Salvatore pauses in the doorway like the house itself has put a hand to his chest. I know the feeling. Every room in here stillholds a version of us young enough to believe that wanting hard enough might build a future out of nothing.
I shrug out of my coat, take his, and hang both by the door. He watches my hands the whole time as if ordinary motions might be the most intimate thing he’s seen all night.
“Vodka?” I ask.
“Yes.”
I pour two and bring him one. Our fingers brush when he takes the glass, but he doesn’t flinch, and neither do I. Progress, maybe. Or maybe just age making cowards of us in new directions.
We sit next to each other, not touching but close enough that the option is there.
He drinks first, then he looks at me over the rim of the glass and says, “I didn’t come for absolution.”
“Good,” I say. “You’re not getting it.”
His mouth twitches. “I suspected as much.”
I lean back and study him in the firelight. “You’re limping worse.”
He glances down at his leg as if it belongs to someone else. “Bad weather.”
“Bullshit.”
“Yes,” he says. “Mostly.”
The honesty in that nearly makes me laugh again. I drink, set my glass down, and look at him. The silver in his hair. The hard mouth has gone softer at the edges because time has finally forced his face to admit what his posture still tries to hide. The eyes are still the same—thank Christ for that. If the eyes had changed, I might actually have believed I was talking to a ghost.
“What now?” I ask.
The question sits between us. Salvatore does not answer immediately. He looks into the fire for so long that I think he might refuse.
Then he says, “I don’t know.”
I let out a breath through my nose. “That’s almost comforting.”
“It shouldn’t be.”
“No,” I agree. “But after thirty years of pretending certainty while ruining both our lives, I’ll take honest confusion.”
That earns me a look; sharp, familiar, loved.
There it is—the unbearable truth of all of this. We are old, broken, full of ghosts, and we still know each other too well for comfort.
The betrayal remains. The exile remains. Lucia remains dead. Arseniy remains gone. Nikolaj remains a blade without a sheath. Nothing is repaired just because Salvatore knelt on my terrace and I kissed him for it.
But he is here, and tonight, for the first time in thirty years, when I say his name aloud, I do not have to imagine the answer.
twenty-six
Vincenzo
Iwalkdowntothecellar like I’m going to confession, and the only thing that makes it almost funny is that I’m the one people confess to.
The estate is quiet above me, all polished marble and silk curtains and staff who’ve learned how to become invisible when the family turns sharp.
They’ve had five years of watching me move through these halls without raising my voice, without losing control in public, without giving anyone the satisfaction of seeing the King of the Five Families behave like a man with blood in his mouth.
They know the difference between my calm and my peace. They also know not to ask questions when the guards rotate shifts twice in one hour, and the head of security walks with his jaw locked like he’s chewing through glass.
