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Is he trying to flirt while bleeding out?

Enzo suddenly links his arms with mine and shakes his head. “Let’s get back home. He’ll be okay.”

I nod, and we head out together.

Sophia

Back home, Enzo checks the security feeds, reviewing patrol routes and ordering the interrogation of our new failed-assassin-turned-prisoner. While he goes through the rituals of a mafia padrino, I let him have them. In return, I bring him tea, curl beside him on the couch, and silence becomes our language.

When he’s done, I take the glass from his hand. “Come to bed.”

His answer is a soft command draped in surrender. “Make me.”

I wrap my arms around his neck and press my lips to his. Our kisses taste like honey and smoke, the kind of sweetness that scars. He touches me like a prayer, reverent and rough all at once. There’s no frenzy in our movements. He holds back until I pull him closer, until restraint becomes unbearable. Love and power blur, not as battle but as balance.

Afterward, the room smells of candle wax. His hand finds the curve of my belly again. “She’s strong,” he murmurs.

“She kicks like you,” I reply.

We laugh, quiet and breathless.

The nursery glows under a moon-shaped lamp. I guide his hand to the flutter beneath my skin. The first time he felt it, he stopped breathing. Tonight’s no different. The man who once terrified half of New York stands still, trembling at the proof of new life. His thumb traces small, reverent circles. He doesn’t speak. He never does when the emotion’s too big. But his silence is full.

Around us, the world spins on.

Gio’s protection agency now guards politicians instead of smugglers.

Billy’s dating one of my teachers. The man who never finished high school now spends his evenings with someone who grades papers for a living. Pretty ironic.

Every corner of this house hums with stories being rewritten.

Peace, it turns out, is noisy in its own way.

That night, Enzo gives me a small velvet box. Inside, Nonna Rosa’s ruby ring—the Benedetti crest I left behind when I ran—gleams.

But something’s different. I turn it toward the lamplight and see the new, delicate engraving inside the band.

Sempre. Always.

The air leaves my lungs. I remember pulling this ring off my finger the night everything fell apart and leaving it on the dresser, along with my wedding ring and that note, like a goodbye. Now it’s back in my possession, not as a symbol of the family I married into, but as something he chose to return.

He slips it onto my finger with quiet, unhurried care. Not an obligation this time. Not legacy. Just us.

Tears blur my vision. “You kept it.”

“I kept everything,” he says simply. His voice cracks on the last word.

His thumb brushes over the ruby like he’s afraid I’ll disappear if he lets go.

When I kiss his hand, the salt of my tears mixes with the faint taste of metal and skin. Our eyes lock, and the tension that never truly died flares to life again.

Later, heat replaces everything.

It starts the way it always does between us. Quietly, then all at once.

His warm hands slide under my shirt at a leisurely pace, and I instinctively lean into him. He reads the action the way he reads everything about me—immediately, accurately—and tugs me closer. As his mouth finds my neck, I tip my head back and give him more room. His teeth graze my pulse point until I shiver.

“Enzo.”