Chapter 37
DANTE
One month married. One month of Amalfi and silence and her body against mine without the shadow of a goddamn conspiracy between us.
We’re back now. And the ordinary part of it is what keeps catching me off guard.
She takes her coffee with oat milk creamer and two sugars. She hums when she’s reading the financial reports. She steals my side of the bed the moment I get up in the morning.
Romano tried to take this from me. He failed.
Sunday dinner. The tradition my mother started when she was twenty-two and married to a man the whole city feared. She set the table herself that first week. Made the food with her own hands. Told my father that if he wanted to build an empire, he had to start with a family that sat down together.
She was right. She was always right.
The dining room looks different today. Not haunted, for once.
Nonna Rosa has been in the kitchen since dawn, filling the house with the smell of her red gravy and fresh bread.
Maria arranged the flowers. The table is set with the good china, the crystal glasses that come out for occasions worth celebrating.
Cristo. We survived.
They arrive in waves.
Gia first, breezing through the door with a bottle of wine and a smile that reaches her eyes. She’s been different since the crisis. Less wound tight. Still carrying too much, but setting some of it down.
“You look rested,” she says, kissing my cheek. “Marriage agrees with you.”
“Don’t sound so surprised.”
“I’m not surprised. I’m smug. I called it months ago.”
Nico is next, slipping in with that charm that makes everyone in the room exhale. He’s telling a story before he’s through the door, something about a restaurant owner in the Quarter and a case of mistaken identity that has Maria laughing from the kitchen.
Then Marco. My youngest brother pauses at the threshold, scanning the room the way he always does. Looking for his place. Looking for confirmation he belongs here. I catch his eye. Nod toward the chair beside Renzo.
He sits.
A month ago, the week after the wedding, I found him alone in the garden. He’d been different since that night. Steadier. Less desperate to prove himself through volume.
“Good work,” I’d told him. Just two words.
He’d looked at me like I’d handed him the world.
Tonight he’s quieter than usual. He sits with his shoulders loose, his hands open on the table. No drumming. No fidgeting. No eyes darting to whoever’s speaking to make sure he hasn’t been forgotten.
Cazzo. Two words. That’s all it took.
Renzo arrives last, sliding into his seat without fanfare. He doesn’t do entrances. Doesn’t need to. The whole room recalibrates when he sits down.
He catches my eye across the table. Holds it for a beat.
He doesn’t say a goddamn thing. Doesn’t have to.
Cassia appears from the kitchen, Nonna Rosa trailing behind her with the bread basket. She’s wearing something simple tonight. Soft blue, no jewelry except her wedding ring. Her hair is down, the way I like it.
She takes her seat at my right hand like she’s been sitting there her whole life.
The Donna’s chair. My mother’s chair. Hers now.
“Everyone’s here,” she says, her hand finding mine under the table.
I look around.
Renzo at my left, solid as always. Gia beside him, our mother’s emerald ring catching the candlelight.
Nico across the table, still mid-story about something that’s making Marco laugh.
Nonna Rosa settling into her seat with a satisfied sigh, surveying her family like a general who’s won the long war.
Everyone’s here. Body and mind.
I raise my glass.
The table falls quiet. Nico’s story trails off. Marco straightens in his chair. Even Nonna stops fussing with the bread basket.
“To family.”
Two words. The same toast my father made every Sunday for thirty years.
Everyone raises their glasses. Drinks.
I watch them over the rim of my wine. Renzo, the ghost of a smile crossing his face before his gaze goes somewhere far off.
Somewhere none of us can follow. Then he’s back, jaw set, and the moment passes.
Gia, relaxed for once. Marco, at ease. Nico, present and accounted for, which is more than I can say most weeks.
Cassia, warm at my side. Her fingers threaded through mine.
And we’re still here. Still eating Nonna’s food. Still arguing about nothing. Still laughing at Nico’s stories. Still breathing.
That’s the victory. Not power or vengeance. Just this. Dinner.
The meal unfolds the way Sunday dinners are supposed to. Nico finishes his story about the restaurant owner, and it turns out the punchline involves a case of expensive wine that ended up in the wrong hands. Gia chokes on her drink, laughing so hard she has to press her napkin to her mouth.
“That did not happen,” Marco says, but he’s grinning.
“I have witnesses.”
“You have people who are afraid to disagree with you.”
“Same thing.”
Nonna Rosa passes the bread basket to Cassia with a pointed look.
“You’re too thin, cher. Eat.”
“I’m not.”
“Eat.”
Cassia takes two pieces of bread. Nonna Rosa nods and turns her attention to Marco, who also needs to eat more despite being built like he could bench-press a small car.
Renzo says something quiet to Gia that makes her roll her eyes but smile.
Marco argues with Nico about something that happened three years ago and requires extensive fact-checking.
Nonna tells a story about the first time my mother made her red gravy and how it took six tries before she got the seasoning right.
“Stubborn woman,” Nonna says, a warmth in her voice that could break you. “Wouldn’t let me help. Said she had to learn it herself or it wouldn’t count.”
“That sounds like Mama,” Gia says.
