My heart did something uncomfortable in my chest. "What did you tell her?"
"The truth." Donatella's eyes bore into mine. "I told her you're not easy to know. That you're private and controlled and intense in ways that can be overwhelming. That you have certain expectations, certain ways of showing you care that aren't always obvious."
I waited. There was more. I could see it in her face.
"I told her you're the best man I've ever met." Her voice softened on the words. "That when Mama died and Papa fellapart, you were the one who held us together. That you take care of people in ways they don't expect, ways they don't even realize they need until you're doing it." Her grip tightened on my wrist. "I told her you would take care of her too, if she let you."
Something cracked inside my chest. A small fissure in the walls I'd spent years building.
"Don't make me a liar." Donatella's voice was fierce now, her Caruso stubbornness blazing through. "She's been through something, Dante. Something that made her this scared, this careful, this convinced that she has to handle everything alone. She deserves someone who's going to treat her like she matters. Not like an asset. Not like a political alliance. Like a person."
I stared at my sister. At this woman who had grown up in the shadow of violence and chosen to be kind anyway. Who saw the best in people even when they couldn't see it in themselves.
She believed in me. Still. After everything.
The cold knot of duty that had been sitting in my chest since my father's death loosened. Not entirely—the weight was still there, would always be there—but something warmer was threading through it now. Something more complicated than obligation.
I thought about Gemma's white face when Enzo Valenti had looked at her. The way her hands had trembled. The naked fear I'd seen before her composure had slammed back into place.
Whatever had happened to her, he was part of it. I was certain of it now.
And when I found out what it was, I was going to burn something down.
"Thank you," I said finally. My voice came out rougher than I intended, scraped over emotions I wasn't ready to examine. "For reaching out to her. For telling me."
Donatella's face split into a smile—radiant, warm, the smile that had always made everything feel less impossible.
"You're welcome." She released my wrist and picked up her latte again, the serious moment passing as quickly as it had arrived. "Now drink your cortado and stop looking so terrified. You're Dante Caruso. You've faced down federal prosecutors and rival families. One beautiful, sad woman shouldn't be this scary."
I lifted the cortado to my lips. Drank. Let the bitterness ground me in the present moment.
"You told her I would take care of her."
"I did." Donatella's eyes met mine over the rim of her cup. "Are you going to prove me right or wrong?"
The question hung in the air between us. Simple on the surface. Complicated underneath.
“I’ll do my duty to her. Nothing more, nothing less.”
She sighed.
“Can’t you just . . . not be the don for a while?”
This marriage was just for business, nothing more. I had to fulfill my duty to the family and to the city.
It was my turn to sigh.
“Sadly,sorellina, I can't.”
Chapter 6
Gemma
Morewhiteroses.Theywere everywhere. Thousands of them, cascading from every pew and pillar, their petals catching the candlelight until St. Boniface glowed like something from a dream. Or a nightmare. I couldn't decide which.
Three days ago, I'd stood in this same church watching a casket lowered toward the ground. Now I stood at the entrance in a wedding gown, my father's arm locked through mine like a shackle wrapped in silk, and watched three hundred guests rise to their feet in a single rustling wave.
My heart was pounding so hard I was certain they could all hear it. A bass drum keeping time with the organ music, announcing to everyone assembled that the bride was terrified. That the beautiful sacrifice was having second thoughts.
