CHAPTER SIXTEEN
JULIA
I FOUND MYSELF IN MY mama's kitchen the next morning.
Ethan had gone in late so he could drop the girls off at school, and I'd been on the road around the same time they were. By the time I arrived, Mama was already three hours deep into her Friday ritual.
Steam rose from pots bubbling with cabbage rolls, thickening the air with garlic and a secret blend of spices she still refused to write down. Her dark hair, streaked heavily with silver now, was twisted into a practical knot as she worked.
Perched on a high-backed stool, I watched her fold dough around potato filling for varenyky, sealing each one with a practiced pinch while pampushky rose beneath a flour-dusted cloth nearby.
Her lipstick remained perfectly un-smudged despite the steam, a crimson line above the firm set of her jaw. When she glanced up, her dove-gray eyes caught mine. The same eyes that had seen through every childhood lie I'd ever attempted.
Mama had the practiced efficiency of a woman who'd spent decades standing sentinel beside my father, watching his businesses blur between legitimate and immoral without ever betraying surprise. Not once in all those years had I seen her hands tremble.
Beyond the kitchen windows, thoroughbreds grazed across the pasture.
My Tato was down at the stables, likely terrorizing some young handler who'd made the mistake of suggesting he take it easy.
Even with joints that creaked louder than his saddles these days, he refused to surrender a single training session to anyone else.
Those horses were his religion. They had been since before I could form memories.
Fridays at my parents' house had become routine for me.
Every week, I came. Every other weekend, they took Aria and Ellie and practically banned me from interfering with their time.
Our girls, they called them.
And honestly, they were.
My daughters belonged to Ethan and me, but there were pieces of them that belonged just as fiercely to the people who'd raised us. It was my parents' way of guarding tradition. Of reminding me that family roots had to run deeper than whatever world Ethan and I had built around ourselves.
Those weekends when they had the twins gave us a luxury most parents with kids could only dream of in their exhausted, touched-out fantasies.
Pockets of uninterrupted silence. Time that wasn’t just ours together, but mine alone, his alone too.
The kind of alone time that let us remember who we were when no one was asking for juice or crying over math homework.
I loved my husband with a ferocity that still surprised me, but if we spent twenty-four hours a day fused at the hip, one of us would eventually end up compost for the bougainvillea climbing our back fence.
Probably him. It wasn’t because I loved him less, but because I liked him enough to know we couldn’t survive on just each other.
He needed more than the firm and coming home to me and the girls. We spent time as a family, of course. We traveled to Italy last spring, Costa Rica before that. As just a couple, we went out for dinners that didn’t end at seven p.m. But Ethan also needed things that belonged only to him.
He liked to surf and frequented pool halls with the guys. Now, with him circling something bigger than even the Ruiz case, I knew his hours would stretch thin again. His texts would come late. Dinners would go cold in the microwave or fridge, but it wasn’t forever.
I’d married this man with my eyes wide open. He championed every ambition I ever whispered; I would armor his in return.
“So.” Mama folded another piece of dough with surgical precision, her knuckles dusted white. “Your husband tells you he might take on Cortez.”
“Yep.”
“You know what that family is.” She wiped her hands on her apron, flour blooming like smoke in the morning light, and finally turned toward me.
“They’ve been moving filth through this city since before you were born.
His father built their fortune in blood, Julia.
Neighborhoods silenced. Judges bought. Politicians kept in pockets. ”
Her mouth tightened.
“And Dominic...” She shook her head slowly. “They’ve been trying to build a case against that man for years. Do you understand what it means that they finally have him locked away? How many bodies had to pile up before they managed it?”
I already knew. Hearing my mother say it carved the reality a little deeper, like a blade tracing old scars.
“He texted me when he got to work.” I reached for my mimosa; the glass was slick with condensation. “He’s meeting Cortez today at Coleman. I told him to take Eric.”
"Good. Eric is a good boy."
I refrained from rolling my eyes, so I didn’t get knocked off my stool. If Eric ever started a fan club, Mama would be his number one fan.
"I need to know whether Cortez is the kind of man who'll let Ethan walk away after hearing him out without deciding our family suddenly knows too much, and if Ethan does take the case, I need to know he and the others can control what comes with it."
