Chapter 21
CASSIA
I wake to the smell of rosemary and his arm across my waist.
Sunday.
The compound is stirring beneath us. Pots clanging somewhere in the distance. Water running. Nonna Rosa’s voice drifting up through the floorboards, humming something old and French that I don’t recognize but my body responds to anyway.
The sounds of a home. Safe sounds.
I don’t move. Don’t want to break whatever spell keeps Dante’s breathing slow and even against my shoulder, his fingers curled at my hip.
He’s warm. Solid. Real in a way that still surprises me when I let myself think about it.
Two days since the library. Two days of quiet on the surface and chaos underneath.
Tonight, they move.
But that’s tonight.
Right now, it’s morning, and his hand is sliding up my ribs, and I’m allowed to have this. Just for a little while longer.
“You’re thinking too loud.”
His voice comes out rough with sleep. Lower than usual. It vibrates against my spine and settles somewhere behind my navel.
“Sorry.”
“No, you’re not.”
I smile into the pillow. “No. I’m not.”
He pulls me closer, chest to my back, and presses his mouth to the curve of my neck. Not a kiss. Just contact. Just mine.
“What time is it?”
“Early. Nonna Rosa’s already started.”
“Mm.” His thumb traces a lazy circle on my hip. “She’ll put you to work if you go down there.”
“Maybe I want to be put to work.”
He goes still behind me. Just for a beat. Then his arm tightens, and he rolls me onto my back so he can look at me.
Morning light cuts across the bed. It catches in his hair, turns his eyes from dark to a shade near amber.
He’s beautiful like this. Unguarded.
“You want to help with dinner.” Not a question. He’s reading me the way he always does, finding the meaning underneath the words.
“I need to be part of it.” I reach up, trace the line of his jaw with my fingertips. “Not watching from the outside. Part of it.”
His jaw relaxes, but his eyes sharpen. Focus on me like I’m the only clear thing in the room.
“You are part of it.” His voice is quiet. Certain. “You’ve been part of it since you walked through my door.”
I swallow past the tightness in my throat.
“Then let me prove it.”
He watches me. Then he leans down, presses his forehead to mine, breathes me in.
“Tonight,” he says against my lips. “After dinner.”
“After dinner.”
Two words. A promise. A plan.
He kisses me once, lingering, then pulls back. The coldness is seeping into his expression. The Don returning. But his hand finds mine on the pillow, and he squeezes once before letting go.
“Go help Nonna Rosa. I have calls to make.”
I watch him rise from the bed, all lean muscle and controlled grace, and my fingers curl into the sheets where his warmth still lingers.
Tonight, I remind myself. Just get through today.
The kitchen is chaotic in the best possible way.
Nonna Rosa stands at the center of it like a general commanding her troops. She’s small, silver-haired, and terrifying when she wants to be. Right now she’s wielding a wooden spoon like a weapon, barking orders in a mix of English and Cajun French that Maria scrambles to follow.
“No, no, cher, the garlic goes in first. You want it to sing before you add the tomatoes. La, like that. Good girl.”
Maria nods, dark hair pulled back in a practical braid, and adjusts the flame beneath the pan. Nonna Rosa’s been training her for years now. Passing down recipes and techniques and all the small rituals that keep this family fed.
I hover at the threshold, uncertain. This is their domain. Their rhythm. I don’t want to disrupt it.
Nonna Rosa spots me before I can retreat.
“Cassia! Mais, look at you standin’ there like a ghost. Come, come.”
Not Mrs. Santoro. Not the Don’s wife. Just Cassia.
She beckons with the spoon, leaving no room for argument.
“I need someone to knead this dough. Maria’s got hands like a surgeon but no patience for bread.”
“That’s not.” Maria starts.
“Hush. It’s true and you know it.” Nonna Rosa’s eyes twinkle. “Come on, dawlin’. Show me what those accountant hands can do.”
I step into the warmth of the kitchen. Garlic and rosemary and sweetness baking in the oven. Fresh coffee on the counter. The yeasty, alive scent of dough rising under a cloth.
