It’s not a single scent so much as a collage of them layered together: coffee burned too long on the burner, fried dough from a corner shop that’s somehow survived three decades, car exhaust and old brick and something faintly sweet that reminds me of Sundays when my mother used to open all the windows no matter the weather.
The car slows, then stops, and for a moment I don’t move, because memory rushes in too fast and too loud, and my chest tightens with it.
Home.
Not Giovanni’s house, although that place is… growing on me, especially since I discovered Isabella Bellandi didn’t have her claws anywhere near it.
No, this place doesn’t come with marble and glass and guards with earpieces.
But it’s still home.
The first and only true one I’ve known.
An exact replica of my Uncle Lazlo’s place next door, the house I grew up in looks exactly as it always has: a squat red-brick building with a narrow stoop and a stubborn refusal to be gentrified out of existence.
The paint on the door is chipped, the railing still wobbles, and I feel twelve again before I even step out of the car.
The door opens before I can knock.
“Lucia.”
Uncle Milo says my name like it’s a prayer and a reprimand rolled into one, and then he’s pulling me into his chest, squeezing hard enough that my feet lift off the ground. He smells like sawdust and aftershave and home.
“Jesus Christ,” he mutters. “You’re here. You’re real.”
Then he yanks me back, frowning as he takes me in from head to toe.
“Are you okay? Where the fuck have you been?”
Behind him, Uncle Lazlo freezes mid-step, his face going pale before it crumples into relief and fury in equal measure. Then he ambles towards me.
They remind me of Papa so much a lump jumps into my throat.
“For Chrissakes, let the girl breathe,pazzo!” He slaps his brother’s shoulder.
Then he narrows pale blue eyes at me.
“You don’t get to disappear for eighteen months, or ever again, you hear me?” he says hoarsely, then crushes me into his arms anyway. “You don’t get to do that to us.”
I cling to them both, blinking hard, my throat closing with everything I didn’t let myself feel while I was running.
I was an only child, but I was never alone.
Milo and Lazlo filled every gap my mother’s early death and my father working all hours left behind, every silence, every scraped knee and late-night panic.
They taught me how to throw a punch, how to balance a chequebook, how to stand my ground when men twice my size tried to talk over me.
They loved me like I was theirs. I loved them like the blood and surrogate fathers they were.
Inside, the house feels smaller than I remember, but warmer too, the walls lined with photographs that stop my heart mid-beat.
Me on Milo’s shoulders at a street fair. Me scowling in a karate gi while Lazlo pretends to be terrified. Birthday cakes, graduations, Sunday dinners where no one ever left hungry or quiet.
“I missed you,” I whisper, uselessly. “So much.”
Milo cups my face, his eyes fierce and shining.
“Don’t ever do that again.”
