Chapter Six #2
I walked through the main hall and out the open glass doors at the back.
The garden was washed in late afternoon light, the kind that turned the stone paths gold and made the leaves look almost soft.
Santino stood near the low stone wall with his sleeves rolled up and his shirt open at the throat, looking more relaxed than he ever did at the club or in any room where the Families were watching.
Four girls moved around him like satellites, bright and chaotic and completely unafraid.
Francesca, the boldest, was trying to climb his leg, small hands gripping the fabric of his trousers with fierce determination.
Angelica held a fistful of flowers she had crushed in her excitement, petals stuck to her fingers like confetti.
Elisa sat on his shoe, arms wrapped around his calf, refusing to let go even when he tried to take a step.
The youngest, small, dark-haired, unsteady on her feet, held onto his fingers with both hands and stared up at him like he had hung the sun in the sky just for her.
Santino looked up when my shadow crossed the grass. Something in his face eased, the careful mask he wore in public slipping into something realer.
“You’re late for dinner by about four years,” he said. His voice carried the same dry humor it always had, but there was warmth underneath it now, the kind that only came from a man who had built something worth protecting.
Francesca abandoned her climbing attempt and ran at me instead. I caught her under the arms and lifted her high enough to make her squeal, the sound bright and pure against the quiet of the garden. The others followed in a rush of sticky hands and overlapping voices.
For a few minutes there was only the chaos of small bodies and the simple, stupid warmth of being claimed by children who did not care what I did in the dark.
Angelica pressed her crushed flowers into my free hand.
Elisa wrapped herself around my leg the second Francesca was set down.
Baby Selena reached for me with both arms until Santino shifted her closer so she could pat my face with solemn, sticky fingers.
Aurora appeared with a tray and saved me from being climbed like a tree.
The girls were herded inside with promises of juice and the threat of baths, their protests loud and temporary.
When the glass doors closed behind them the garden felt too quiet.
The light had shifted further toward evening.
Shadows stretched long across the grass.
Santino handed me a coffee he had poured, black and strong the way we both took it.
“You look like a man who came here to say something,” he said.
I wrapped both hands around the cup and watched the surface ripple.
The words sat heavy on my tongue. Part of me wanted to keep the plan sealed behind the usual walls, the same way I had kept every other decision that mattered.
The larger part had driven here for a reason.
Santino had always been the only person who could look at a hole and not pretend it was nothing.
“I’ve chosen a wife.”
Santino went still. The slight pause of a man recalculating the board, measuring the new piece against every other piece in play. The wind moved through the trees at the edge of the property. Inside the house one of the girls laughed, bright and unburdened.
“The seat condition,” he said. Not a question.
“Yes.”
“Do I know her?”
“Not sure.” I looked up and met his eyes. “She’s one of the dancers at After Dark, so you may. Name is Morena Caruso. She’s been on the secondary stage for weeks. I’m taking her at the auction in three weeks.”
Santino was quiet for a long time. He drank his coffee slowly, eyes on the garden wall, the same way he used to study a map before a job. When he finally spoke again his voice was lower. “You’re sure.”
“Yes.”
“Not about the seat. About her.”
I thought of the private room. The knife.
The way she had looked at me when I told her to leave.
The pain that had formed when Dario said she would hate me if I killed him.
The scent she had left behind. The way my body had reacted even while I was deciding whether to end a man.
The photographs on my wall. The three weeks I had spent watching her from the shadows like a man who had decided the ending.
“I’m sure.”
Santino studied me the way he used to when I was younger, and still learning how to hide the sharper edges. Whatever he saw made his expression shift into something closer to understanding, and quieter concern. He set his cup down on the low wall.
“Then do it cleanly,” he said. “And Matteo.”
He waited until I looked at him again. “Don’t lie to yourself about what you’re taking.
Girls like that don’t come without cost. They come with ghosts.
With histories. With the kind of damage that doesn’t stay quiet just because you put a ring on it.
Make sure you’re willing to pay for it. All of it.
Because once you claim her in front of the Families, there is no putting her back. ”
I nodded once. The coffee had gone lukewarm in my hands.
Inside the house, Aurora called our names.
The girls’ voices rose in a chorus behind her, high and insistent.
Santino put a hand on my shoulder, brief and solid, the same weight he had used when words had not been enough.
Then he turned back toward the light and the noise and the life he had built. I followed him in.
The decision sat in my chest like a stone that had finally found its place at the bottom of the river. Heavy. Settled. Impossible to ignore.
Three weeks.
Aurora met us in the hallway with the youngest, Selena, on her hip.
The little girl reached for Santino immediately, small hands opening and closing like she knew exactly where she belonged.
He took her without hesitation, pressing a kiss to the top of her dark hair while the other three swarmed around his legs again, talking over one another in the particular chaos only children could create.
Francesca was trying to climb his other leg.
Angelica held up a new crushed flower like an offering.
Elisa refused to let go of his calf. The baby girl was tucked safely against his chest, content.
Trust the most terrifying man I knew to have all daughters.
And he spoiled them rotten like princesses.
I stayed near the door.
My sister’s eyes found mine over the top of her daughter’s head.
She didn’t ask questions. She never did when the answers were the kind that stained.
Instead she simply studied my face the way she had when we were younger and I thought I could hide everything from her.
The same quiet assessment. The same refusal to look away.
“Stay for dessert,” she said.
“I can’t.”
She nodded once, accepting it without argument. “Then don’t be a stranger. The girls ask about you. Francesca tells people her uncle is the tallest man in the world.”
I looked at the four of them, Francesca halfway up Santino’s side, Angelica solemnly presenting her ruined flower, Elisa clinging like a limpet, Selena safe against his chest, and felt something cold and distant settle behind my ribs.
This was the life Santino had built after the blood. Soft edges. Loud rooms. Children who had never watched a man die on a restaurant floor. Children who would never know the particular silence that followed a clean kill.
It was not the life I was choosing.
I left before the feeling could turn into something I didn’t want to name.
The drive back into the city was quiet. The sky had gone the deep blue that came just before full dark, the kind of blue that made the city lights look sharper. I kept both hands on the wheel and let the plan settle into its new shape.
Three weeks until the auction. Three weeks to make certain Dario stayed exactly where I had put him, bleeding, terrified, and obedient. Three weeks to ensure every man who might raise a paddle against me understood the cost of competing. Three weeks to watch her dance under those lights.
I did not go straight to the penthouse. I drove to After Dark instead.