Chapter 23 Isabella
I’m still trying to remember how to breathe. Nico kissed me. In front of everyone.
My mouth tingles, my legs feel suspiciously like they’re made of warm jelly, and his hand is still resting at my waist like he put it there and forgot to move it.
Letty beams up at me from my arms. “Are you staying for Christmas? Can I help you decorate?”
Her excitement tugs me out of my Nico-induced fog.
I laugh, shifting her carefully so she isn’t pressing against my ribs. “Yes. Please. I need help managing your uncles.”
Matteo clutches at his chest, staggering back a step. “Wounded. Betrayed. I liked you, Isabella.”
“You still do,” I say dryly.
He grins, completely unoffended. “Unfortunately, yes.”
Nico squeezes my waist once before letting go, like a silent ‘are you okay?’ that settles something deep inside me. He hefts the tree box like it weighs nothing and points his chin toward the far corner of the living room.
“There,” he says. “If we’re committing to this nonsense, we’re doing it properly.”
“You do realize it isn’t even Thanksgiving yet, right?” Adi huffs.
“Stop being a grinch and help us.”
Letty wriggles in my arms, practically vibrating. “Can we put the star on top?” she asks.
“Absolutely,” I say. “Though I may have to subcontract the actual star placement to a tall person.” I glance at the brothers. “Luckily, I seem to have options.”
Matteo flicks an invisible speck of dust off his shirt. “I was born for the role of dramatic star placement.”
Adi snorts. It’s quiet, but it’s there.
We set the tree up together. It’s taller than I remembered in the store, nearly touching the ceiling once Nico and Matteo wrestle it upright. Letty gasps like it’s the most magical thing she’s ever seen, which, honestly, might be my new favorite sound.
“Lights first,” I declare.
Nico makes a low sound that might be a protest. “There are a lot of lights, and it already has lights on it.”
“There are never enough on the pre-lit trees and never an appropriate number of lights,” I correct primly.
Matteo takes a coil from the box and starts unwinding it with the air of a man preparing for battle. “What’s the over-under on Nico electrocuting himself?” he asks.
“Zero,” Nico says. “Because I’m not doing it wrong, moron.”
“That’s exactly what people say right before they…”
“Matteo,” Adi warns.
Matteo mouths, what, at Letty, who giggles and nearly drops the ornament she’s holding.
We fall into a rhythm. I direct the general aesthetic.
Matteo climbs on the small step ladder and works on the higher branches, humming something that’s either a Christmas carol or an Italian club remix.
Nico handles the heavier stuff, tree base, boxes, untangling what I’m ninety percent sure he deliberately calls “this mess,” just so he can mutter about it.
Adi mostly watches at first, arms folded, that sharp lawyer gaze taking everything in. But when Letty tugs on his sleeve and says, “Papa, help,” he caves instantly, kneeling beside her to hook a candy-cane ornament over a lower branch.
I catch the way his expression softens when she leans her full weight against his side. It’s not a look I ever imagined seeing on the face of Adriano Mancini: open, tender, vulnerable.
It does something to me I don’t have words for.
“You okay?” Nico murmurs in my ear, low enough no one else will hear.
I startle slightly; I hadn’t realized he’d moved that close. “Yeah,” I say. “Just… taking this in.”
“This?” He follows my gaze, Adi, Letty, and Matteo dramatically arguing with a strand of tinsel.
“Yeah,” I say quietly. “It’s… nice. Seeing you like this.”
“Like what?”
“Like a family,” slips out before I can stop it.
His jaw flexes once. For a second, I think I’ve pushed too far. Poked at a wound that is still bleeding.
Then he says, softer, “We are. Even without him, we’re a family.”
“But it still hurts, doesn’t it?” He nods, his eyes on his brothers, as his hands find my waist, just holding me close. “It gets easier. You learn to live with the hole they leave. It’s all the firsts that hurt the most.”
“We should’ve invited your mother.”
