Chapter 20
Salvatore
Marco did not ask whether anyone wanted to keep celebrating. He announced it as if he had already checked every calendar, bribed every objection, and arranged the moon over Chicago himself.
“Nero is closed to everyone but us,” he said, standing near the bar with one hand around a glass of wine. “The staff has been paid extra to serve us all, but I want no funny business from anyone.”
Tonio pointed at himself.
Marco smiled. “That’s right, Tonio, I’m talking about you.”
“I am wounded.”
“You have survived worse.”
Katerina folded her arms. “He has had three glasses of wine.”
“Two,” Tonio said.
“Three.”
“Two and a half.”
“Three.”
Marco looked at Salvatore—at me—and lifted his brows. “You coming?”
I looked at Yelena.
She stood beside the dessert table, one hand around a champagne glass, the other held by Gemma while Cora showed them something on her phone. Her face was flushed from wine and laughter. Her pale eyes caught the gold light above the courtyard.
She looked happy.
Not guarded-happy. Not performing it for men who needed reassurance.
Just happy.
“I suppose we are coming,” I said.
Yelena looked over at me at once, a smile on her face.
Marco pressed a hand to his chest. “Good, good. I’m glad you listened to reason!”
Nero was a representation of Marco as a nightclub.
It was sleek without being cold. Dark wood.
Low amber light. Brass shelves behind the bar.
Music that reached into the ribs without making conversation impossible.
Tonight, the front doors remained locked.
The staff moved with quiet ease, pouring drinks and setting out small plates nobody had requested but everybody ate.
No strangers watched us.
No one asked us to perform.
Dante danced with Gemma near the center of the floor.
He moved with solemn concentration, like dancing was a matter of state security and Gemma’s feet were a border he had sworn to defend.
Gemma laughed against his shoulder. Dante did not smile much, but I saw the shape of it when she looked up at him.
Santo had one hand extended toward Cora.
“I know how to dance,” he told her.
“You know how to throw punches in rhythm.”
“It is the same thing.”
“You’re delusional.” She laughed.
“Come here and find out.”
Cora stared at him for a long second, then took his hand. Santo immediately stepped on her boot.
Cora looked down.
Santo looked down too.
“I was testing your balance,” he said. Everyone burst into laughter.
Across the room, Pietro stood close enough to Angela that the rest of us had disappeared for them. He said something against her ear. She looked up, her guarded face softening in a way that still made me grateful. They moved slowly. Not much dancing. More holding on.
Marco had Serafina in his arms. She allowed him one turn. Only one.
He spun her beneath his hand, pleased with himself until she caught his wrist on the way back, reversed the motion, and put him off balance.
Marco laughed.
Serafina did not.
Then she smiled, small and sharp, and led him into the next step.
Tonio and Katerina danced with the reckless conviction of people who had no idea what they were doing and did not care.
His hands were everywhere they were permitted to be.
Her fingers gripped his shirt. They moved badly.
Passionately. Like the music had insulted them and they intended to answer it.
Donatella sat at the bar with champagne.
“His left foot is a criminal offense,” she called. “Like literally illegal.”
Tonio lifted one hand without looking back.
“Your entire personality is literally illegal.”
“Dance better.”
“Drink quieter.”
“I am drinking beautifully, thank you very much.”
Yelena laughed.
The sound found me across the room.
I had spent years listening for danger. A wrong note in a conversation. A delayed check-in. The silence after a phone call when somebody did not want to tell me the whole truth.
Tonight, I listened to laughter.
Kiryl stood near the far end of the bar with a small group around his age. I did not know all their names. I did not need to. He was telling a story with both hands. Someone laughed hard enough to bend over. Kiryl laughed too.
He did not look toward Yelena for permission to breathe.
He did not stand at her shoulder, waiting to be protected.
Yelena watched him once. Her face changed. Not sadness. Not fear.
Relief.
Then Gemma caught her hand and pulled her toward the floor.
Yelena went willingly.
She danced with Gemma first, laughing when Gemma’s careful movements became bolder. Then Cora joined them. Katerina pulled Yelena into a loose circle with Donatella, who complained the entire time while moving perfectly to the beat.
Yelena belonged in the center of it.
Not because anyone made room.
Because the room bent toward her naturally.
My hand went to my pocket.
The ring box rested there. Small. Impossible. Heavy enough to drag the whole night down through the floorboards.
Tonio appeared beside me with two drinks.
“You are touching it again,” he said.
