Epilogue
ISABELLA
Three months ago, I sat at this table and counted exits.
The dining room of the Santoro compound, with its dark wood paneling and ancestral portraits and chandelier that costs more than my old apartment’s annual rent.
I cataloged every window, every door, every potential weapon within reach.
The butter knife. The heavy silver candlesticks.
The sheer size of Lorenzo beside me, blocking the clearest path to the hall.
Tonight I’m counting something else.
Every chair filled around the table. Nonna Rosa’s gumbo steaming in the center, flanked by cornbread and collard greens and a bread pudding that’s been calling my name since I walked in.
Cassia passing the hot sauce to Dante, their fingers brushing in a way that looks accidental but isn’t.
Giada laughing at something Nico said, her hand on his arm, the twin bond visible in the way they lean toward each other.
Marco at the table instead of hovering at the edges, his shoulders set differently than they were a month ago.
And Lorenzo.
Lorenzo beside me, his thigh pressed against mine under the table, solid and warm and there in a way that has nothing to do with blocking exits.
Sofia sits on my other side. She hasn’t spoken yet. She may not speak tonight. But she’s here, at the table, wearing the soft sweater Giada bought her and letting Nonna Rosa pile food on her plate without pulling away. She tracks the conversation even though she doesn’t join it.
Three weeks ago she wouldn’t leave her room. Two weeks ago she started sitting in the garden while Lorenzo did his morning rounds. Last week she let Nonna brush her hair.
Mila sits by the window, pulled back from the table but still in the room. A plate of food beside her, half eaten. That’s new. Last week it would have been untouched.
“Isabella, cher, you’re not eatin’.” Nonna Rosa’s voice cuts through my inventory. “What did I tell you about pickin’ at your food like a bird?”
“I’m eating.” I hold up my spoon as evidence. “See? Eating.”
“That’s one bite. I made enough gumbo to feed an army and you’re sittin’ there countin’ the okra.”
“I wasn’t counting the okra.”
“Mais oui, you were. You got that look.” Nonna Rosa points her serving spoon at me. “The one that says your brain’s goin’ faster than your mouth. Eat first. Think later.”
Nico grins from across the table. “Give up, Isabella. Rosa always wins. Ask Renzo about the time he tried to skip dessert.”
“We don’t talk about that,” Lorenzo says.
“Two slices of pie,” Nico continues, ignoring him. “And an apology. To the pie.”
“The pie had feelings, apparently,” Giada adds.
Lorenzo’s face shifts. Barely. I take a deliberate bite of gumbo. The heat blooms across my tongue.
“Good girl,” Nonna Rosa says, satisfied. “Now. Someone tell me why Dante’s hand has been on Cassia’s belly for the last ten minutes like he’s protectin’ the crown jewels.”
The room goes quiet. Dante and Cassia exchange a look. The kind that requires no translation. Cassia’s cheeks flush. Dante’s hand on her belly spreads wider, protective.
“We were going to wait until after dinner,” Cassia says.
“Cher, I’ve been watchin’ that boy since he was knee-high to a grasshopper. You think I don’t know when a Santoro man is guardin’ somethin’ precious?” Nonna Rosa sets down her serving spoon. She’s beaming. “When?”
“Early summer.” Rough. “June, if everything goes well.”
Nonna Rosa’s hand flies to her chest. “A baby. Lucia’s grandbaby.”
The name lands at the center of the room. Lucia. Mrs. Santoro. The woman whose garden I’ve sat in a hundred times. Whose rosary I pulled from a burning building. Whose boy grew up to become the most dangerous man I’ve ever met.
One second of silence. Two. Then the room explodes.
“A baby.“ Giada is out of her chair. She rounds to Cassia and has her in a bear hug before Dante can blink. ”Dante. A baby. I’m going to be an aunt. I’m going to be the best aunt. I’m already making plans. I’m calling Dr. Rowan in the morning for a referral.“
“Gia, she already has a doctor,” Dante starts.
“She has a regular doctor. She needs the best doctor. I know the best. Sit down, I’m handling this.”
“You literally just stood up.”
Nico leans back in his chair, grin spreading so wide it looks like it might split him open. “I’m going to be an uncle. I want that on record. Best uncle. It’s not a competition because I’ve already won.”
“You have not won,” Giada says from inside Cassia’s hair.
“I have. I’m making plans. I’m buying a tiny suit. I’m teaching this kid Italian, card tricks, and how to charm their way out of detention by age four.”
