“And instead?”
“Instead you sat in that chair.” I nod toward the seat across from the desk. “Told me you weren’t your sister. And a certainty in your voice made me believe you meant it.”
She’s quiet.
“I was so angry at Elena that day. For running. For leaving us to clean up her mess.” She traces a thread on the chair’s arm. “Didn’t realize until later that she did me a favor.”
“Hell of a favor. Marrying you off to a man who ends people for a living.”
“A man who ends people for a living but brings me coffee without being asked.” Her fingers trace patterns on my chest. “Who noticed I take it with two sugars. Who remembers that I hum when I’m concentrating and can’t sleep without the window cracked.”
“I notice everything about you.”
“I know.” She smiles. “That’s what got me. Not the power or the money or the compound. The fact that you saw me. No one had ever seen me before.”
I think about the woman who walked in here three months ago. Shoulders curved inward. Voice measured. Eyes that expected to be overlooked. And the woman in my arms now, who holds her head high, who speaks without hedging, who claimed her place in this family like she was born to it.
“You’re different,” I tell her. “From that first day.”
“So are you.” She cups my face. “You smiled at me last week. A real smile. Not the one you use for business.”
“I smile.”
“You smirk. You give that terrifying Don look. You do that thing where your eyes go cold and grown men start sweating.” Her thumb brushes my cheekbone. “But last week, when one of the new soldiers asked Renzo what you were like and I said, straight-faced, ‘He’s a sweetheart. Only threatens people before noon. Very reasonable after coffee.’ You laughed. Nonna Rosa dropped her cup.”
I remember that. The kid had gone pale, trying to figure out if she was serious. Cassia hadn’t cracked. Just sipped her espresso like she’d commented on the weather.
“You’re good for me,” I say. Low, because the admission costs too damn much. “Didn’t expect that.”
“What did you expect?”
“Someone useful. Someone who wouldn’t make waves.” I draw her closer. “Not someone who’d take apart everything I thought I knew about myself.”
She’s quiet. Then: “Are you scared? About tomorrow?”
“No.”
“Dante.”
Fuck.
She reads me like a book. Every wall I’ve built, she just walks through.
I exhale. Reach for the desk drawer. Pull out the photograph I’ve been staring at for the past hour.
Cassia takes it with care. Studies the faces. Papa and Mama. Young. Hopeful. Standing under the iron arch wrapped in jasmine. The same arch where we’ll stand tomorrow.
“They look so young,” she says, her voice a thread.
“Twenty-three.” I look at my mother’s face. The smile I can count on one hand. “Younger than us. And they had no idea what was coming.”
She traces the edge of the photograph with her fingertip. Like she’s touching stained glass.
“He kept it in that drawer for thirty-four years,” I say. “I found it when I took over the study. Couldn’t bring myself to move it.”
“You look like her. Around the eyes.”
Something lodges in my throat. My teeth grind against it.
