Epilogue
Giovanni
The kitchen smells like coffee and crespelle and home.
I’ve been making this breakfast for seven years now - first in her absence, learning through trial and error and a stubborn refusal to give up, and then in her presence, perfecting it until I could do it with my eyes closed.
The routine is muscle memory at this point: coffee brewing while the batter rests, eggs cracked into a bowl for scrambling, the particular pan that heats evenly and doesn’t stick.
Thirty-eight years old, and I’ve finally become the kind of man who knows his way around a kitchen. My father would have found it amusing. My mother would have been proud.
“Papa!” Gio’s voice echoes through the house, followed by the thunder of six-year-old feet on the stairs. “Papa, is breakfast ready? I’m starving!”
“You’re always starving. It’s a medical condition at this point.”
He bursts into the kitchen like a small hurricane, all gangly limbs and wild dark hair that refuses to stay flat no matter how many times Cielo tries to tame it.
He’s shot up in the last two years - past my hip now, almost to my waist - and sometimes I look at him and see glimpses of the man he’s going to become.
A good man, I hope. Better than me.
“Can I help flip the crespelle?”
“Did you brush your teeth?”
“Yes.”
“Did you really brush your teeth, or did you run the water and hope I wouldn’t notice?”
He grins, unrepentant. “I’ll go brush them now.”
“Good choice.”
He races back upstairs, and I shake my head, returning to the stove.
The house is loud with the sounds of morning - footsteps overhead, water running, Beppe’s voice drifting in from the garden where he’s doing his rounds with Rino.
Two years ago, this place felt like a fortress.
Now it feels like what it is: a family home, protected but not imprisoned.
“You’re smiling.”
I turn to find Cielo in the doorway, still in her robe, her hair loose around her shoulders. At thirty-one, she’s more beautiful than the day I met her - something about the years has settled into her face, softened the sharp edges of fear and uncertainty that used to live there.
“I’m allowed to smile. It’s my kitchen.”
“It’s our kitchen.”
“I built it. I get naming rights.”
She crosses to me and steals a piece of bacon from the plate, dodging my half-hearted attempt to stop her. “You didn’t build it. You hired someone to build it.”
“Same thing.”
“Very much not the same thing.”
I catch her around the waist before she can escape, pulling her against me. She smells like sleep and the lavender soap she favors, and I press a kiss to her temple just because I can.
“Good morning, wife.”
“Good morning, husband.” She tilts her head back to look at me. “You’re in a good mood.”
“I woke up next to you. That always puts me in a good mood.”
“Flatterer.”
“Truth-teller.”
She rolls her eyes, but she’s smiling too - that particular smile that used to be rare and is now almost constant, the one that says she’s happy and not afraid to show it.
“Gio is going to want to help with the crespelle,” she warns.
“I know. I’ve already allocated a sacrifice crespella for his learning experience.”
“A sacrifice crespella?”
“The first one always comes out wrong anyway. Might as well let him be responsible for it.”
She laughs, and the sound fills the kitchen, mingles with the smell of coffee and the warmth of the morning sun. I’ve spent seven years learning to make this breakfast, but I’ve spent longer learning to make her laugh - and that’s the skill I’m prouder of.
* * *
Gio returns, teeth genuinely brushed this time (I check), and takes his place at the stove with the gravity of a surgeon preparing for an operation.
“Okay, Papa. I’m ready.”
“Remember: flip away from yourself, not toward yourself.”
“I know. You tell me every time.”
“Because every time, you try to flip toward yourself.”
“That was one time.”
“It was three times. I counted.”
He sticks his tongue out at me, and I hand him the spatula with exaggerated ceremony. The first crespella is, as predicted, a disaster - torn down the middle, folded over on itself, shaped like something that might be a star if you squint and are very generous.
“That one’s mine,” Gio declares, examining his creation with pride. “I’m naming it Proxima.”
“After the star?”
“After the star. Proxima Centauri is the closest star to our sun, you know. Besides the sun itself.”
“I do know. You’ve told me approximately four hundred times.”
“Four hundred and twelve,” Cielo corrects from her seat at the table. “I’ve been counting.”
“Mamma!” Gio looks betrayed. “You’re supposed to be on my side.”
“I’m on the side of accurate record-keeping.”
“That’s not a side. That’s being pedantic.”
“Big word for a six-year-old.”
“Zia Delphine taught me. She says pedantic people are the only ones who keep the world from falling into chaos.”