Nonna Rosa guides me to the counter where a pale mound of dough waits. She dusts flour over my hands, positions my fingers, shows me the motion.
“Push with the heel. Fold. Turn. Comme ca.” Her own hands are quick and sure, decades of muscle memory. “Don’t be gentle. The dough can take it. It wants to be worked.”
I try to mimic her movements. Push. Fold. Turn. The dough is cool and yielding under my palms, and the repetition is meditative. Grounding.
“That’s it.” Nonna Rosa nods. “You’re a natural.”
“I doubt that.”
“Don’t doubt me, cher. I’m always right.”
She moves back to the stove, tastes from a pot, adds a pinch of salt.
“Maria, watch the roux. It’s about to turn.”
The kitchen settles into rhythm around me. Nonna Rosa directing. Maria executing. Me at the counter, working the dough, trying not to think about what’s coming tonight.
Elena would have hated this.
The thought surfaces without warning, and I push it down just as fast. But it lingers there, at the edges. My sister, who was supposed to be here. Who was supposed to be Dante’s wife, standing in this kitchen, learning Nonna Rosa’s recipes.
Elena would have hated every second of it. The flour under her nails. The heat from the stove. The work. She always preferred to be served rather than to serve.
She left two days ago. Dante arranged safe passage, enough money to start over somewhere far from New Orleans. He didn’t tell me where. I didn’t ask.
I didn’t say goodbye.
I’m still not sure what I would have said if I had.
Thank you for running?
I’m sorry you were scared?
How could you take their money and not care what it did to us?
The truth is more complicated than any of that.
Elena is my sister. I spent my whole life loving her, resenting her, wanting to be her, wanting to be seen the way everyone saw her.
And now she’s gone, and I’m here, and the grief is tangled up with relief and anger and something that might feel like freedom.
She didn’t say goodbye either.
I wonder if she thought about it. If she stood at the gate and looked back at the compound and considered, even for a moment, finding me. Explaining. Apologizing.
Probably not. Elena never looked back. That was always her gift. Moving forward without the weight of what she left behind.
I can’t do that. I carry everything. Every slight, every wound, every moment of being invisible in my own family.
But maybe that’s not weakness. Maybe that’s what makes me different. I stayed. I looked. I found the man destroying them from the inside. And tonight, Dante will make sure Romano pays for it.
“You’re thinkin’ again.”
Nonna’s voice cuts through my spiral. She’s watching me with those sharp eyes that miss nothing.
“Dough’s over-worked, cher.”
I look down. My hands have gone still, fingers pressed too hard into the yielding surface.
“Sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. Just be here.” She crosses to me, hip checking me aside, and takes over the dough with expert hands. “Whatever’s goin’ on in that head of yours, it can wait. Right now, we make bread. Feed the family. The rest takes care of itself.”
She’s right about one thing. I can be here. Present. Part of this moment.
“Can you teach me the roux?” I ask.
Nonna Rosa’s face splits into a grin.
“Now you’re talkin’. Maria, move over. We got another student.”
An hour later, I’m covered in flour and my shoulders ache from stirring and the laughter keeps slipping out before I can catch it.
Maria and I developed a rhythm. She handles the proteins, I handle the starches, and Nonna floats between us, correcting and praising in equal measure.
The kitchen is warm, fragrant, alive with purpose.
This is what I wanted. What I didn’t know I needed until I was standing in the middle of it.
“The gravy needs more time.” Nonna peers into a pot, frowning. “Another hour at least. Maria, you watch it. Don’t let it scorch.”
“I won’t.”
“You said that last time.”
“Last time was different.”
“Last time you were daydreamin’ about that Valentino boy who delivers the wine.”
Maria’s cheeks flush. “I was not.”
“You were. I got eyes everywhere, cher. Don’t forget it.”
I bite back a smile. There’s love in Nonna Rosa’s teasing, the kind that comes from years of knowing someone. Of being family even when blood doesn’t connect you.
