I pulled into the driveway. Cut the engine. Sat for a moment in the dark, listening to her breathe, watching the house glow with the light we'd left on—warm and waiting, the way a home was supposed to be.
Then I got out. Walked around to her side. Opened the door.
"Come here."
She looked up at me. The rabbit still clutched to her chest, the tears still drying on her cheeks, the emerald earrings throwing small green sparks in the porch light.
I lifted her out of the car. Cradled her against my chest—one arm under her knees, one around her shoulders, the rabbit pressed between us—and carried her up the steps, through the door, over the threshold.
Like it was our wedding night all over again. Because in some ways, it was. The first night had been a performance—two strangers in formal clothes, acting out a ritual neither of them had chosen. This was the real thing. Two people who had chosen each other, carrying each other home.
The bedroom was soft with lamplight. I set her down on the edge of the bed. Knelt before her—that same position, the kneeling, the one that had become our private language—and slipped off her heels. One, then the other. Set them aside. Rubbed my thumb against the arch of her foot and watched her toes curl.
"Arms up."
She raised them. I drew the black dress over her head. Folded it. Set it on the chair. Reached for the shopping bag that held the silk nightgown—the dove grey one she'd chosen, the one that lived in the space between woman and girl—and drew it out of its tissue paper wrapping.
I pulled it over her head the way I'd pulled my t-shirt over her head after the bath. She lifted her arms with the same automatic trust, the same unselfconscious surrender. The silk fell around her like water. She looked down at herself. Touched the lace at the hem.
"Beautiful," I said. And meant it with every cell in my body.
She climbed into bed. Settled against the pillows. Arranged the rabbit beside her—propped against the headboard, its velvetears folded just so, its champagne fur bright against the white sheets.
"His name is Caravaggio," she announced.
Of course it was.
I laughed. A real laugh—the kind that came from somewhere beneath the don and the daddy and the man who'd spent the last forty-eight hours staring down the barrel of a war. The kind that just came because the woman I loved had named a stuffed rabbit after a Renaissance painter, and it was the most perfectly, absurdly right thing she could have done.
"Caravaggio," I repeated. "Does he prefer chiaroscuro or tenebrism?"
"Don't be reductive. He's a master of both."
I kicked off my shoes. Loosened my tie. Climbed in beside her—still mostly dressed, because this wasn't about me tonight. It was about her. About the ritual we'd been building, the nighttime architecture of safety and softness that had become the foundation of everything we were.
I reached for the nightstand. The Little Prince was there, the spine more creased than it had been a week ago, the pages soft from handling. I opened it to where we'd left off. Cleared my throat.
"'People have forgotten this truth,' the fox said. 'But you mustn't forget it. You become responsible forever for what you've tamed.'"
Her head found my chest. That spot—the hollow beneath my collarbone, the one that existed only for her. Caravaggio was tucked under her arm. Her breathing was already slowing—the deep, even rhythm of a body that had finally learned what safety felt like and was surrendering to it.
I read on. A few more pages. The prince and his rose. The desert and the stars. Words written for children that meant more the older you got, the more you'd lost, the more you understoodabout the terrible cost of loving something in a world that broke everything it touched.
Her eyes fluttered. Closed. Opened once more—just a sliver of brown, checking that I was still there. Finding me. Closing again.
I set the book down. Turned off the lamp. Sat in the dark with my wife's heartbeat against my ribs and the weight of everything I'd set in motion pressing against my skull.
Enzo wouldn't let this go. The evidence would surface—tomorrow, next week, next month. The careful, patient pressure would become something sharper. The phone calls would start. The construction contracts would collapse. The feds would come knocking with questions that had no good answers, and the name Caruso would become synonymous with a dead girl at a quinceañera and twenty years of blood money.
I knew this.
Knew it the way I knew the sound of Gemma's breathing, the way I knew the weight of my father's watch on my wrist, the way I knew that Santo was probably still awake somewhere in the city with his scarred fists and his barely leashed fury, waiting for the word.
War was coming. Not the old war, not my father's war—something new. Something that would test every alliance, every strategy, every ounce of the composure I'd spent my life perfecting. Marco was already working. I could feel it—the invisible machinery of my youngest brother's mind, turning over possibilities, building contingencies, preparing the battlefield with the ruthless intelligence that everyone underestimated and no one survived.
But tonight I was here. In the dark. With her.
Chapter 16
