Epilogue Three months later
LUCY
I am, on paper, a fallen debutante. But I’m also engaged to the city’s most notorious mafioso, and if you ask Page Six, “reigning queen of the Tribeca scene.” Alessio likes to call me his bauble, his pretty ruin.
Still, I’m building something from my own ashes: a couture studio on the ground floor of Alessio’s latest high-rise, a block south of Canal, where SoHo’s self-made princesses fight to the death over the last espresso at Sant Ambroeus.
The studio is, technically, still raw concrete, caution tape, and a mob of union guys who watched The Sopranos too many times growing up.
But it has potential. The bones are good: a soaring glass wall, steel beams painted the bruised blue of a thunderstorm, a mezzanine that will one day serve as my office.
I supervise the chaos with a yellow legal pad tucked beneath my arm and a ballpoint pen I chew until it’s pockmarked like a spent shell casing.
Vittoria perches on a folding chair, sketching a series of bias-cut silk gowns for this summer’s launch, cigarette jammed in a holder that’s probably older than she is.
She chain-smokes Gitanes and drinks Picpoul at lunch, and she’s the only person in New York whose voice makes me feel like a child and an adult at the same time.
“You must show more leg,” she says, shading in a slit that goes from ankle to upper thigh, “or you will drown in the sea of mediocrità.”
It’s a Tuesday, too cold for the season, but I insist on cracking the loading dock door every hour to let in a shot of fresh air.
The construction foreman, a man with the hands of a pianist and the squint of a correctional officer, brings me a soda as a peace offering.
In another life, he was a minor league catcher; he tells me this twice a week, like it’s a warning.
I let him believe I’m scared of him. I’ve learned that lesson: never show your actual teeth until you’re ready to use them.
I’m mid-rant about the wrong color of tile when Alessio, in a charcoal suit cut to emphasize the width of his shoulders, appears in my studio’s unfinished doorway. He fills any room like a fire, and his gaze scans the worksite before it lands, uncomfortably, on me.
“Is it lunchtime?” he says, holding up a white cardboard box stamped with the logo of a bakery that’s technically his, though nobody who works there knows it.
He glances at the foreman, dismisses him with a flick of his fingers, and stalks up the plywood ramp towards me.
The touch of his hand on my elbow is casual to anyone else, but I know how it reads: You’re mine.
All these men work for me, and so do you.
I like that about him. I like it even more that he lets me.
He peels back the bakery box, revealing a layered concoction that must have taken three pastry chefs to engineer. “No poison,” he says, offering me the first bite. His eyes don’t leave my mouth until I finish it. “I bet you’re hungry.”
“Always,” I say, leaning closer so I can smell the box.
He laughs, a brief, rough vibration that makes the construction air taste better. “Make sure you eat, Lucia. You know I hate it when you disappear.”
I pretend not to hear. “Did you call the caterer from Le Richemont? They still haven’t emailed me a tasting menu.”
“I told Enzo. If they don’t call by tonight, I’ll talk with them at one of my warehouses.”
“Overkill,” I say, grinning. I let the back of my hand brush his wrist, angled just so the sunlight hits the ridiculous diamond on my left hand.
The ring is ostentatious, the size of a chocolate truffle, and it’s Alessio’s way of staking claim because the usual channels—money, violence, social leverage—aren’t quite enough when your fiancée is as stubborn as a wildcat.
I see his gaze flicker down to the ring, then back to my face, searching for the part where I recoil from my own reflection.
But I don’t. I force the diamond higher, twist my hand so it blinds him for a second.
“I need you to intimidate the flower vendors, too,” I say.
“Apparently, ‘peonies out of season’ just means ‘try harder.’”
He laughs again, this time in that rumble that vibrates through his ribs. “You’re going to be impossible when we’re actually married.”
I dust my hands on my pants, then wipe a spot of cream cheese from his cheek, just below the bone. “You created this monster.”
He catches my wrist, his fingers rough and hot. “You’re not a monster,” he murmurs, so quietly I almost don’t hear it.
He’s about to kiss me, right there in the middle of the sawdust and plasterboard, surrounded by the men who call him Don behind his back and Boss to his face, but I put a finger to his lips: “I have to finish reviewing the electrical plans before two. Let me work.”
He sighs, stepping back, and straightens the collar of my shirt, as if I’m a mannequin in his window. “Don’t forget your hard hat,” he says. “You are not replaceable.”
