The commotion starts before I see them.
Raised voices echo through the compound's foyer.
I'm already moving toward the noise when Pietro appears at my shoulder.
"Brace yourself," he mutters.
"For what?"
The front doors burst open.
Aria Sartori sweeps into the compound like a Mediterranean storm. All silk and barely contained fury. At sixty-three, our mother still moves like she owns every room she enters. Because she does. Her silver-streaked dark hair is pulled back severely, emphasizing her cheekbones.
Behind her, Valentino fills the doorway. My cousin stands six-three, broad as a wall, with the kind of weathered look that comes from years under the Sicilian sun. Gray threads through his black hair at the temples now. His dark eyes scan the foyer before he even crosses the threshold. Old habits. We share that particular paranoia.
His mother, my Aunt Carmela, trails behind them. Aria's widowed sister is softer around the edges, quieter, but her eyes hold the same steel. She lost her husband twenty years ago. Grief made them roommates in a Sicilian villa.
"Where is he?" Aria demands. No greeting. No pleasantries. Just the question that's been burning holes in her since she boarded the plane.
Pietro steps forward. "Mama?—"
"Don't." She holds up one hand, diamond rings catching light. "Don't Mama me, Pietro. I asked you a simple question."
"Bruno's in his room." Pietro's voice stays level. Steady. The Don mask firmly in place. "He's... having a difficult morning."
Aria's expression flickers. Just for a second. Then the steel returns.
I watch her carefully. This is only her third time back since moving to Sicily after our father's heart attack. She fled Chicago like the city itself had wounded her, which in a way, it had. Every street corner held Giuseppe's memory. Every restaurant, every church, every shadow of the life they'd built together for forty-five years.
She came back once. When Bruno finally opened his eyes after six months in a coma.
She lasted three hours.
Seeing her youngest son in that wheelchair, his legs useless, his eyes full of rage and pain broke something in her. Because Bruno in that chair meant Riccardo in the ground. Same day. Same bullets. Same wedding that was supposed to be a celebration and became a massacre instead.
"I'll see him now," Aria announces. Not a request.
"He doesn't want visitors." The words come out before I can stop them.
Aria's gaze locks onto me. "Nicolò."
I hate my full name. Always have. But she's the only one who uses it, and I've never had the balls to correct her.
"Mama." I dip my head in acknowledgment.
"You think I care what Bruno wants?" She crosses the distance between us. Up close, I can see the exhaustion beneathher perfect makeup. The shadows under her eyes. "I carried that boy for nine months. I raised him. I will see my son."
"He's not a boy anymore." I keep my voice flat. Neutral. "He's a man who's been through hell and doesn't know how to come back from it. Pushing him won't help."
"Don't you dare tell me how to handle my own children." Aria's voice is ice. "I lost one son. I will not lose another to his own bitterness."
I don't react. Just hold her stare until she looks away first.
Valentino clears his throat. "Perhaps some coffee first? It was a long flight."
Aria smooths her silk blouse, composing herself. "Coffee. Yes. And then I see Bruno." She sweeps past us toward the kitchen, Carmela following in her wake.
Pietro exhales slowly. "You're lucky she didn't use her shoe." He claps my shoulder, squeezing once before letting go. "Valentino. Good to see you, cousin."
