“Take me to bed, husband.”
Husband. The word used to mean a cage. Not when she says it.
“Yes,tesoro.”
I take her hand. Lead her inside. Through the kitchen that still smells like Nonna Rosa’s bread. Down the hallway lined with family photographs. Past the study where I came back from the edge and the bedroom where she anchored me.
Into our room. Our bed. Our life.
The fairy lights glow through the window. The house settles around us, old wood and older memories.
My wife. My Donna. My family.
The city sleeps. The empire holds. And I am not my father. Not anymore.
My hand finds her hip in the dark. She presses closer, her breath warm against my throat. I hold on.
38
CASSIA
“Where are we going?”
Dante glances at me, the corner of his mouth twitching. “You’ll see.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only one you’re getting.”
I settle back into the leather seat, watching New Orleans blur past the window. The French Quarter fades behind us, all neon and noise, giving way to quieter streets. Shotgun houses with sagging porches. Corner stores with metal grates. The parts of the city tourists don’t photograph.
His hand finds mine on the console. Warm. Sure. I thread my fingers through his and stop asking questions.
The night air is thick with humidity, the kind that makes your clothes stick and your hair curl. Somewhere nearby, a jazz trumpet wails from an open window. This city never sleeps. It just changes tempo.
We’ve been back from Italy for weeks. Four weeks of settling into a life that still feels unreal. Sunday dinners with his family. Morning coffee in the garden. Nights tangled together in sheets that smell like us.
I keep smoothing my thumb over the band on my ring finger. Pressing down. Making sure it’s real.
It always is.
The car slows outside a building on a corner I don’t recognize. Modern glass and clean lines. Warm lights glowing from within even at this hour.
Three security cameras above the entrance. A parking lot that could hold fifty cars, empty now except for a patrol vehicle making rounds. Landscaping trimmed tight against the foundation.
The sign above the entrance reads CASA LUCIA in elegant green letters, with a smaller line beneath: Community Health Center.
I know this place. Not this specific location, but what it represents. Giada told me about the centers months ago, back when I was still learning the shape of this family.
Salvatore Santoro built the first one for Lucia twenty-five years ago, when she told him she wanted to give back to the city that had given them everything. State-of-the-art facilities in neighborhoods that needed them most. Open eighteen hours a day, six days a week. Staffed by doctors who cared.
His gift to her. His love made tangible.
Giada runs them now. Has since she finished her residency. Four centers across the city, serving thousands of patients who would otherwise have nowhere to go.
“What are we doing here?”
Dante cuts the engine. “Come see,tesoro.”
