And it’s not fair to ask her; not when we cannot control it, but I do anyway. “Promise me. Please.”
She has made promises before, but never to me. This is the promise I ask of her.
Don’t leave me. Stay with me.
And her tears mingle with mine as we grip each other in the back of that car.
“Sì. I swear it.”
4 – Caterina
The silence that surrounds us in the back of this car is peaceful, rather than tense. A silence that speaks of relief, and truth, and the feel of being together again after so long apart.
And I find myself reluctant to break it as I glance out of the window. Dante tightens his hands, still wrapped around me, at my movement. He leans forward to follow my look. “Morelli’s a fucking show-off.”
The corner of my lip barely twitches at his dry words as he scans the villa that rises up in front of us behind the security gates. But the fact that a smile threatens at all—
Little steps.
I need to remember who I am. To find myself again - that Corvo heir,the Crow, and I need to do it quickly.
I do not have time to mope, to lose myself in everything that has happened.
Instead, I take another breath.
I’m here.
I’m free.
Nothing else matters.
Maybe if I tell myself that enough, if I push away those fragments of memory every time they threaten to overtake my mind… maybe I’ll start to believe it.
Dante runs his hand over my back as the car slows to crawl through the gates that instantly close behind us. “Are you ready?”
The refusal hovers on my tongue.
No, I am not ready.
I’m not ready to meet my daughter. To look Alessia full in the face, to see the shared features that shine out so clearly on her face.
Today, I can feel her in my arms without the heaviness of everythingtheyused to keep her from me weighing down my soul.
My chest constricts as I tip my head up to meet Dante’s gaze. “I wouldn’t let myself think of this moment. Not often. It just… it made everything so much harder. But when Idid… I always thought that Bea would be there.”
I can imagine her so clearly. The way that she would step forward with a warm welcome, the way she would help us all adjust with gentle words and a no-nonsense attitude in thatwayshe had – that way that made her my first and only choice for my daughter’s guardian.
And the thought is almost unbearable, the realization smashing into me once again as I turn my eyes toward the closed window - to where Dom sits quietly, giving us this space even as he nurses his own grief.
Because hissister, the only family that Domenico had left - she will not be there. Bea and Pepe are gone, murdered byMatteo and his men. Their small but strong family, broken and shattered in one hideous night.
“She was sogood,” I whisper. And my voice breaks. “I don’t know how to do any of this, Dante. Bea was… she deserved to be Alessia’s mother. And Alessia deserved to have someone like Bea.”
She deserves a mother who knows what she’s doing.
And me? I have no idea how to do any of it. Give me a gun, or a knife. Those are easy – but a living, breathing tiny human… she deserves better thanme.
None of this is fair. None of it.