“God help us,” Marco says. But his mouth is doing something it doesn’t do often. The corners are lifting. Not a full smile. Marco doesn’t do full smiles. But the closest thing to one I’ve seen since the night of the raid.
“Every child needs exactly this many uncles and aunts,” Nonna Rosa declares. She has a napkin pressed to her eyes and she is not subtle about it. “Lord, Lucia’s watchin’. She’s watchin’ from those roses and she’s smilin’, I know she is.”
“I’m going to teach the kid to code,” I say, before I realize the words are leaving my mouth.
The words hang in the air and I hear them from the outside, the way you hear your own voice on a recording and don’t recognize it. That’s a woman with plans. A woman who assumes she’ll be here in five years, teaching someone else’s kid to code in a dining room that smells like gumbo.
When did I become that woman? I’m not sure. I don’t think she sent a memo.
Everyone turns to me. Nico’s grin widens. “Uncle Lorenzo, Aunt Isabella. Has a ring to it.”
“Uncle Renzo is going to terrify this child,” Giada says.
“Uncle Renzo terrifies everyone,” Lorenzo says. Flat. The smallest glint of humor behind it.
“Not me,” I say.
“Not you,” he agrees.
Nico stands. Raises his glass. “To the baby Santoro. Who will arrive in a family of criminals, be spoiled by a Cajun grandmother, and learn to hack government databases before kindergarten.”
“Nico,” Dante warns.
“I’m not wrong.”
“Sit down.”
“To the baby,” Nonna Rosa says, raising her own glass. Her voice catches but she pushes through it. “To Lucia’s grandbaby. May they have their papa’s strength, their mama’s grace, and their Uncle Nico’s charm.”
“And their Aunt Gia’s brains,” Giada adds.
“And Uncle Marco’s stubbornness,” Marco says, surprising everyone. “They’ll need it in this family.”
The laughter that follows isn’t polite or restrained. It fills the dining room, bounces off the ancestral portraits, rattles the chandelier. Loud enough that the guards in the hallway probably hear it. One of them shifts his weight. The holster creaks.
The sound sits under the laughter like a bass note, so constant I almost don’t hear it anymore. Almost.
Beside me, Lorenzo goes quiet. He finds his pocket. Thumb pressing the rosary once through the cotton. His breath catches. Then it releases, and he finds my hand under the table instead. His fingers close around mine, tight, a reflex he doesn’t have to think about anymore.
“Hey,” I say, under the noise.
He turns his head. Looks at me. Something soft behind the black.
“You okay?” I ask.
His thumb brushes across my knuckles. “Yeah.”
“You’re going to be an uncle too.”
“I know.”
“You’re going to have to hold a baby.”
The corner of his mouth lifts. “I’ve held babies before.”
“Have you?”
“Gia was small once.”
“That was twenty-eight years ago.”
“I remember it.”
I squeeze his hand. “You’re going to be a great uncle.”
His fingers tighten on mine.
In the corner of my vision, Mila is watching.
Not the family. Not the chaos. She’s watching the way they touch each other.
The casual contact. Nico’s arm around Giada.
Nonna Rosa on Cassia’s shoulder. Dante’s palm on the table near Marco’s elbow, near enough to count as connection in the language of men who don’t hug.
The tight line of Mila’s mouth loosens. The haunted look goes quiet for a moment.
Every few minutes, Nico’s attention drifts to where she sits. The charm never wavers when he’s facing the table, but his gaze tracks to her like a compass finding north. She doesn’t look back. But she doesn’t leave, either.
Sofia’s hand touches mine.
I turn, startled. She hasn’t initiated contact since the day Lorenzo carried her out of the Benedetti compound and she reached for me through the chaos and the blood. Since then, I’ve been the one reaching. Every time. Letting her decide how much touch she can handle.
But now her fingers find mine under the table, cold and thin and trembling. She’s looking at Nonna Rosa. At the way Nonna is fussing over Cassia. At the way this family folds around each other, loud and messy and unguarded about it.
“Sof?”
Low. She doesn’t answer. But she holds on. I hold back.
Nonna Rosa catches me watching. Something moves across her face, too fast to read, and then she’s on her feet again and coming toward us.
“Sofia, cher.” Nonna Rosa’s voice is gentler than I’ve ever heard it. “You want some bread pudding? Made it fresh this mornin’. Extra bourbon sauce, just how Lucia used to make it.”
Sofia’s grip on my hand tightens. But she doesn’t pull away from Nonna. She just looks at her, eyes wide and wary and searching.