I roll my eyes, but the way he says it makes me want to fist his lapel and pull him behind the stacks of drywall for a quick fuck. “Noted,” I say, “Capo.”
He lingers, making a show of not wanting to leave, then pivots and walks out.
On the way, he stops to say something to the foreman, who laughs—too loud, too eager.
I try not to watch him go, but the cut of his suit and the curve of his shoulder blades are a gravitational field, and I’m too weak to resist.
“He’d bulldoze an orphanage for you, you know,” Vittoria says, not looking up from her sketchbook.
“He probably already has,” I reply, and pop another bite of the pastry into my mouth, savoring the burst of burnt sugar and cream.
Ten minutes after Alessio leaves, the next disaster walks in: my mother.
She strides across the construction site in three-inch heels, ducking nothing and blinking at nobody, as if sawdust and hard hats are nothing more than props in her personal psychodrama.
She’s followed by Aunt Elise, who’s half a head shorter but twice as poisonous in word and deed.
Both are vacuum-sealed in monochrome wool, hair sculpted to withstand chemical attack, and eyes shielded behind enormous sunglasses despite being indoors.
They stand at the mezzanine rail, surveying the future home of “Lucia Vittoria, NYC” as if they plan to rent it out for parties once I inevitably fail.
“Lucinda,” my mother calls, voice crackling like cellophane. “A word.”
I motion for her to come closer, but Elise floats down the stairs first, arms folded, lips flat in a line of pure skepticism. Both women trail clouds of Bergdorf Goodman perfume, and Vittoria mutters something in Italian that makes her cigarette holder quiver with contempt.
I meet them by the makeshift reception area, which for now is a rolling rack of sample dresses and a folding table with a dying peace lily.
My mother takes in the chaos with well-practiced disdain, but her gaze lingers on the velvet dress perched on a hanger, as if remembering a party where she wore it better.
She removes her sunglasses, revealing a new set of crow’s feet that weren’t there last year. “We heard you’re to be married,” she says, as if it’s a question of etiquette, not family loyalty.
“To Alessio Morrone, yes,” I reply, smoothing my hair down just to spite her.
Elise snorts, looking me up and down with x-ray vision. “How quaint. The wedding of the century, without any actual family in attendance.”
My mother’s face doesn’t move, but I can tell she’s calculating. “We want to understand, Lucinda. There are rumors. After what happened with your father, and the press’s obsession—”
I brace for the blow.
“—Do you intend to embarrass us further?” she asks, voice brittle with the effort of pretending to care.
My anger is a sleeping wolf, roused but not yet hungry. I step closer. “You disowned me and sent the Feds to scare me. My actions no longer concern you.” I remind her.
Her jaw clenches. “That was before. Before your… involvement ruined everything.”
The word hovers in the air, ugly and sticky.
I look back at the half-finished studio, the men working because of Morrone money, Vittoria along for the ride because Alessio’s intimidation got her out of her last contract, and the bakery box still open on the folding table.
I glance at my mother’s hands, clasped so tightly her knuckles are translucent.
She’s fighting not to reach for me, not to beg.
“Did you come to apologize?” I ask, tilting my head. “Or just to see if I’m still alive?”
Aunt Elise interrupts: “We need you to do something. For the family.”
I bark a laugh, and Vittoria’s head snaps up, eyes glittering with delight. “Of course you do,” I say.
Mother’s voice drops a register. “We need you to tell your… fiancé to stop.”
“Stop what?” I ask, feigning stupidity.
They’re quiet for a moment. My mother looks suddenly old—there’s a crease in her eyebrow I’ve never seen before, a tremble in her lower lip.
“The calls. The letters. The men standing outside our building at night.” She fixes her stare on me. “This isn’t who you are, Lucinda.”
The wolf inside me is awake now. I smell blood, and it isn’t mine. “It’s who I’ve always been,” I say, letting each word find its mark. “You just never noticed.”
Elise presses closer, her perfume a chemical veil.
“John is ruined. He lost the Yale board seat; the club rescinded his membership. Every time he steps outside, someone’s watching.
He barely leaves the apartment.” She lets it hang there, the implication that the father I hated has now become the victim in my story.
Good. Let him rot.
My mother’s hand reaches for mine, nails manicured to a blade’s edge. “You can fix this. Tell Alessio to call off his people. Give us our lives back. Please, Lucinda. I’m asking as your mother.”