Page 2 of One Breath After Another

And for her, too.

For her peace of mind. Something she never had—not while her mother still walked and breathed.

Soon, Allegra wouldn’t.

Penny needed to start over first. Go back to the beginning and remember. To know that for a time, before all of this happened, she was happy. Or ... she was starting to learn how to be happy in her own way. Until her mother ruined that, too.

Some things never changed ...

Lost in her thoughts and still staring at the only home she had ever known, Penny was too distracted to hear the crack of twigs from her left. That was, until a little voice said, “Hey, Penny.”

1.

Luca

Six and a half years earlier ...

SOMETIMES, the present was the last place Luca wanted to be, but especially when nothing he did seemed to please anyone around him. That was never more obvious than when he sat at his family’s dinner table. Even a simple question wasn’t just a question for him to answer regardless of which parent asked it of him.

It was always an opening for a discussion. One of many, unfortunately. Discussions that made it very clear he wasn’t doing what someone thought he should be, but certainly when it came to his life choices.

“How were your classes this week?” his mother asked.

Luca stabbed the waffle on his plate with a fork, hoping that if he shoved the bite into his mouth and chewed for long enough, Katya would forget she even asked in the first place. Highly unlikely.

“All right,” he muttered around chews when she continued staring at him from her spot at the end of the table. “Missed a lecture and my morning classes but—”

“Education is important, Luca.”

Yeah, here we go, he thought.

“And you did want to go to college,” Katya added after a moment. “Why waste time and resources if you’re unwilling to commit to your choice?”

“I’m not wasting anything, Ma.”

“Don’t talk with your mouth full.”

Christ.

Maybe he had looked at this all wrong. Instead of using bites of food to deflect his mother’s questions about his failing attempt at law school—every good criminal family needed a defense lawyer, right?—she was using his full mouth as a chance to get her opinion in when he couldn’t talk back.

Sneaky.

But smart.

Also, not surprising.

Wives of made men learned different ways over the years about just how they could get their voices heard when it wasn’t meant to be in the discussion in the first place. His mother might have been given a bit more freedom in her place as his father’s wife—not all made men cared to have compliant, silent, pretty dolls for wives, after all—but she also knew where the lines were drawn when it came to the family business.

While his father watched them from his chair at the head of the table, he knew his mother was toeing the line by even bringing up the fact that his higher education was currently taking a hit as he stepped more and more into Zeke’s business.

The family business.

The mafia.

“I just think—”

“Katya,” his father spoke up, drawing all attention to Zeke when he picked up his coffee mug from the table. “Would you mind pouring me another cup? This one is cold.”