I shake my head. “No, it would complicate things. This is a moment in time for us all, not forever, and I don’t want to involve her in something that isn’t going to last.” I watch a shadow cross his features before he nods and drops a kiss on my lips.
“Okay.”
Not an argument. Not a deflection.
A fact.
Warmth spreads through my chest, unexpected and a little dangerous, but it feels weighed by an ache, because the fact is, I wish this was forever, and that’s more dangerous than any gangster trying to kill me.
“Izzy!” Matteo calls. “We need your expert eye. Does this side say, ‘tasteful luxury’ or ‘drunk elf’?”
I squint at the tree. One strand of lights is definitely listing left. “Drunk elf.”
“I knew it,” he mutters, going back in.
“Who the hell is Izzy?” Nico barks, a possessive look on his face.
Matteo smirks. “What? It’s a nickname. You call her Belle.”
“That’s different. You don’t get to give her nicknames, numb nuts.”
I laugh, secretly delighted in this show of jealousy. “Izzy is fine. Some of my friends call me Izzy.”
“See, she doesn’t mind and now that means we’re friends. So bite me, big brother.”
“Or I could shoot you.”
Adi throws his hands up. “Will you two give it a rest?”
“He started it,” Matteo defends.
“Well, I’m ending it.”
Watching this back and forth makes them so real to me. Not mobsters or dangerous killers or powerful CEOs, but brothers who fight and joke and love and grieve together.
Letty leans toward me from her spot on Adi’s hip. “Which ornament is your favorite?” she asks seriously.
I blink at the question. Most of mine are gone, melted or smoked out of existence. Grief flickers, sharp and familiar, but I breathe through it. “Maybe…” I reach into the box beside me and pull out the snow globe I bought earlier, the tiny town square, frozen in glitter-snow. “This one.”
“That’s not an ornament,” Letty points out.
“No,” I smile. “But it reminds me of home.”
“Will you show me where to put it?” she asks.
My throat tightens. “Yeah,” I whisper. “I’d like that.”
We put it on one of the shelves by the window, where the light hits it just right.
Letty shakes it, eyes wide as the glitter swirls. “Magic,” she whispers.
My heart gives a funny, painful little lurch. “Yeah,” I say. “Exactly.”
After the ornaments come the garlands. I loop them along the stair railing and around the columns, stopping every so often to stretch my ribs. Nico watches me with hawk-like focus; the second my face tightens, he’s there, plucking whatever I’m holding out of my hands.
“Slow down,” he murmurs. “You’re still healing.”
“I’m fine,” I protest.
He gives me a look. The lying to me will get you punished look.
I huff. “Okay. Slightly less than fine. Moderate fine.”
He doesn’t smile, but something like it flickers across his eyes. “Sit. Direct. Let us do the work.”
“You’re very bossy, you know that?”
“So I’ve been told.”
I end up on the couch, Letty pressed to my side, both of us supervising while the brothers handle the last of the heavy lifting. She chatters quietly about school and her favorite cartoons. I tell her about my mom’s legendary gingerbread cookies and her horrible, judgmental angel statue.
“Do you miss your papa?” she asks suddenly.
The question hits like a sucker punch, small and earnest. I swallow. “Yeah,” I say. “I do.”
She thinks about that, nodding like it’s a serious and important answer. Then she pats my hand with her small one. “I miss my Nonno,” she says. “But Papa says we can talk about him whenever we want.”
My chest aches. “Your Nonno was a good man,” I say, knowing it’s true, even from the outside. From Nico’s grief. From the way these brothers orbit the space where he used to be.
“Mmm,” she says confidently. “He bought the biggest trees.”
“Of course he did,” I murmur.
When the last ornament is hung and the last garland draped, Nico moves to the wall and flicks off the main lights.
The penthouse transforms.
Warm white lights glow from the tree and the railings, reflecting off the glass, softening all the sharp edges of steel and stone. The snowy branches sparkle faintly; the ornaments catch the light, tiny stars in their own little universe.
It’s… beautiful.
My throat goes tight.