“I’m gonna put a little bowl right here,” Nonna Rosa says, setting the dessert in front of Sofia. “You eat it if you want. You don’t, that’s fine too. No pressure, dawlin’. You take all the time you need.”
Sofia stares at the bread pudding. At Nonna. At me.
Then she picks up the spoon.
My vision burns. I blink hard, looking away before she can see.
Lorenzo’s hand finds my nape. His thumb brushes along my hairline. He’s watching Sofia eat.
The noise resumes. More food. More chaos. Marco defending himself against Nico’s outlandish suggestions for crew names. Dante murmuring something to Cassia that makes her laugh and swat at his shoulder. Giada sneaking extra servings onto everyone’s plates when she thinks they’re not looking.
And Nonna Rosa, who has seen this family through births and deaths and everything in between.
“You know,” she says. The conversation has lulled.
The food is gone. The candles have burned down to stubs.
“Lucia used to say this table would fill up again. Before she passed, when the boys were still young and her garden was new. She’d sit with me in the kitchen and say, ‘Rosa, you watch. This family’s gonna be loud someday.
Full.’” Nonna Rosa’s voice softens. “She didn’t live to see it.
And then we lost Salvatore too, God rest him.
After that, I watched these boys turn to stone one by one and I started wonderin’ if maybe Lucia was wrong. ”
She pauses. Her napkin goes to her eyes again.
“But she wasn’t. Love came back. It always comes back.” She turns to me. “Isabella, cher. Lucia could see through every front people put up. She would have taken one look at you and known.”
My throat closes. I just sit there with Lorenzo on my neck and Sofia’s hand in mine and this woman’s blessing pouring over me. I don’t know how to hold this. The blessing. The table. Nonna Rosa looking at me like I belong here.
Six months ago I was running a fake identity. Eating takeout over a laptop. The only family I had was a ghost I couldn’t find.
My throat burns. Not grief. Something harder to name.
Nonna Rosa looks at Lorenzo. “She would have been so proud of you too, cher. Her gentle boy, finally learnin’ how to live again.”
The room is quiet. Even Nico has nothing to say.
Lorenzo swallows. His throat works. “Yeah.” Rough. Barely audible. “She would have.”
I turn to him. His eyes are wet. And those dimples. The ones I’ve only seen three times. They’re there, barely, fighting through the clench of his jaw.
Lorenzo’s eyes are never wet.
“Renzo,” I whisper.
He pulls me against his side. Not gently. Like he needs to anchor himself. I hold back. And around us, the family pretends not to notice, giving us this moment in the middle of all of them, private and public at once.
Sofia’s hand tightens on mine. I look over and find her watching me. Her jaw has loosened. The tight line between her brows is gone. Her gaze is clear, present, fixed on mine.
But she’s here. At a table surrounded by people who will protect her. Holding my hand.
The dinner continues. Dessert. Nonna Rosa threatening Nico with a wooden spoon when he tries to steal the last of the bourbon sauce.
Dante and Cassia disappearing along the corridor, his hand on her back.
Giada offering to walk Sofia to her room, the two of them leaving together in a quiet that looks like peace.
Marco catches Lorenzo in the hallway. I hang back, watching through the doorway. They stand close. Marco’s posture has shifted since the raid. Straighter. Wider. He holds himself like a man who’s stopped asking permission to be in the room.
Lorenzo notices it too. I can tell by the way he tilts his head, studying his youngest brother with something that isn’t surprise. Recognition.
Marco says something I can’t hear. Lorenzo listens. Nods once. Then his hand finds Marco’s shoulder. Not a pat. A grip. The kind that says I see what you’re becoming.
Marco holds the contact for a beat longer than he used to. Then he straightens, chin level, and walks toward the east wing with a stride that belongs to a man carrying real weight. Not borrowed. Earned.
Lorenzo watches him go. Something quiet moves across his face before he locks it down.
The dining room empties. Nonna Rosa shoos everyone away to clean up, refusing all help. Lorenzo finds me in the doorway. Takes my hand.
The night air is cool, carrying the scent of jasmine. His mother’s roses are blooming, pale shapes in the darkness. We stop at the edge of the garden.
“Isabella.”
“Yeah?”
“Stay.”
I lean into him. Press my cheek against his chest, right over his heartbeat.
“I’m not going anywhere.”
He wraps himself around me. His chin rests on the top of my head. We stand there in the dark, in the garden his mother planted, while silence settles over the compound around us.
THANK YOU