Page 68 of One Breath After Another

Over his shoulder, the man replied, “Don’t mention it.”

Zeke’s gaze came back to Luca but before his father could say anything more, Katya and Catherine—Naz’s mother—came rushing into the entry.

“They’re coming—they’re at the gates!”

The guests of the hour had arrived, it seemed. Any family business could wait.

• • •

“CONGRATS, ROZ,” LUCA murmured against the top of his little sister’s head.

His sister beamed. For him, yeah, but also because the crowd gathered in front of the massive, beautifully decorated backdrop were taking pictures. Of them. The siblings, but also a million other shots, too.

With a variety of interchanging family, with the pregnant lady, or of the expectant father ... with his mother, her mother, and anyone else that decided to join in. Luca was about done with the pictures because he had done his part already and was told as much by Roz, but he’d do a few more.

For his sister.

Of course.

And hell, if she could stand there basically nine months pregnant for a million pictures, then who cared if his shoes pinched?

Roz swung around to hug Luca’s middle with a squeeze for the next picture, and he laughed before kissing her on the top of her head.

Her shampoo was still the same as it had been when they were teenagers. Strawberries and cream. He connected that scent—anywhere—to three things: family, love, and his sister. Despite being the older of the two, he could count on one hand the number of times Roz actually let him feel like her older brother. Maybe it was that singular year that separated the two, but it really did feel like they grew up together.

Staring down at his sister, Luca let out a slow breath before telling her, “At some point, you shot far ahead of me, huh? Went out and grabbed a career, and then started a whole family while I was ... when did I look away, Roz?”

Because shit ...

“Remember when we were still kids and when I started getting my own friends, you made me let you hang out with us because, as you said, ‘I gave you friends first!’ Or some shit like that. You weren’t wrong, though.”

Roz grinned, a line of wetness glistening in her eyes. “Don’t make me cry. You will never hear the end of it when they have to stop the pictures just to fix my makeup.”

“None of you need that shit, anyway.”

And it was true.

The men around them?

Loved all their women—unapologetically. A lot of things could be said about a good many of them—they were heroes to some and villains to many more—but no one could say they didn’t love their women with everything they had.

Luca had a lot of problems with his own father—or maybe it was just the growing pains of life that he was trying to get through—but he was also grateful for Zeke more than he could explain. The man that drove him crazy with expectations was also the same man who, without excuse, treated the women in his life with utmost respect and loyalty.

The same way he did for Cosa Nostra. Like the women who allowed them to share their lives were worth the same oath that they coveted to only those who could be made. The importance of those things wasn’t lost on Luca.

“Turn and smile again, guys!” someone shouted from the crowd of semi-pro photogs. Luca smirked as they turned, amused at his own dry humor.

“That’s not a smile, Luca,” he heard his mother call.

Fuck.

Luca smiled alongside his sister for another round of shots. That’s when Roz decided to tell him, “You and Penny ... you’ll be good godparents for him. And Luca?”

He turned her way. “Yeah?”

“I didn’t shoot ahead of you. Right now, we just want different things. And there’s nothing wrong with not being sure what it is you want, either.”

Trust his sister to be the one person who saw Luca like cellophane. Completely see-through. She always knew what was in his heart ... another by-product of the two of them growing up together as they did.