I took the glass he offered. “Touching what?”
“The ring.”
“How do you know? I am not! What ring?!”
“You have checked your pocket six times in ten minutes.”
I sighed. “Is it that obvious?”
“Sal.” He grinned. “If you wait much longer, I will announce the proposal myself.”
“You better fucking not.”
“I will stand on the bar and shout it.”
“You will not.”
“Then ask her.”
I watched Yelena dance. Her hair had fallen over one shoulder. Her ringless hand lifted in the air as she laughed at something Donatella said.
My throat tightened.
“I will,” I said.
Tonio’s expression gentled.
“Good.”
I crossed the room before I could think myself into another decade of silence.
Yelena saw me coming. Her smile turned knowing.
“There he is,” she said. “The suspicious man.”
“I have no idea what you mean.”
“You canceled meetings. Fed me breakfast like I was preparing for a siege. Kept looking at your pocket. You’ve been acting like a priest with a body in the basement.”
“That seems harsh.”
“You’re right, priests shouldn’t hide bodies. They’re meant to be good people.”
I put one hand at her waist.
“Dance with me.”
She looked at the women around her. Donatella waved her away with theatrical impatience.
“Go,” she said. “He looks like he might faint.”
“I do not faint,” I said.
Yelena’s brows rose. “You do look pale.”
She came into my arms.
The music was slower now. Her body settled against mine with no hesitation. One hand rested on my shoulder. The other slid into mine.
Her fingers fit between mine.
I had held knives with less care.
“You know,” she said, “I have spent all day trying to determine what you planned.”
“And?”
“I assumed a party. But we had one.”
“Interesting.”
“A gift?”
“No.”
“A surprise trip?”
“No.”
“A small, emotionally manipulative animal?”
I looked down at her.
“You’re talking about yourself?”
She batted my arm in faux-annoyance. “Daddy!”
“Sorry, bella, sorry. Forgive me.”
“So what is it? What’s the surprise?”
I held her closer.
“Not here,” I said. “This is just for us.”
She went still in my arms.
Then she looked up at me.
The music continued. The club continued. Our family laughed around us.
But Yelena’s eyes held mine, and I knew there was no plan in the world that could make me ready enough.
“Take me home,” she said softly.
So I did.
The drive home was quiet.
Not empty. Never empty with Yelena beside me.
She sat with her hand in mine across the center console, her thumb brushing my knuckles every few minutes. The city passed outside in wet reflections and black glass. Beyond it waited the lake, dark and broad beneath the night.
I had told myself, once, that silence meant danger.
With her, silence could mean she was thinking. It could mean she was tired. It could mean she was content enough not to fill every space.
The house stood dark except for the lights I had left on beside the windows. Gold warmed the glass. Lake water moved beyond the terrace in slow black folds.
Yelena looked toward the lights.
“Thanky you for welcoming me into your family, Sal,” she said.
“My darling, of course.”
“I know it’s complicated. And I know my father and my brothers were angry.”
It was an understatement. But Lev, Arkady and Daniil were slowly coming round to the fact that an alliance with my family was a better offer than the marriage to Gianni had ever been.
“It’s no matter. Let them be angry. We just need to be happy.”
I opened her door. She stepped out. The cold caught her hair and lifted it across her cheek. I wanted to move it back. I did not.
Not yet.
Inside, she took off her coat. I took it from her only after she handed it to me. We crossed the quiet rooms together. The house smelled faintly of cedar, coffee from that morning, the orange-blossom pastry Katerina had forced us to take home.
On the terrace, the notebook waited on the small table beside two untouched glasses of water.
Yelena stopped.
Her face softened when she saw it.
“Sal.”
I picked it up. My hands had been steady while men pointed guns at me. They had been steady while I signed orders that changed the course of entire operations.
They were not steady now.
I opened the notebook.
“I cannot write the next hope for you,” I said.
Her eyes filled at once.
“I do not want to decide what you should want. Not ever. I do not want to make a beautiful prison out of care. I have been afraid of that from the beginning.”
“Sal—”
“I need you to let me say this.”
She nodded.
I set the notebook down and lowered myself to one knee.
The world narrowed.
Her breath caught. One hand rose to her mouth.
I took the ring box from my pocket.
“I spent my whole life believing that men like me do not get to keep soft things,” I said. “I thought the responsible thing was to stop wanting them. To be useful. To be dependable. To give my family everything and ask for nothing that could be taken away.”
My voice almost failed. I made it continue.