The dining room erupts in warmth and chaos. Ana bounces baby Antonia in her lap, the child grabbing at her mother's dark hair with chubby fingers. The baby looks like Dante, serious even at four months old, those dark eyes taking in everything.
"Sofia!" Ana rises carefully, mindful of the baby, and embraces me one-armed. She smells like milk and baby powder and that light perfume she's worn since Rome. "We've been so worried."
Faith struggles to stand from her chair, her belly round with promise. Eight months now, maybe more. Luca's hand settles on her shoulder, gentle, keeping her seated. The casual tenderness in the gesture makes my chest ache; even my psychotic brother has found something soft to protect.
"Don't get up," I tell Faith, leaning down to kiss her cheek. She smells like vanilla and old books, probably from her library work she insists on continuing despite Luca's protests.
"You look well," she says, but there's something in her eyes, a recognition maybe, woman to woman, of secrets held.
Emma rises despite Alessandro's protests, moving carefully but determinedly toward me. The guilt crashes through me. She got shot and nearly died because of me, because of my weakness in believing Alexei's trap.
"I'm so glad you're okay," she whispers as she hugs me, and I want to tell her I'm not, I'm so far from okay I can't see it anymore.
"How are you healing?" I manage.
"Good. Better. Driving Alex crazy with my stubbornness." She pulls back, studies my face with those sharp eyes that survived years of servitude before Alessandro claimed her. "Sit next to me. I want to hear everything."
Everything. The word sits like lead in my stomach.
"You don't have to pretend with me." Emma's voice is soft while voices roar around us. "I know what it's like to be caught between worlds."
My hands still. "I don't know what you mean."
"I was a servant who fell for a Rosetti. Everyone told me it was impossible. Wrong. That I was betraying my class, my people. Sometimes the heart doesn't care about sides."
I pull out the seat beside her and sit. "Emma—"
"I'm not asking you to tell me anything. I'm just saying—" She meets my eyes. "Whatever's happening, you're not alone. And you're not as good a liar as you think."
My throat closes. I shouldn’t have sat next to Emma, she was always too observant.
I accept a glass of water from Alessandro, and suddenly I'm fifteen again, before the massacre, before Mikhail, before I became someone who lies to the only people who matter. Maria bustles in with platters that smell like childhood: her famous ragù, fresh bread still steaming, the lemon-caper pasta she only makes for celebrations.
"Too skinny!" she declares, piling food on my plate. "What they feed you over there? Air? Men don't know nothing about feeding people."
If only she knew how Alexei feeds me, by hand sometimes, watching my mouth take each bite like it's foreplay, making me wet just from the attention. This afternoon he'd fed me strawberries in bed, juice running down my chin, then licked it off until I was gasping his name.
"The food is fine, Maria," I say, forcing myself to eat despite my churning stomach.
"Bah. Fine is not good enough. You need proper food. Soul food." She pinches my cheek like I'm still five. "I make you tiramisu for dessert. Your favorite."
The normalcy of it all makes me want to scream. Here's my family, whole and warm and worried about me, while I sit here knowing I deleted intelligence that could improve their lives, strengthen our hold over the city. Knowing I chose their enemy over them.
God, I hope I find the strength to stay here, to let that midnight deadline come and go, and then settle back into my own life.
"So," Marco says once everyone's served, his voice carrying that particular gravity that signals the shift from family to business. "Tell us about the compound."
The table quiets, even baby Antonia seeming to sense the change. All eyes turn to me: my brothers who trust me, their wives who welcomed me, this family I'm about to betray with every word.
I recite what I've prepared, accurate enough to be believable, vague enough to be useless. Guard rotations that Alexei has already changed. Security protocols he updated the moment I left. I give them the bones while keeping the meat for myself, for him.
"The compound is a fortress," I say, cutting my pasta mechanically. "Three levels of security. Electronic locks on everything."
"Weak points?" Nico asks, but his eyes are on my hands, watching how they tremble slightly around my fork.
"The east side has older cameras. Slight delay in the coverage." A truth that will be false by tomorrow; Alexei mentioned upgrading them this week.
"And Volkov himself?" Marco's voice stays neutral but his eyes are sharp. "His state of mind?"
