
“Your papà would love to stop pacing holes in the marble in the office.” A beat, softer. “Are you okay? It’s been weeks.”
I glance at the hedges blurring by, the sky trying to remember blue. Okay isn’t the word. Different is. “I’m… good,” I finally reply, and the truth in it almost knocks me sideways.
“Leo says you’re headed to the notary. Paperwork for the new Gemini project, right? I’d rather have your signature on my forehead than on those filings, but I’ll take what I can get.”
“Thanks for the confidence,” I deadpan.
“I’m serious, Matty.” His voice lowers. “I know you said you needed air, but the family needs to see your face. I need to see your face.”
Guilt tightens my grip on the phone. I tap the console and raise the privacy screen, the sound-dampening glass sliding up with a hush.
Releasing a breath, I whisper, “I should have told you sooner. I wasn’t keeping it from you to be an asshole. I just… didn’t know how to. Saying it out loud makes it real and—”
A beat. “Makes what real?”
I press the heel of my hand to my eyes and laugh once, wrecked. “I have a daughter, Ale.”
Silence. One heartbeat. Two. Then a rough exhale like he’s been punched and liked it. “Dio,” he whispers. “You—Matty, that’s… that’s incredible.”
“Her name is Livia.” I taste the name again because I can now.
“She’s three. Copper hair, eyes that are all trouble.
She grew up calling Cat ‘Auntie’ because that was the safest lie.
We told her the truth when I met her.” My throat tightens.
“She asked if papàs read stories and I said only the best ones. I did not cry. Much.”
Ale laughs, a ragged edge to his tone. “I’m going to need a minute over here.”
I lean my head back against the rest, watching a cow leaning against a fence. “I keep thinking about what we were scared of at nineteen. It wasn’t this.”
“No,” he says, and I can hear Rory’s voice somewhere behind his, sweet and steel. “Now we’re scared of tiny socks and whether cursing in the kitchen will turn them feral.”
“I’m scared of the world I’m in.” The words feel heavier than the car. “Of bringing her into it. Of letting it write itself on her. I told Cat I’d burn it all down and move to Sicily if that’s what it takes.”
“For the record,” Ale interrupts, “you offering to retire on a sandy beach is the funniest thing I’ve heard all week. Second only to my papà trying to assemble a bassinet from the wrong brand’s instruction manual.”
A reluctant smile pulls at my mouth. “How’s that going?”
“He’s threatened to sue the screws.” Then, quieter, honest. “I’m terrified too, Matty.
Every second. And I’ve got the fortress, and the cameras, and the cousins who keep showing up with casseroles and guns.
I lie awake thinking about a world that touches things I love, and I want to take a knife to it.
But—” His inhale steadies. “We figure it out. We build walls where they need walls and gardens where they need gardens. We set rules we didn’t have when we were kids. We do better.”
My chest goes tight with something like pride. “Look at you. Who put a father inside my coglione of a cousin?”
“Rory,” he answers without missing a beat.
“And a baby who’s coming before we know it.
” A pause. “Come home, Matty. There’s no safer place for your daughter than with us.
With family. You know our fathers will put a guard on every corner of Belfast if that’s where she is, but I’d rather have you and her under the same roof as the rest of us while we hammer everything else into place. ”
I picture Livia in her yellow wellies, brow furrowed at a crooked moat. I picture Cat’s hand finding mine in the grass. I picture the weight of a city with our name on it and what it demands in exchange.
“I can’t bring them yet. Not until I’m sure the last Quinlan embers are out and the papers Noreen’s getting for Cat arrive. I won’t move Cat until she says go, and I won’t move Livia until she’s ready, the security cameras work and the pantry has biscuits with the blue wrapper she likes.”
“Cazzo, you’re already a papà,” he murmurs, and it lands hard. “Fine. Finish what you have to finish. But promise me you’re not staying away because you’re punishing yourself.”
“I’m not.” The hedge breaks to a view of a gray sprawl and a church steeple. Town. “I’m… making sure the door I open doesn’t have a tripwire on the other side.”
“Good.” His voice warms. “And Matty, congratulations. That little girl is going to ruin you in the best way.”
“She already has.”
He clears his throat. “Tell Cat I said welcome to the madness. And tell Livia her new favorite uncle is bringing her a stuffed bear that looks like a meatball.”
“She’ll insist on naming it Lemon.”
“Of course she will.” A smile across the line, then, more serious. “Let me handle your papà. I’ll keep him off your neck for as long as possible. After that, he may start paddling across the Atlantic.”
“Grazie.” I swallow. “I’ll come home as soon as I can. I promise.”
“Soon,” he echoes. “And Matteo?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m proud of you.”
The words hit somewhere I didn’t know was starving. “Ti voglio bene, Ale.” I love you.
“Anch’io.” Me too. “Now go sign your papers like a respectable criminal.”
We hang up. I drop the screen and the driver pretends he hasn’t heard a thing. I sure as hell hope he hasn’t. The fewer people who know about Livia the better. I don’t care how trusted they may be.
The town tightens around us, the narrow streets, and a storefront with a bell that probably rings too loud.
The notary’s office sits above a pharmacy, blinds crooked with a plaque that says Mrs. McVeigh, Commissioner for Oaths.
I roll my shoulders, breathe, and think about a girl in wellies who wants twenty stories and a papà who can fix things.
“Fifteen minutes,” the driver says, driving up to the curb. “I’ll be right here.”
“Make it thirty.” I open the door to the wet morning then glance back. “I might buy some biscuits.”
The streets are quiet, rain pattering across the car’s windshield on our ride back.
The appointment with the notary took longer than expected, but at least it’s done.
Now hopefully, Papà will get off my back for a few more weeks until I can convince Cat to come back to Manhattan with me.
I balance a paper sack of biscuits on my knees, the blue-wrapper kind Livia demolishes two at a time, and let the rainy fields unspool into glass and skyline in my head.
I see a narrow Manhattan kitchen that smells like coffee and Sunday sauce, Cat barefoot in one of my shirts, and Livia on a stool dusted in flour, declaring herself Minister of Biscuit Distribution.
I see my father pretending not to cry when she calls him Nonno, Serena teaching her how to side-eye with precision and Antonio smuggling contraband gelato.
Then there’s Alessia and Bella arguing about which bow goes with yellow wellies, Raf showing her how to double-knot laces like a sailor and little Rex playing with her on a swing set.
Ale and I sit on a rooftop with lemon trees in ugly pots that somehow still grow, swearing we’ll do better than what raised us.
There’s a walk to the park where pigeons lose their minds over crumbs. School drop-offs with too-big backpacks and notes in lunch boxes. A library card with Livia printed crooked. A key on Cat’s chain that opens our door and not a single one I’d ever need for a back room again.
I imagine danger knocking and finding nothing but cameras, cousins, and a city that belongs to us the way a promise belongs to a man who finally learned how to keep it.
The hedges close over the lane to Noreen’s, and a black van whizzes past us. A whisper of unease trickles down my spine, but I shove it down. Those instincts I grew up with will take a long time to bury. Still, I reach for my phone and shoot Cat a quick message.
Me: Almost home.
Then, I palm the biscuits, picture Livia’s grin, and think: almost there. Almost home.