A year later
We’ve built a life in the southern part of Italy.
The mornings here begin slowly, as if the land itself refuses to rush. Light drips in through the linen curtains like honey over the ridges of the hills outside.
The window is cracked open, and the breeze carries the scent of wild thyme and warm stone, the rustle of fig trees and birdsong echoing over the valley.
The house rests at the edge of the world, or at least it feels like it. It’s remote enough that no one passes by unless they are invited. It’s high enough up that the sky feels closer than the village, which lies down the slope and past the olive groves, quiet and small, and kind.
The house is carved from stone the color of old parchment, with pale green shutters that creak when the wind shifts through the valley.
There’s no gate, no security system, no need for whispered passwords or quiet checks beneath the car. Just a low wall lined with rosemary and wild thyme, and a gravel path that crunches softly under our feet every morning when Gabriel runs out with his backpack half-zipped and his hair still damp.
No one knows our names beyond what we’ve given them. A place where no one remembers the headlines, or the bloodlines, or the men who used to speak our names like warnings.
The hills stretch wide and olive-green, and the sun burns slow and gold against the shutters by midday.
On Sundays, the church bell rings lazily, like even God has given himself permission to rest here.
The inside is small, but the house breathes well. A kitchen with sun-warmed tiles, a worn wooden table that still carries the grooves of whatever life came before us.
The bedroom smells of linen and rosemary, and the living room is scattered with Gabriel’s comic books and dog-eared notebooks, his sketches sometimes left out on the counter where Enzo pretends not to smile when he sees them.
There are no cameras. No armed men outside. No one we report to, and no one who knocks after dark unless it’s the neighbor’s daughter asking if Gabriel can come play soccer by the field.
Aria Lombardi doesn’t exist here.
Not the way she used to.
And Enzo—Enzo hasn’t touched a gun in almost a year, except the one he keeps locked in a slot beneath the floorboards, just in case the past forgets how to stay buried.
In the mornings, we drink coffee on the stone steps while the cicadas start their endless song.
Gabriel feeds the chickens that came with the house, and Enzo reads the newspaper like he isn’t scanning for old ghosts hidden between the lines.
He is slower now, not in the way of weakness, but in the way of men who have learned how to savor peace without constantly reaching for the next fire to put out.
He grows tomatoes in the back garden. I paint sometimes.
We take walks in the early evening, the sky split open with pink and rust, Gabriel racing ahead on his bike while Enzo’s hand brushes mine like it always has, quietly, without ceremony, like something that belongs to us.
Sometimes, when the nights come too quiet and the wind picks up through the olive trees, I find him sitting alone on the porch, eyes far away. He still thinks about the men he left behind. The things he did to survive. But he never apologizes for them. I never ask him to. We earned this silence. We bled for it.
I wake before either of them.
It happens often.
There is a kind of peace in the quiet, in the way this house breathes when it still holds sleep. I pad across the terracotta tiles barefoot, careful not to disturb the creaking boards in the hallway, and stop at the doorway to Gabriel’s room.
He is curled sideways in bed, tangled in his sheets, his hair a wild halo, the stuffed lion still clutched in his arms though it is more thread than fabric now. He is taller than he was, a little sharper in the angles of his face, but he is still our boy. Still the child who clung to me in the dark when the world was closing in.
I press a kiss to his forehead and pull the blanket higher over his shoulder. He doesn’t stir.
Downstairs, the kitchen holds warmth from the bread I baked last night.
There are herbs drying near the window, strung up by Enzo in a line of curling green.
I make coffee slowly, the old way, with the stovetop pot that hisses as it boils.
The sound of it, the scent, the way it fills the corners of the house—it settles me in a way nothing else ever has. I pour two mugs, one dark and strong for him, one with milk and a little sugar for me, and then carry them back upstairs.
The bedroom is quiet when I return. The sheets are half-flung across the bed, the window wide open, the wind curling the curtain like it wants to be part of the dream.
Enzo lies sprawled on his back, bare chest rising and falling with the kind of calm that still makes my throat ache. His scars are soft now, pale like whispers against his skin. I sit beside him and brush my fingers down his arm. He stirs, turns his face toward me, and blinks slowly.
‘You’re up early,’ he murmurs, voice rough with sleep.
‘I always am.’
‘Is he still asleep?’
‘Like the dead.’
Enzo’s mouth tilts into a smile as he sits up and reaches for the coffee. He takes a sip and sighs like it means something more than caffeine.
I watch him, every movement familiar and unhurried. There is a streak of silver near his temple now, and when I tease him about it, he just shrugs and says it took years to earn. He is not the same man I met on the marble floors of that estate, but he is still him. Still mine.
‘What are you thinking about?’ he asks, watching me over the rim of his mug.
‘How quiet it is here,’ I say, tucking my legs beneath me. ‘How different everything is.’
His hand finds mine. His fingers still feel like fire, like memory. ‘It isn’t so different,’ he says. ‘You’re still bossy. Gabriel still refuses to eat olives. And I still want you more than I know how to say.’
