"It's not done."
"Gemma."
She turned the book toward me.
It was me. Technically. In the same way that a fun-house mirror technically reflected the person standing before it. The jaw—my jaw, the jaw she'd once drawn with aching precision—was approximately the width of the page. The eyebrows were two dark caterpillars engaged in mortal combat above eyes that were somehow both too close together and too far apart. The hair was a dark cloud. The expression was one of supreme, constipated seriousness.
Underneath, in her careful handwriting:Don Caruso contemplates his morning eggs.
"I'm offended."
"You should be."
"Those aren't eyebrows. Those are architectural features."
"They're a portrait of your inner life, Dante. Dark. Bushy. Slightly uneven."
I laughed. The real kind. She grinned around a triangle of toast. Crumbs on my t-shirt. Colored pencil smudges on her fingers.
Marco had called an hour ago. The news was good. The Lombardi bridge loan was signed—favorable terms, quiet delivery, the kind of generosity that purchased loyalty without appearing to purchase anything. The DeLuca debt was forgiven. Tommaso DeLuca's hundred-and-twelve-thousand-dollar poker problem had dissolved overnight, and his father had already called Marco to express the particular gratitude of a man who understood exactly what had happened and was choosing to be grateful rather than resentful. Smart. The DeLucas were pragmatic people.
The groundwork was laid. The alliances were forming. Marco was already working on the Ferrantes—the hard one, the old-school one, the family that couldn't be bought and would have to be impressed.
Upstairs in the Bridgeport house across town, Carlo Moretti occupied the guest bedroom with the stubborn permanence of a man who had decided that proximity to his sister was non-negotiable and would remain in Chicago until the crisis was resolved or the city collapsed, whichever came first. Santo, one floor above him, was probably already ignoring Dr. Ferraro's instructions and attempting push-ups with stitches that were three days old.
The war was coming. But we would be ready. And today was Sunday.
I watched her draw another terrible portrait — this one of Marco, recognizable only by the exaggerated smile and a tiny speech bubble that readtrust me—and I felt the nervousness bloom in my chest like something opening.
I'd rehearsed this. In the shower. In the dark, with her breathing against my ribs. In the car, alone, driving back fromBridgeport with the city scrolling past and the words arranging and rearranging themselves in my mouth like furniture in a room I couldn't get right.
There was no right way. That was the problem. Every version sounded like a speech. Every framing felt like strategy. And this couldn't be strategy.
"Little one."
She looked up. Pencil suspended. Toast crumbs on her lower lip.
"There's something I want to ask you."
The pencil lowered slowly. The playfulness didn't leave her face, but something else arrived alongside it—the watchfulness, the careful attention of a woman who'd spent her life reading the air pressure in rooms full of dangerous men and had learned that tone mattered more than words.
"I want to marry you," I said.
She blinked. Then laughed — bright, startled, the kind of laugh that escaped before the mind could catch it.
"Dante. We're already married, silly."
"No. We were married." The distinction lived in every syllable. "Two families made a deal. A priest said words that neither of us chose. You wore a dress someone else picked out. I stood at an altar and waited for a woman I'd met once when she was twelve, and the whole thing was a transaction dressed in flowers and a reception I don't remember because I spent it watching you pretend to be happy."
Her laughter faded. Her eyes were wet. The pencil lay forgotten on the open book, a line of burnt sienna trailing across the page like a path that had lost its destination.
"That wasn't a marriage, Gemma. That was a business relationship. And I want —" My voice caught. The don's voice didn't catch. The daddy's voice didn't catch. But the man's voice did. "I want to choose you. And I want you to choose me. Notbecause our fathers decided. Not because a document requires it. Because we want to."
The kitchen was quiet. The coffee maker ticked.
"Yes," she said.
Simple. Clean. The word filled the room the way sunlight filled it — completely, without effort, without fanfare, without the elaborate performance that I'd feared and she'd outgrown.