Mama nodded once. "Smart. You learn what kind of animal is in the cage before you decide whether to put your hand through the bars."
I took a sip, humming in agreement.
"You don't seem afraid," she added, glancing at me sidelong.
I arched a brow. "Would you be?"
Her laugh was soft, almost indulgent. "You know the answer to that, dytyna." She turned back to her cooking. "Now, what else is new in your life since we last spoke?"
I sighed, a long, low rumble that felt like my frustration made audible. Mama didn’t lift her eyes from the splintered cutting board, its surface worn smooth by decades of knives.
“That is the sound of a woman fed up with something,” she remarked in that calm, measured tone of hers.
“An associate,” I muttered.
Her knife halted midair, blade glinting in the late afternoon sun. “Ah. A woman, then.”
Before I could respond, my father appeared in the doorway, broad-shouldered even in a simple linen shirt. He carried the scent of sweet hay, aged leather, and that sharp tang of berry soap from the stables—a combination that always reminded me of him at dawn, coaxing horses into line.
He rubbed his calloused palms together, then bent to kiss the crown of my head as if I were still small. Sunlight caught the silvery streaks in his dark hair, haloing him for a moment—though holy was the last word anyone would use to describe my Tato.
“What’s this about a woman?” he asked, voice warm but edged with that curiosity only he could muster.
I straightened and slid my glass closer.
“Her name’s Lila Marino. She’s been at the firm just over two years.
Started at the bottom—filing, assisting, all the little shit nobody else wanted.
She’s sharp. Worked her way up steadily and is now shadowing Serena on the bigger briefs alongside some cases of her own.
Toya read me her résumé during our call with Carmen and Meg this morning. ”
Both my parents’ heads snapped in my direction. Mama’s knife clattered against the board; a half-chopped onion winked in the sunlight.
“Marino?” they said simultaneously.
My father’s hazel-green eyes—mine, too—narrowed as if appraising a racehorse. Mama’s lips pressed into a thin line.
“You didn’t tell me that part,” she said softly, the Ukrainian accent slipping in.
“I didn’t tell you any part until five seconds ago, Mama,” I replied, exasperated. “She wasn’t my problem until recently.”
Under her breath, Mama muttered something decidedly unladylike in Ukrainian. Tato gave her a mild look.
“Anya,” he chided gently. “They wouldn’t know the history.”
“Okay,” I said, leaning forward. “One of you to tell me what I’m missing.”
Mama paused, eyes on mine. “What does she look like?”
I described Lila in detail: about five-six, slim-thick, with dark hair; Latina with high cheekbones.
Mama exchanged a glance with Tato. A bitter half-smile quirked his lips.
“Sounds like the family,” he murmured.
“Who?” I asked, heart pounding.
“The Marinos,” Mama answered, resuming her chopping with renewed force—pepper bits scattering across the board. “The women in that line have a reputation.”
“What kind of reputation?” I pressed.
“Ambitious,” she said flatly.
Tato snorted; Mama shot him a glare fierce enough to cut glass.
“Aggressively ambitious,” she clarified, voice clipped.
“That’s one way to put it,” he muttered. He leaned in, lowering his voice. “Her mother’s a brilliant doctor. Her grandmother built a fashion empire on silk, secrets, and knowing exactly which powerful man needed flattery and discretion.”
“How do you two know all this?”
They exchanged another look that said I’d asked the one question they could never dodge. My father eased onto the stool beside mine, moving more carefully than he would have ten years ago.
“Because, my beautiful girl,” he replied, brushing a loose strand of hair from my forehead, “nothing that moves through this city stays underground forever.”
I breathed in the lingering scent of berry soap as Mama’s knife fell into its steady rhythm. The kitchen felt smaller, the light dimmer, and every unspoken secret in the room seemed to press in on me.
"Gianna Marino's fashion house wasn't only dresses and perfume. She made introductions. Brokered favors. Collected information. She knew which politicians kept mistresses, which businessmen moved dirty money, which wives knew and which ones preferred not to."
"Information is currency," Tato said.
Mama nodded. "And Gianna spent it very well."