I glance at Cielo, who’s hiding a smile behind her coffee cup.
Delphine has been visiting more often lately - something about wanting to be close to her godson and definitely not something about the way she and Beppe have been circling each other for months.
I haven’t said anything. Some things work themselves out.
“The second crespella,” I say, steering us back on track. “Ready?”
“Ready.”
This one turns out better - golden on both sides, almost perfectly round. Gio whoops with triumph and does a little dance that involves more jumping than actual dancing, and I catch Cielo watching us from the doorway with an expression I’ve learned to read over the years.
This is what I wanted. This is what I was afraid I’d never have.
I know the feeling. I carry it with me every day.
* * *
After breakfast, we saddle the horses.
Luna is older now, steadier, patient with a six-year-old who wants to tell her about every constellation while she’s trying to eat her oats. Gio’s pony - Stella, because of course - stands placidly while he scrambles onto her back with more enthusiasm than grace.
“Can we ride to the back field, Papa? The one with the good view?”
“If you remember to hold the reins properly.”
“I always hold the reins properly.”
“You held them like you were strangling a snake last week.”
“That was artistic interpretation.”
Cielo snorts from beside me, already mounted on Luna. “Artistic interpretation. Where does he get this stuff?”
“Definitely not from me. I’m not artistic.”
“You commissioned a family portrait.”
“That’s appreciation, not creation. Very different.”
We ride out together, the three of us, across the grounds of the Milan house and toward the back field where the hills roll away toward the horizon.
It’s a clear day, the sky that particular blue that only comes in early autumn, and I find myself cataloging the moment the way I’ve learned to do - the sound of hooves on grass, the smell of horse and leather and the perfume Cielo wears, the way Gio’s voice carries as he tells Stella about the moons of Saturn.
Seven years ago, I was standing in the ruins of a villa in Sicily, swearing I’d find my wife if it took the rest of my life.
Now I’m riding across my own land with that wife beside me and our son on his pony ahead of us, and the only thing I’m searching for is the perfect spot to stop and have the picnic Beppe packed for us.
Funny how life works.
* * *
“Papa?”
We’re sitting on a blanket in the back field, the remains of lunch scattered around us, Cielo leaning against my shoulder while Gio sprawls on his back and watches clouds.
“What is it, piccolo?”
“Rino says you used to be scary.”
Cielo goes still beside me, and I feel her attention sharpen even though she doesn’t move.
“Did he?”
“He said people used to be afraid of you. That you were the-” Gio pauses, clearly trying to remember the exact phrase. “The most dangerous man in the city.”
“That was a long time ago.”
“Are you still dangerous?”
I consider the question carefully, because Gio is six now and starting to ask questions that deserve real answers.
“When I need to be,” I say finally. “When someone threatens the people I love.”
“Like when the bad lady took me?”
Cielo’s hand finds mine, squeezes tight. We don’t talk about that night much anymore - it’s a closed chapter, a danger that ended - but Gio remembers. Of course he remembers.
“Yes. Like that.”
“But you’re not scary to me.”
“I hope not.”
“You’re just Papa.” He says it like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “You make breakfast and you teach me about horses and you tell the best stories about the moons. Scary people don’t do that.”
“Maybe they do. Maybe scary people are just people who love their families so much that they’ll do anything to protect them.”
Gio considers this, his brow furrowed in that particular way that means he’s thinking hard.
“Okay,” he says finally. “I guess that makes sense.” He rolls onto his side, already moving on to the next thought. “Can we go look at the stars tonight? Jupiter is supposed to be really visible.”
“It’s a date.”
“Not a date. Dates are for grown-ups. This is a scientific observation session.”
“My apologies. A scientific observation session.”
He nods, satisfied, and closes his eyes for a post-lunch nap in the sunshine. I watch him for a moment - this child who is equal parts me and Cielo, who carries the weight of our history without knowing most of it, who calls the most feared man in the city “Papa” and means it without irony.
“He’s going to be okay,” Cielo says quietly. “He’s going to grow up and be normal and never have to be part of any of it.”
“I know.”
“You made that possible. You know that, right? The life he’s going to have - it’s because you chose to be different.”
“We chose,” I correct. “I couldn’t have done any of this without you.”
She shifts to look at me, and her eyes are soft in a way that still catches me off guard sometimes - this woman who ran from me, who hid from me, who built a life without me and then chose to come back.
“I have something to tell you,” she says.
My heart stops. “Good something or bad something?”