She put the kettle on with the ease of someone who had done this a thousand times before, then turned back to me and leaned lightly against the opposite side of the island.
“Pietro may have told you I’m not his biological mother,” she said.
I didn’t hesitate. “You’re his mother in every way that matters.”
For a second she just looked at me.
“Thank you,” she said quietly. “That means more than you know.”
I looked down at my hands. “It’s true.”
Her smile came back, gentler now. “You know, for a historian, you have very good instincts about family.”
“That is the first time anyone has complimented my instincts while I’m standing in a mafia kitchen.”
“Get used to disappointment,” she said lightly. “There are many unusual experiences still ahead of you.”
I laughed, and the sound had barely left me when voices drifted in from the hall.
Pietro’s first, lower and flatter than usual. Victoria’s right over the top of it.
“No.”
“Yes.”
“Absolutely not.”
“You’re not the boss of me.”
“That is sadly true.”
Lily tilted her head toward the doorway. “Ah. A family classic.”
A second later they came into view. Victoria was halfway up Pietro’s side like an extremely determined koala, and he was trying to maintain some version of dignity while also keeping hold of her before she launched herself. Sandro followed behindthem with the expression of a man who had seen this exact scene too many times to intervene unless blood was imminent.
“Dad said I could show Emily the winter garden later,” Victoria announced.
“I said you could ask,” Sandro corrected.
“Same thing.”
Pietro caught sight of me then, and whatever he was about to say to his sister died before it reached his mouth. His whole face changed, just enough that I saw it. Enough that Lily saw me seeing it.
Victoria noticed too, because apparently nothing escaped anyone in this house. She huffed and dropped back to the floor. “Oh, disgusting. He’s doing the look.”
“What look?” I asked before I could stop myself.
“The one where he forgets the rest of us exist,” she said, with the long-suffering air of someone deeply put upon. “Mom says it’s genetic.”
Sandro came up behind Lily then and rested one hand lightly at her waist, the gesture absentminded. She leaned into him without even glancing up, as natural as breathing, and suddenly the whole room seemed to make a different kind of sense. Power was still here, unmistakably. But so was this. This touch. This ease. This center.
Lily’s gaze slid to me, warm and far too perceptive.
“I know you’re wondering whether you can do this,” she said low enough that the others would not hear. “Pietro may not have said it aloud. I don’t think he quite knows yet that he’s asking that question with every breath.”
I swallowed and looked back at the small scene unfolding in front of me. Pietro was trying to pry Victoria away from the bread knife she had acquired, Sandro was pretending not to be amused, and the whole thing felt so absurd that it was hard to reconcile it with the world I knew they belonged to.
Lily followed my gaze. “This man in front of you,” she said quietly, and I knew at once she meant Sandro, not Pietro, “this is who he is the moment he crosses this threshold. He loves us enough to keep the darkness at bay.” Her voice dipped, steadier, older somehow. “And I love him enough that if one day I had to step into that darkness with him, I would.”