“That’s your mama through and through. God rest her.”
The table goes quiet. Not heavy. Just an acknowledgment. Lucia Santoro has been dead for over a decade, but her recipes fill this room. Her traditions. Her insistence that family meant something, even when it was dangerous.
Cassia squeezes my hand.
I squeeze back.
After dinner, the dining room empties in waves. Nico excuses himself first, claiming an early meeting that sure as hell doesn’t exist. Marco follows, his stride unhurried for once, no backward glance at the door.
Renzo lingers by the door while the others filter out. Once we’re alone, he steps closer. Lowers his voice.
“There’s been activity in our systems. Someone poking around. Testing firewalls.”
My hand closes around the back of the nearest chair. “Benedetti?”
“Maybe. Maybe not.” He’s too calm. Too measured. Which means he’s three steps ahead and doesn’t like what he’s seeing. “I’m close to tracing the source.”
“You need resources?”
“No.” Clipped. Final. “I’ll handle it.”
I study him. The hollows under his eyes are deeper than they were at the wedding.
His hand drifts to his jacket pocket, the one where he keeps Mama’s rosary, and I catch the faint click of the beads before he stops himself.
He used to do that only when he thought nobody was watching. Now he’s doing it in front of me.
He leaves before I can push further. But I know my brother. Whatever he’s hunting, it’s gotten under his skin. Become something more than security protocols and digital signatures.
Fuck.
That’s twice now. Twice I’ve watched him walk away carrying something he won’t name. I’ll push harder next time. He won’t like it. But he’s my brother, and I’m done letting the people I love disappear into their own damage.
Dio, I should have pushed tonight.
Gia hugs Cassia for a long time before she goes. I don’t hear what she whispers, but Cassia’s eyes are bright when they pull apart.
Then the kitchen is just us. And Nonna.
I stand in the doorway, watching.
Cassia has her sleeves rolled up, helping Nonna Rosa with the dishes. Their voices are low, intimate. Nonna’s hands move with the efficiency of someone who’s done this ten thousand times. Cassia watches, mirrors.
“Lucia would have loved you,” Nonna says.
Cassia’s hands still on the plate she’s drying.
“I wish I could have known her.”
“Oh, dawlin’.” Nonna turns to face her, soapy hands and all. “You do know her. Every time you sit at that table. Every time you make him smile. Every time you keep this family together when it wants to fly apart.”
Cassia’s eyes glisten. She doesn’t speak.
“That’s her legacy,” Nonna continues. “Not the clinics or the charity work, though Lord knows she was proud of those. Her legacy is this family. How we gather. How we stay.”
She reaches out, cups Cassia’s cheek with a damp hand.
“And now it’s yours.”
I should leave. This moment isn’t mine.
But my hand is braced against the doorframe and my knuckles have gone white. Something with teeth is pressing against my ribs, and I can’t move. Can’t look away.
Fuck. Fuck me.
Cassia looks up. Finds me standing there. Her eyes are wet but she’s smiling.
“I know,” she says. Not to me. To Nonna Rosa. To the house. To whatever piece of Lucia still lingers in these walls.
“I’ll take care of them. I promise.”
Nonna Rosa pats her cheek. “I know you will, cher. I’ve known since the day you walked through that door.”
After Nonna has gone to bed, I find Cassia on the back veranda.
She’s looking out at the garden where we got married.
The fairy lights are still up, tangled through the jasmine.
The chairs have been put away, but I can still see them.
The arch where she walked toward me. The spot where I promised her everything.
“Hey.”
She turns. Smiles.
“Hey.”
I settle beside her, pull her against my chest. She fits. She always has.
“Good dinner,” she says.
“Good dinner.”
We stand there in silence, watching the garden, listening to the night. Somewhere in the house, Nonna is humming. An old song. One my mother used to sing.
“Dante?”
“Hmm?”
“Thank you. For this. For all of it.”
I press a kiss to her hair. Breathe her in.
“Thank you for staying.”
She tips her head back to look at me. “Where else would I be?”
Nowhere. There’s nowhere else she should be. There’s nowhere else I want her to be.
I tilt her chin up. Kiss her slow and thorough, tasting wine and bread and Nonna’s red gravy and something underneath all of it that’s just her. She makes a sound against my mouth and my arms tighten, pulling her closer.
Anyone who touches you dies. That’s not a threat.
It wasn’t then. It isn’t now. It won’t be tomorrow.
She pulls back. Looks at me with those dark eyes that see everything I am and don’t flinch.
“Take me to bed, husband.”
Husband. The word used to mean a cage. Not when she says it.
“Yes, tesoro.”
I take her hand. Lead her inside. Through the kitchen that still smells like Nonna Rosa’s bread. Down the hallway lined with family photographs. Past the study where I came back from the edge and the bedroom where she anchored me.
Into our room. Our bed. Our life.
The fairy lights glow through the window. The house settles around us, old wood and older memories.
My wife. My Donna. My family.
The city sleeps. The empire holds. And I am not my father. Not anymore.
My hand finds her hip in the dark. She presses closer, her breath warm against my throat. I hold on.