The conversation shifts to waiting. Alex performs elaborate complaints about hospital coffee. Dante walks a slow patrol with Antonia, rocking her back to sleep. Maria arrives with containers of food, immediately losing her composure when she spots me on screen.
“You should be here!” She deploys her Italian-English hybrid assault. “That baby needs his uncle!”
“Maria—”
“Don’t you Maria me, Nico Rosetti. You bring that girl to Chicago where we can feed you both properly. Look at you, starving boy, and her…” Maria peers at Marisol through the screen. “Skinny as spaghetti.”
Beside me, Marisol makes an amused sound.
Maria leaves, and I watch my family through this screen. Their chaos, their constant chatting over the top of each other, the way they maintain formation even in a hospital waiting room. Beside me, Marisol watches too, and I wonder what she thinks of us all. A unit that fights and protects in equal measure. Something she lost when her mother died.
The door opens in Chicago, and everything stops.
Luca stands in the doorway still in surgical gear, and I’ve never seen my brother like this. His hands, the weapons that have eliminated more targets than anyone in that room, are shaking. Actually shaking, like a sniper with a compromised grip.
His pale blue eyes, usually flat as a predator’s, are bright. Wet.
“Theodore,” he says, and his voice cracks on the name. Luca Rosetti, the family’s ultimate weapon, who discusses elimination over oatmeal, can’t get the words out. He tries again. “Seven pounds, four ounces. Faith is…”
He stops. Swallows. Cannot continue. The tremor in his hands intensifies.
“She’s perfect. He’s perfect.” The words emerge rough, wonder breaking through. “He has her eyes. She named him for her father. Judge Theodore Winters.”
The room erupts. Maria sobbing, Alex on his feet embracing Luca, whose hands are still trembling against Alex’s back. Ana is smiling against Dante’s shoulder while he holds their daughter tighter. Through the screen, I process it all. The joy, the celebration, the ache of not being there.
Marco pulls Luca into a brief, hard embrace, his hand gripping our brother’s neck with force that speaks louder than words.
“Uncle Nico needs to see him,” Luca says suddenly, remembering the connection.
He holds up his phone, showing the delivery room. Faith appears exhausted but radiant, and in her arms, Theodore. Tiny, wrinkled, face expressing newborn protest at the harsh world. Named for the judge who once stood against us, still estranged from his daughter, but now honored through his grandson.
“Say hi to Uncle Nico,” Faith says, voice warm despite exhaustion.
Something cracks in my chest. Uncle. Again. A title I wear at a distance. And I’m watching through a screen at 0400 hours in Miami while my family celebrates without me.
Beside me, Marisol’s breathing changes. When I check, tears track silently down her cheeks. She’s watching my family loveeach other, recognizing what she lost, what her mother’s death ended. Her hand covers mine.
The ache doubles. For the distance. For her loss. For the nephew I can’t hold. For the way this birth has cracked open the family’s most lethal weapon.
“He’s perfect, Luca,” I manage. “Strong genes. You did good.”
Luca actually smiles. Not his usual sharp thing but something soft, something recalibrating. “I’m a father. I have a son.”
The words impact everyone. This is Luca, who we thought was too damaged for any kind of normal life, holding his child, transformed into something none of us predicted.
Through the screen, I watch my family reorganize around this new arrival. The way they instinctively form a protective circle, fierce and proud. The noise of them, the love beneath the violence, the perfect chaos of Rosettis welcoming another generation.
And I’m here. Watching through a screen because I chose the woman beside me over family protocol, and she’s crying for the family she lost and the family I have.
Marco’s phone buzzes, and the temperature in that hospital room drops twenty degrees.
He checks the screen, and I watch my brother shut down and reboot. The warmth evacuates, replaced by winter. The Don returning with lethal suddenness.
Alex sees it first. “What?”
“Nothing.” Marco’s voice flatlines.
But Valentina caught a glimpse of the screen, saw the message before he turned the phone face-down with finality.
