Epilogue - Sicily #2
Cesare smiled, looking proudly down at his son. “I came home the day he was born—right before he was born actually. I got very lucky, but I was just happy I could be there with Bells.”
Cesare and I had spent hours talking, walking around the institute’s gardens, and learning about one another.
He’d apologized so many times, explained why his psychosis even existed, and I’d understood even if being around him still made my heart speed in the wrong ways.
It hadn’t been his fault, but I would always remember.
“Here,” Cesare said quietly, stepping forward to slide the little boy into my arms. It wasn’t just a way for me to hold my nephew, but a way for him to show me that we could be close and that he was safe.
“How’s Bella?” I asked with a sniffle of emotion, rocking Ciro back to sleep as he stirred in my arms, his little arms kicking out at the intrusion of being moved.
I’d spoken to Bella and Fiore every hour of every day since we’d forged the new contract, but I wasn’t there in Philadelphia with Bella like Fiorella was. Though she’d sent a photo, I craved nothing more than to be there to look after her.
“Resting,” Cesare said, a happy, fulfilled smile tilting his lips. “She’s besotted with him, but I know she’s appreciating the few hours of sleep she’ll get without him this evening.”
“We told you we’d come babysit whenever you needed.” Fiore beamed, her bottom lip pouting at Ciro’s sleepy, oblivious face.
Fiorella and Brenno had extended their cottage, making three separate houses conjoined around the central back fields.
Brenno had said that he knew Bella and Cesare would have more kids and needed the space, and he couldn’t stand the sound of Ezio’s zombie game every morning, so he’d gifted them all their own houses, still attached to his, but away from him at the same time.
Adriano and Francesco had said it was a good idea.
Milan had promptly told them he would use his Capo influence to sell any house they moved into that wasn’t the one we all shared.
Brenno raised a brow at his fiancée. “We did not say that. I mentioned that I would be available for babysitting purposes once the spawn slept his way through the night, not during whatever evening crises he currently has.”
Fiorella slapped his chest. “Don’t call our nephew a spawn.”
I caught sight of Milan, Adriano, and Francesco, my boys, and wondered what a baby would look like in our house. Milan and I had sworn off the idea of kids entirely, but Adriano and Francesco were desperately hopeful that one day, they could marry and adopt without prejudice.
They would be such good dads.
So would Milan, but I couldn’t tell him that.
My husband stopped in his tracks and a small, soft, sensitive smile grazed his lips as he spied the baby in my arms and the brother by my side. He watched Ciro drool onto my forearm with such intensity that I would’ve given anything to know what he was thinking.
Adriano gasped as they came closer. “Oh my god!”
“Look at him!” Francesco squeaked.
Cesare chuckled, slapping their shoulders into a tight hug, holding on a little tighter when it came to Milan’s turn. They had also spent a lot of time talking when he had been in the institute, and they’d reached a good place. It wasn’t perfect, but none of us were; we were all just enough.
Milan had been ecstatic about Ciro’s birth, so ecstatic that when Bella sent a photo of him to the new family group chat, he’d even done a thumbs-up. That was an incredibly high level of praise for Milan Lucca.
I laid the baby across Francesco’s arm as he reached for him, noting how Adriano looked away with his face a picture of pain and want. I squeezed his wrist, telling him that I knew his pain, that I felt it, and would fix it.
Milan reached over to his nephew, smoothing down his matching hair.
Ciro was every part a Lucca from his dark eyes to his even darker hair. His jaw even sat in the same way as Brenno, Cesare, and Milan’s. The brothers’ shared traits had all come from Mattea, and those were the features that Ciro had decided to inherit, not the ones that had come from Hugo.
A newborn with my husband’s face was not good for my ovaries, and I didn’t even want his inevitably giant-bodied kids.
I didn’t think I did anyway.
“He is wonderful. Well done, Cesare,” Milano said softly. “He looks like Siena.”
“He does,” Adriano cooed. “It’s the dark hair and little button nose. What a cutie.”
Brenno cleared his throat. “That’s Mom’s genes.”
Everyone had avoided talking about Mattea—everyone other than Brenno.
He seemed to bring her up on occasions where the family was together, like it healed a part of him to include her or ask about her, but Fiorella had said that she thought it was because he felt safest with everyone around to wonder about her.
It didn’t matter why. All that was truly important was that we were a family, that we all belonged, and that the Lucca brothers were never separated again.
MILAN
As the night drew on and people showed no signs of leaving, I became increasingly aware of my wife’s aching feet and tired limbs.
It was nine in the evening; Sicily and I were typically in bed like elderly people by now, but the Famiglia was just getting started.
My wife had worked hard, given up so much, and I was in complete and total awe of her, but having emotions and loving her as dearly as I did meant experiencing her exhaustion too, and that was something I was still becoming accustomed to.
As I followed Sicily through the corridor and watched her take a secret seat on the school’s glossy staircase, a small smirk tugged at my lips. I paused, letting the wall hold my shoulder as she flexed her toes inside of her shoes, not realizing that anyone was watching.
“Can I tell you a secret?”
She looked up to find me, laughing softly. “Yeah?”
I walked slowly toward her and crouched, my fingers working off the straps of her heels. “I would rather be in bed pretending I am not falling asleep during our movie night right now.”
Her next fit of laughter fell into a small whimper as I shimmied the shoes from her feet and squeezed her red, squashed toes. I worked my knuckles over the stiff, blistering red arches, causing her head to roll on her neck and her eyes to close.
Peace was the most notable thing I could offer her, and I would always work tirelessly to ensure that her world served her as she sculpted it the way she desired.