"So you're the florist."
The voice is soft, warm, and entirely lacking the gravelly, violent undertone of the Costa men, but carrying the exact same stubborn cadence. There is a quiet strength in it—the voice of a woman who has survived things that would have broken anyone else and come out the other side holding her own name in both hands.
"Lucia," I say, leaning my hip against the massive stainless-steel worktable.
"My brother called me." A pause, loaded with a year's worth of distance compressed into a single breath. "First time I've heard his voice in twelve months. He told me about you—about your shop, about what the Bellantis did to it, about what he ordereddone to the men who burned it." Another pause, shorter this time. "He said your name, Sienna. Dominic Costa does not say names unless they mean something he can't control."
My chest tightens. In the background, I hear the faint, bright sound of a child's voice—high and insistent—followed by a low, male murmur that quiets it.
"He told me about the marriage," I say carefully. "About Calix. About the sniper he had aimed at the Gala."
Lucia's breath catches, barely perceptible. "He told you about the trap."
"He told me everything. The marriage, the plan to kill Calix, the fact that you didn't know." I grip the edge of the worktable, steadying myself. "He told me about Tyra."
The silence that follows is long and heavy. When Lucia speaks again, her voice has changed—thicker, rawer, stripped of the composure she opened the call with.
"He said her name?"
"He said he never picked her up. He said he saw the winter coat by the door every morning and couldn't bring himself to hold the little girl wearing it." My throat aches. "It's the thing that's eating him alive, Lucia. Not the marriage. Not the war. Your daughter."
A tremulous breath breaks against the phone's receiver. I hear the faint creak of a chair, the rustle of fabric—a woman sitting down under something she has carried for years.
"Tyra just turned five," Lucia says quietly. "She's reading already—actual sentences, not picture books. She has his stubbornness. She doesn't know she has an uncle who couldn't hold her. She just knows there's a man in Chicago that her mama praysfor every night." A soft sound—not quite a laugh, not quite a sob. "And Sera—my youngest—she's three months old. She has Jude's eyes and screams like a Costa."
"He told me about Tyra," I say softly. "He brought her up himself, before I knew you had a daughter. He wanted me to know."
Another silence. I can feel it stretching across a thousand miles.
"He carries it with him every second of every day," I say, keeping my voice low, fiercely protective of the silver-templed man who tore his own soul apart to build an empire. "What he did to you. What he thought he had to do to keep his brothers alive. He thinks it makes him irredeemable."
"That's the curse of the Costa men," Lucia murmurs, the words heavy with shared blood. "They love like it's a war. They think survival is the only currency that matters. When our parents were murdered, Dominic didn't just become the patriarch. He became the shield. He stopped being a brother and became a weapon. He deliberately hollowed himself out so the rest of us wouldn't have to."
"I know," I say, and I realize with a sudden, absolute clarity that I do. The interrogations, the cold calculations, the way he physically inserts himself between me and any open doorway. "I see him, Lucia. All of him."
"Good." The affection in her voice is thick, undeniable. "Because he needs someone who isn't afraid of the blood on his hands. Don't let him push you away when the guilt gets too heavy. Dig your heels in. Fight him back. I spent twenty-three years in that compound watching him turn to stone. He needs someone who can crack it."
"I already do."
"I can tell." She breathes out a soft sigh. Then, quieter: "He gave you the phone. That means more than you know. Dominic doesn't give people access to me. He spent twenty years making sure no one could reach me unless he controlled the channel. The fact that he put my number in your hands and said call her—" She stops. When she continues, her voice is thick. "That's the closest thing to surrender Dominic Costa is capable of."
I look down at the burner phone in my hand. It feels suddenly enormous against my palm.
"Keep him safe for me, Sienna," Lucia says. "Even the monsters need someone to come home to."
"I will," I promise, the vow settling deep in my marrow. "And Lucia?—"
"Yes?"
"Thank you. For the text you sent this morning. For reaching out to me when you didn't have to."
A beat. "You stayed after hearing the worst of him. That makes you family. Whether you're ready for that or not." The warmth in her voice is unmistakable—Costa warmth, expressed in short sentences and long silences. "I have to go. Sera's decided she's hungry, and Nick is giving me the look that means he's about to handle it himself, which never ends well for anyone."
Despite everything—the war, the blood, the black envelope still haunting my nightmares—I laugh. It is small and startled and entirely real.
"Goodbye, Lucia."
"Goodbye, Sienna. And remember—Costa women don't break. We just learn to bloom in armor."
