Chapter Eleven Sofia and the Family Ledger
Sofia found her three days later, curled in the library with a book she wasn't really reading, and dropped into the chair opposite without invitation, the way only family — or people who'd decided to become family regardless of blood — ever seemed to do in this house.
"You survived Salvatore Calvetti at your first real family event," Sofia said, without preamble. "That's more than most brides manage in their first year. I'm almost impressed."
"Almost?"
"I withhold full judgment until I see how you handle the rest of us.
" But Sofia's smile was warmer than her words, and she curled her legs beneath her with the easy familiarity of someone settling in for a real conversation.
"Can I tell you something about my cousin that he'll never tell you himself? "
Elena set her book aside entirely. "Please."
"Dante wasn't always like this. Cold, I mean — capable of it, but not built entirely from it, the way he seems now.
" Sofia's expression softened into something almost sad.
"When we were children, before his father decided the business needed a certain kind of son, Dante was the one who organized games for the younger cousins, who snuck us sweets before dinner, who cried, openly, at his own mother's funeral while the men around him told him a Moretti didn't do that in public.
His father beat that out of him, over about three years, until the boy who cried at funerals became the man who negotiates with killers without his pulse changing. "
Elena's chest ached at the image. "How do you know all this?"
"Because I was there for most of it. Because I loved that boy, the way you love a brother, and I watched his father dismantle him piece by piece and rebuild him into something useful instead.
" Sofia's eyes, when they met Elena's, were fierce with an old, protective love.
"I have watched you, these past weeks. I have watched him watch you.
And I want you to understand something important, Elena — I have never, not once in fifteen years, seen anyone get close enough to that boy again. Not until you."
"What if I can't fix what his father broke?"
"You don't fix people, tesoro. That's not how any of this works.
" Sofia reached across and squeezed her hand, sudden and warm.
"You just keep showing up, the way you have been, and let him remember, slowly, that the boy who cried at funerals is still allowed to exist somewhere underneath the Don.
That's not fixing. That's just love, done patiently.
" She rose, smoothing her skirt, business concluded as abruptly as she'd begun it.
"Also, for what it's worth — he's been humming lately.
Off-key, constantly, completely unaware he's doing it.
I haven't heard that boy hum since before his mother died. "
She left before Elena could respond, and Elena sat alone in the library for a long while afterward, turning the image over — a boy who cried at funerals, a man who hummed without knowing it — and felt something in her chest settle more firmly into place: not certainty, exactly, but something close enough to hope that she no longer wanted to argue with it.