"And hoarded it like a dragon," he added.
"Her daughter Lucia had her own connections," Mama continued.
"A doctor who treated people privately when discretion mattered more than paperwork.
Cash. Jewelry. Favors. Whatever payment kept questions from being asked.
" She gave me a pointed look. "Eventually, she married a wealthy patient's husband. "
"Messy," I murmured.
"Very."
My chest tightened. "Lila doesn't have her mother's married name?"
"No. The Marino women tend to keep the family name." Mama said it neutrally this time, but I could hear the judgment simmering underneath.
"None of this means Lila is her mother or grandmother," I pointed out.
Tato looked at me. "No, it doesn't."
Glad we agreed on that. I didn’t like the woman but I wasn't about to convict her based on the sins of her bloodline when I was sitting in this kitchen with my parents. That would've been hypocrisy with a fucking bow on top.
"But," Mama continued, "history teaches you where to look."
That, I couldn't argue with.
Tato folded his hands over his chest. "If she's ambitious, if she understands what the Marcelli Group actually is, you watch."
"For what?"
"Whatever comes next,” Mama answered.
I stared at her. She sighed—the kind that came from somewhere deeper than impatience.
"You gave me a name, and I am telling you what I think because she is on your mind.
First, you don't panic. You don't invent enemies where there aren't any.
And you don't let another woman's family history make you stupid. "
Well, that was surprisingly reasonable.
"But you also don't hesitate when someone shows you what they want." Her eyes held mine over the steam still rising from the pot behind her. "You're my daughter. You know the difference."
A stool scraped softly against the tile as Tato shifted closer, reaching for my hand.
"And don't leave everything to your husband because he thinks protecting you is his job.
" His thumb moved over my knuckles in slow, deliberate strokes.
"Ethan is a good man. Smart. Capable. Loves you enough that even I eventually stopped imagining creative ways to dispose of him. "
"Eventually?"
"Mostly."
I laughed lightly. His expression softened the way it only did in this kitchen, in this light—but his next words didn't.
"He sees danger the way men like him are trained to see it. Coming from outside. A client. An enemy. Someone at the gate. You were not raised that way."
No.
I wasn't.
Mama had taught me to watch rooms—the exits, the sight lines, who stood too close to whom.
Tato had taught me to watch people in the ways she didn’t.
Between them, I'd learned early that the person smiling across a dinner table could be more dangerous than the stranger carrying a gun, and assuming you were safe simply because you loved someone was how blind spots formed.
"I trust Ethan," I said.
Neither of them challenged me.
"I know," Mama replied, her voice quieter now, the accent more present. She reached over and tucked a loose piece of hair behind my ear unhurried, the same one Tato had just moved and the same way she had when I was small and couldn't sit still long enough to let her finish.
"This isn't about distrusting your husband, dytyna. It's about remembering yourself while you trust him."
"If trouble ever does reach your walls, don't stand around waiting for somebody else to tell you what it is. You protect your children. You protect yourself. Then you decide what deserves protecting after that."
I stared at Tato. The lines around his eyes had deepened since I was small.
His thumb had stopped moving over my knuckles.
Just the same lesson he'd spent my entire life teaching me in a hundred different forms, in this kitchen and in cars and at the edges of rooms at parties where I was the youngest person by twenty years.
I nodded. "Okay."
Mama returned to her varenyky as if we hadn't just mapped the architecture of betrayal over a pot of something that smelled like every Sunday of my childhood. She picked up a round of dough, pressed a thumb into its center, and began to fold.
"So," she said, not looking up, "are you staying for lunch?"
I looked at the mountain of food surrounding her. The onion still half-chopped on the board. The bowl of filling. The neat rows of finished dumplings lined up like small pale moons.
"No, Mama. I came all this way to watch you cook and then go eat a fucking sandwich."
Tato's laugh came out sharp and sudden.
Mama pointed the knife at me without turning her head. "Watch your mouth."
"Wonder where I learned it."
She looked at me then. Eyes narrow. I smiled sweetly.
The kitchen settled back into the smell of dough and butter and the soft knock of the knife finding the board again, but all the things I just learned sat in my head.