I want Nonna Rosa to know me long enough to tease me like that.
“Cassia.”
His voice comes from the entrance, and my whole body responds before my mind catches up.
I turn, and there he is.
Dante.
He’s dressed down. Dark jeans, a gray henley pushed up at the sleeves. No suit, no armor. Just him, leaning against the frame, watching me with an expression I can’t read.
His eyes drop to my hands. To the flour dusting my fingers, my wrists, the front of my shirt.
“Having fun?”
“Nonna Rosa’s teaching me to cook.”
“I can see that.”
He pushes off the frame, crosses to me. Nonna Rosa and Maria have become interested in their respective tasks, giving us what privacy the kitchen allows.
Dante stops in front of me. Close enough that I can smell his soap, feel the heat radiating off his body.
His hand comes up, and he brushes flour from my cheek with his thumb.
“You look good like this,” he says, voice low. “Here.”
My pulse skips. “I am happy.”
“Good.” His thumb traces my cheekbone, and his eyes darken. His gaze drops to my mouth and stays there.
He leans in, and his lips brush my temple. Warm. Certain.
“Everything’s ready?” I ask, voice low enough that only he can hear.
He knows what I mean. Not the food.
“Everything’s ready.”
My heart kicks against my ribs. “And tonight?”
He pauses. His hand slides to my nape, anchoring me.
“Tonight. When it’s done, I handle Romano. You stay upstairs. By morning, it’ll be over.”
I should be scared. Should be horrified at the casual way he discusses ending a man’s life.
But I think about Elena’s tear-streaked face when she told me about the money. About Salvatore dying and Romano standing at the funeral weeping fake tears. About thirty-two years of lies and theft and betrayal, all hidden behind Sunday dinners and loyal service.
“Okay.” One word. Complete trust.
Dante’s eyes search my face. Whatever he finds there makes his expression crack open.
He doesn’t say anything. Just pulls me against him, one arm banded across my back, his mouth pressed to my hair. Holding on like he’s memorizing the shape of me.
“Go back to your calls.” I rise on my toes, press a kiss to the corner of his mouth. “I have bread to finish.”
The ghost of a smile crosses his face. Then he steps back, and the Don slides into place behind his eyes. The warmth remains underneath, but it’s banked now. Controlled.
He has a war to prepare for.
“When it’s done,” he says again.
“When it’s done.”
He leaves. I watch him go, heart full and aching in equal measure.
Just get through today. And then it’s over.
Nonna Rosa’s hand lands on my shoulder. I didn’t hear her approach.
“That man,” she says, voice low, “has been carryin’ this family since he was twenty-three years old. Eleven years. No help, no rest, no one to lean on.”
I turn to look at her. Her eyes are bright, knowing.
“You’re good for him, cher. I’ve watched him these past weeks. The way he looks at you. The way he sleeps.” She squeezes my shoulder. “He’s different. Better. Because of you.”
The words lodge in my throat, too big to escape.
“Now.” Nonna Rosa releases me, all business again. “That dough won’t shape itself. Come on. We got work to do.”
I follow her back to the counter. Pick up where I left off. Push, fold, turn.
The rhythm steadies my hands, my heart, my spinning mind.
Outside, the sun climbs higher. Golden light spills through the windows, turning the kitchen warm and bright. Maria hums at the stove. She tastes the gravy and nods.
Sunday. Family. Home.
I shape the dough into rounds and set them to rise. Wipe the flour from my hands. Let the golden light warm my skin through the window.
Nonna Rosa tastes the gravy one more time, nods, and sets the spoon down with the quiet satisfaction of a woman whose kitchen is running the way it should.
Tonight, Dante handles Romano.
Tomorrow, we wake up in a house that’s ours. No lies hiding behind the walls. No traitor sitting at our table.
I flatten my palms against the cool marble and breathe.
Four. Five. Six.
The count settles into my pulse, a rhythm as familiar as my own heartbeat.
Finally.