28. Giovanni
— ? —
Giovanni
The artist is a woman in her sixties, sharp-eyed and impatient, recommended by someone who swore she could capture truth on canvas. She sets up her easel in the garden, arranging us like props - Cielo in the center, Gio on her lap, me standing behind them with my hand on my wife’s shoulder.
“Don’t smile,” she instructs. “I want to paint who you are, not who you think you should be.”
Gio, predictably, starts giggling the moment she says this, and Cielo catches the laughter like it’s contagious, and I’m left standing there trying to look dignified while my family falls apart in the best possible way.
“Perhaps we should try again tomorrow,” the artist sighs.
“Perhaps we should try again in five minutes,” Cielo counters, “once the small one has gotten the wiggles out.”
We end up taking a break while Gio runs circles around the garden with Beppe in pursuit - Beppe, who I’ve seen take down armed men without breaking a sweat, now reduced to playing tag with a four-year-old who insists on being called “Space Commander Gio.”
“He’s something else,” the artist observes, watching the chaos. “The boy.”
“He’s everything,” I say, before I can stop myself.
She glances at me, and something in her expression softens. “I can see that. It’s good. The painting will be better for it.”
When we finally reconvene, Gio has calmed down enough to sit still for approximately ninety seconds at a time, which the artist assures us is sufficient.
She works quickly, her brush moving in strokes I can’t follow, and by the end of the first session, there’s a rough outline on the canvas that makes my chest tighten.
A family. My family.
The first blood relatives I’ve had since I was seventeen years old, standing in the ruins of my parents’ house and swearing that I’d make someone pay.
* * *
The portrait takes three weeks to complete.
In that time, everything settles. Both Falcones remain in state police custody, the evidence from the raid and Gio’s abduction holding them there.
Their remaining loyalists have surrendered or scattered, the network collapsing without its leaders.
My withdrawal from criminal command is complete now - the last pieces handed off, the last obligations fulfilled.
My family is free of this threat. I can finally just be here, watching a stranger paint us onto canvas.
The artist comes every afternoon, capturing light and shadow and the particular way Cielo’s hair catches the sun.
She makes Gio laugh by telling him stories about famous paintings - about artists who went mad and paintings that sold for millions and museums that caught fire and saved masterpieces from the flames.
“She’s good with him,” Cielo observes one evening, after the artist has left and Gio is occupied with Rino in the observatory. “Better than most adults.”
“She lost her own children. Years ago. She mentioned it once, when I asked why she specialized in family portraits.”
Cielo is quiet for a moment. “That’s terrible.”
“She said it made her better at seeing. At understanding what matters.” I pull her closer, pressing a kiss to her temple. “I think she’s right.”
When the portrait is finally finished, we hang it in the study - the room that used to hold evidence of my empire and now holds evidence of my family. The three of us, captured in oil and canvas, looking out from the wall like we belong there.
Because we do. Finally, impossibly, we do.
* * *
That night, Cielo falls asleep against my chest while we’re reading in bed.
It’s not unusual - she’s been tired lately, the accumulated exhaustion of weeks of crisis finally catching up to her now that the danger has passed. I should wake her, should nudge her toward a proper sleeping position, should do the practical thing.
Instead, I hold her.
I hold her and let myself feel everything I’ve been holding back. Tomorrow I’ll have the portrait moved to where we can see it from here - for now, it hangs in the study, waiting.
“I don’t know how to do this,” I say quietly, certain she can’t hear me. “I’ve never had a family. Not really. Not since I was a child. I don’t know how to be a father, how to be a husband - not the kind you deserve.”
Her breathing stays steady, even, and I continue, the words spilling out like water through a broken dam.
“I’ve killed men. I’ve ordered deaths. I’ve done things that would make you hate me if you knew the details.
” I stroke her hair, marveling at the softness of it.
“But when I look at you - when I look at Gio - all of that feels like it happened to someone else. Like there’s a version of me that did those things and a version of me that holds you while you sleep, and they can’t possibly be the same person. ”
She doesn’t stir. Doesn’t respond.
“I was so angry when you left. For years, I was furious - at you, at whoever took you, at myself for not being there. But underneath the anger, there was always this.” I press a kiss to her forehead.
“This feeling like the world had ended. Like I was walking through the ruins of something beautiful, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t find my way out. ”
My voice drops to barely a whisper.
“You’re my way out, Cielo. You and Gio. You’re the only thing that’s ever made sense to me.
The only thing I’ve ever wanted that wasn’t about power or survival or revenge.
” I hold her tighter. “I love you. I’ve loved you since that gallery.
I’ll love you until they put me in the ground, and probably after that too, because I don’t know how to stop. ”
The silence stretches, and I let it.
“I’m going to do this right,” I say finally. “The family. The marriage. All of it. I’m going to give us the one thing circumstance never did - a choice. A real choice, made with our own hands, not forced by danger or necessity or fear.”
I close my eyes, and the decision crystallizes in my mind like ice forming on a window.
“I’m going to ask you to marry me again. Not because we have to. Not because we’re already married. Because I want you to know that I choose you. That I’ll keep choosing you, every day, for the rest of my life.”
Her breathing stays steady.
I hold her until I fall asleep.