“Ready?” Matteo whispers loudly.
Letty bounces on her toes. “Ready!”
Nico nods to me. “You and Letty do the honors.”
My breath catches. “Really?”
“Your tree,” he says simply. “Your star.”
I lift Letty carefully so she can reach. Nico steps in behind us, one steady hand on my hip, the other bracing her back so she doesn’t wobble. Together, we place the star at the very top.
When it clicks into place and lights up, Letty gasps, clapping her hands. Matteo makes a dramatic sound of approval. Even Adi’s mouth tips in a small, real smile.
For a moment, standing there between them, Nico’s hand warm at my waist, a little girl’s laughter in my ear, and the tree glowing in front of us, I feel something I haven’t felt in a long time.
Home.
It scares me.
It soothes me.
Both.
Eventually, the spell breaks. Letty starts yawning, sugar crash written all over her.
Adi glances at the time and sighs. “We should go,” he says. “Bedtime.”
Letty pouts, but when he mentions hot chocolate and a new book, she brightens.
She turns to me again, arms lifting for a hug. I fold her in gently, carefully, breathing in the scent of candy cane and kid shampoo.
“Thank you for letting me help,” she says into my shoulder.
“Thank you for helping,” I whisper back. “You’re the best decorator here.”
She pulls back, solemn. “I know.”
I laugh, blinking fast against the sting in my eyes.
Adi catches my gaze as he takes her from my arms. There’s something measuring there, still cautious, still the man who reads every fine print clause twice, but there’s also a thread of respect that wasn’t there before.
“Goodnight, Isabella,” he says.
“Goodnight,” I answer.
Matteo swoops in for a hug that is more of a theatrical squeeze. “Don’t let my brother boss you around too much,” he stage-whispers.
“I’ll try,” I whisper back. “He’s very committed.”
Matteo barks out a laugh and slaps Nico’s shoulder as he passes. “She’s going to eat you alive, big brother.”
“Out,” Nico says, but there’s no heat in it.
The door shuts behind them, taking the chatter and the rustle of coats and Letty’s sleepy giggles with them.
Silence settles.
Not the empty, echoing kind that used to fill this penthouse.
A softer kind. Warm. Full.
The tree glows in the corner, washing the room in gold.
I wrap my arms around myself, suddenly stupidly aware that it’s just us now.
Just me.
Just Nico.
His gaze is on the tree, hands in his pockets, face unreadable. For a second, doubt whispers: maybe this was too much. Too bright. Too chaotic for his perfect, controlled world.
Then he looks at me.
And I know, instantly, I was wrong.
His eyes move slowly, from the lights to my face, down to where my sweater has slipped off one shoulder, then back up again. Heat rolls off him in waves, the shift from quiet to hungry so subtle I feel it more than see it.
“It looks…” he starts, then stops, searching for the right word. “Better,” he finally settles on. “It looks better.”
Something in my chest flutters wildly. “Yeah?” I ask, voice a little too soft, a little too hopeful.
“Yeah.” His gaze darkens. “But I think I know how to make it perfect.”
Oh.
My pulse jumps. “How’s that?”
He takes a step toward me. Then another.
By the time he stops, he’s close enough that the lights are reflected in his eyes, tiny stars caught in ink-dark irises.
His hand comes up, knuckles brushing my jaw, thumb tracing the corner of my mouth like he’s memorizing it. “Easy,” he murmurs. “You. Naked.” His gaze flicks toward the tree, then back to me, heat and promise in every line of his body. “Under my Christmas tree.”
Air leaves my lungs in a shaky rush. “Nico,” I whisper, the word half warning, half invitation.
He smiles, slow, wicked, devastating. “Belle,” he says, voice dropping to that gravelly register that turns my bones to liquid. “I think it’s time we unwrap you properly.”
My heart is a drum in my throat.
The tree glows. The room spins, just a little.
And as he bends to kiss me, deep and claiming, one thought threads through the chaos of my desire: I’m so, so far gone, I can’t see a way back.