They arrive the way I imagine they do everything—engines first, then boots, then a wall of leather and wind-burned faces filling Lucia's yard around the fire pit. Nick, silver-haired and watchful, who shakes Alessio's hand like a treaty.
Rafe, scarred and silent, who nods at me once and then spends the evening making Sera shriek with delight by pretending she's invisible. Jude, who talks medicine with Alessio for one hour straight while both their wives-and-almost-wives exchange a look older than either family.
And trailing the pack, the young ones—prospects and hangers-on and one girl about nineteen who hovers at the firelight's edge with a soda she doesn't drink, watching everything, memorizing exits.
I know that stance. I invented that stance.
"Kaila," Lucia says, following my eyes. "Her brother wants to prospect for the club—the youngest they’ve ever considered. She's new to the mountain. Still deciding if it's real."
So I do what Sienna did to me in a Chicago kitchen a war ago: I carry over a plate she didn't ask for, and I sit down next to her without asking either, close enough to be company and far enough to leave the exits clear.
"I'm not staying long," she tells me, first thing. A door, closing.
"I said that too," I say, and hand her the plate. "Word of advice? Don't bet money on it. These people are patient."
She almost smiles. Down the fire, somebody's guitar starts up badly, and the flames climb, and two families that used to be strangers make one enormous, ridiculous noise under the pines.
"I’m staying," I say into his skin, the words a vow.
"I know," he murmurs, his hands tangling in my hair, holding me like the most precious thing he’s ever found.
We stand there as the sun disappears, casting the room in a deep, violet twilight. The amber in my ring catches the last of the light, glowing like a small, fierce coal. The girl who broke into a clinic in the West Loop, desperate and alone, is gone. She found her way out of the dark and into the light of a man who looked at her grief and didn't turn away.
The dresser is heavy, permanent oak. The bed is a kingdom. And Alessio? He's the gravity keeping me from spinning off into the dark. There are no shoes left on for a quick departure. There is only the mountain, the silence, and the promise of a morning where I don't have to run.
"Come on," Alessio says, gently pulling me toward the door. "Matteo is threatening to burn the kitchen down if we don't come down for dinner. And Dominic wants to toast to the new house."
"A toast," I say, a dry smile finally touching my lips. "Tell Dominic his vineyard books are a disaster. If he wants to go legitimate, he needs to stop laundering his ego through the irrigation expenses."
He groans, but there’s a twinkle in his eye. "You’re going to be the death of him."
"No," I say, stepping out into the hallway and letting him lead the way. "I’m going to be the one who keeps you all in line. Someone has to make sure the Costas don't accidentally buy a small country."
We walk down the stairs together, the sound of the family growing louder with every step.
It’s a beautiful, permanent noise. Dominic lifts his glass when we come in. Matteo shouts something about the honey being wrong. Somewhere a child shrieks with laughter, and the mountain holds all of it like it was built for the purpose.
Tomorrow, at dawn, in a stone chapel full of coral peonies, I marry into this noise. Forever.
Let the silence try to find me now.
30
ALESSIO
The mountain airbites at my neck, sharp and clean, a world away from the smog of Chicago. I stand on the porch of the stone chapel, hands shoved deep into the pockets of my suit trousers. The heavy, expensive fabric feels like armor for a war that is already over.
My knuckles strain against my skin as I grip a smooth piece of granite I found on the trail this morning—solid, unyielding, a reflection of the woman currently preparing inside the main house.
“Quit pacing, Alessio. You’re going to wear a trench into the stone.”
I don’t turn to look at Matteo. His voice is a familiar grit, his presence a heavy anchor at my back. He leans against the doorframe, the scent of fresh flour and sugar clinging to him even now. He’s been baking since three in the morning, a restless habit that has filled the new house with the smell of survival and a home finally claimed.
“I’m not pacing,” I growl, though my boots have traced the same three-foot line a dozen times. “I’m checking the perimeter.”
“The perimeter is fine,” Matteo says, his voice dropping into that low register he uses when the weight of the past gets too heavy. “Nico and Enzo are at the gate. Dante is with the cars. There are no Bellantis in these woods, brother. There’s nothing here but us and the trees.”
I turn, my gaze sweeping over him. He looks different in the light of Pine Valley. The shadows under his eyes have faded. The tension in his jaw has smoothed out. We all look different. We look like men who have finally set down a burden carried for twenty years.
