We didn't talk. Not that first time. He just sat there, eating his food, like it was the most normal thing in the world to share a meal with the homeless kid his brother dragged in off the streets.
After that, I started following him.
I didn't mean to. It just happened. Wherever Lorenzo went, I found myself going too. He never told me to leave. Never asked why I was there. He just made space for me.
When he trained, I trained beside him. When he studied the family business, I listened from the corner. When he went to meetings with his father, he started bringing me along.
"You're quiet," he told me once. "That's useful. People forget you're there. They say things they shouldn't."
It was the first time anyone had told me my silence was worth something.
The Sartori family back then was different. Giuseppe was still alive. Riccardo too. The empire was blooming. Growing. Expanding into new territories every year.
Not gently. Never gently.
I watched men disappear. Watched deals get made in blood. Watched the family build its power on the bones of anyone who stood in their way.
But I also watched something else.
I watched Giuseppe kiss his wife's forehead, Aria, every morning before breakfast. Watched Riccardo teach his younger siblings how to shoot, patient and careful, never raising his voice. Watched Aria and Giulia cook massive dinners for twenty people and refuse to let anyone leave the table hungry.
I watched a family love each other.
And I didn't know what to do with that.
"I never talked to anyone about this," I tell Marina.
She's stopped crying. Her eyes are red, her cheeks wet, but she's listening. Really listening.
"About what?"
"About any of it. How I felt. What it was like." I shake my head. "I didn't know people did that. Talked about feelings. I thought you just... carried them. Buried them. Kept moving."
Marina's quiet.
"No one ever asked?"
"No one ever asked."
The words hang in the air between us.
"I didn't realize I could love people," I say. "After my family died, I thought that part of me was gone. Burned out. I thought I was just surviving. Going through the motions until something killed me."
I look at my hands. The scars on my knuckles. The calluses from years of fighting.
"But I did love them. The Sartoris. I loved them entirely."
Marina shifts on the couch. Her hand moves toward me, then stops. Pulls back.
"Aria was like a mother to me," I say. "She never treated me different. She treated me like one of her children. Made sure I ate. Made sure I slept. Yelled at me when I did something stupid."
I almost smile at the memory.
"I had brothers again. Lorenzo. Bruno. Pietro. Nico. Even Riccardo. Trained with me. Trusted me with their lives."
I pause.
"And Vittoria. I had a sister too."