I laugh softly, but my chest twists, because it is too much sometimes, the way we are happy, the way we are safe. After everything.
‘I used to think we’d never get here,’ I whisper. ‘That it was too far. That we’d burned too many bridges.’
‘We built new ones.’
His thumb brushes along the inside of my wrist. ‘We paid for this peace,’ he says quietly. ‘But we earned it.’
I nod, swallowing against the emotion that catches there. ‘And you,’ I say, voice trembling, ‘you really don’t miss it? The estate? The blood? The silence?’
‘I miss espresso that doesn’t taste like it was brewed in a tin can,’ he says dryly. ‘And I miss the look on Luca’s face when I called his bluff.’
‘But the rest?’
He leans in and kisses me, slow and soft and sure. ‘I only miss the part of it that gave me you.’
I close my eyes and rest my forehead against his. We stay like that for a long time, the sun rising higher, the breeze carrying the scent of rosemary through the windows, the sound of distant bells from the village drifting up to meet us.
This house is not large. It has no guards, no gates, no cameras. But it is ours. Built with quiet and grit, with forgiveness and persistence, with late-night confessions and whispered promises made beneath bruised skies.
Later, Gabriel will wake. We will take him to school, the one with the climbing wall and the art room that smells like paint. I will bake bread again, and Enzo will try to fix the roof and swear when he falls through it. The world will keep moving. But for now, I sit beside the man I love and listen to the silence of a life we fought to keep.
It sounds like everything we never thought we’d have.
The table is still cluttered with the remnants of dinner—plates scraped clean, wine glasses tipped with gold at the edges, the candle flickering low and lazy between us.
The kitchen smells like garlic and lemon, like rosemary roasted in olive oil, like laughter that has not yet been washed away.
The last of the bread is torn into soft pieces in a linen basket, and Enzo’s fork rests on the rim of his plate, abandoned when conversation overtook appetite.
Outside, the wind has slowed. The olive branches no longer murmur against the shutters. Somewhere in the village below, a bell chimes the hour, a soft metallic echo swallowed by the hills.
Gabriel has gone to Alistair’s house, a school friend with a soccer ball and a labrador puppy, and he will not be back until morning.
Which means this evening belongs to us.
Enzo leans back in his chair, the white fabric of his shirt wrinkled and soft against his skin, his sleeves rolled to the elbows, his mouth curved into the faintest smile. It’s the kind that always undoes me. He watches me with the patience of a man who no longer needs to chase what he wants, because he already has it in his hands.
‘You’re staring,’ I murmur, reaching for my wine.
‘I’m memorizing,’ he says. ‘It’s different.’
I shake my head, but I smile. I feel it, rising slow and warm from the base of my spine to the corners of my mouth. I sip the wine, rich and dark and made in the valley behind our house, and I let it linger on my tongue. ‘What exactly are you memorizing?’
‘The way you look when you’re full and happy and wearing that old sweater you refuse to throw out.’
‘It’s comfortable.’
‘It’s faded.’
‘So am I.’
He stands then, slow and quiet, and moves around the table. His hand slides across the small of my back as he takes my wineglass and sets it gently on the counter. I turn to him, but he’s already in front of me, already leaning down, already brushing his mouth against mine like he’s waited all evening to do just that.
The kiss is soft at first. Then deeper. More. My fingers rise to his collar, curling into the fabric, and I feel him breathe into the space between us like he’s trying to inhale something that has no name. He lifts me without asking. He just slides his hands beneath my thighs and pulls me up, and I wrap my legs around him, my arms around his neck. The world tilts with us. The kitchen disappears. The wine. The candles. The night.
He carries me to the bedroom like I weigh nothing, like he’s done this a thousand times and will do it a thousand more. The lamp on the nightstand is already on, casting the room in amber and linen and the low glow of familiarity. He sets me down on the bed, kneeling over me, his hands braced on either side of my shoulders, his mouth brushing mine in that way that always starts something and never finishes it.
I reach for the buttons of his shirt and undo them slowly, one by one, my fingers grazing his skin as I go. He watches me, eyes dark and steady, chest rising beneath my hands. When the shirt falls open, I trace the lines of his scars, the soft curve of his ribs, the rough strength in the hollow of his collarbone.
‘You’re so quiet,’ I say, my voice barely above a breath.
‘I’m trying to remember if this is real,’ he replies.
I pull him down to kiss him again, longer this time, until I feel the edge of him unravel, until I feel the tension slip from his shoulders and his body melt into mine.
I tug my sweater over my head, toss it aside. His hands are on my waist, my ribs, my back, warm and sure and reverent. I arch into him as he pulls my leggings down my thighs, his mouth trailing behind his fingers, mapping every inch of me like a promise.
There is no rush in the way he moves. Only purpose. Only heat. He undresses slowly, methodically, never taking his eyes off mine. When we are bare, skin to skin, he lowers himself onto the bed beside me and pulls me into his lap, my knees bracketing his hips, my body already aching for him, already ready.
I sink down onto him with a gasp that turns into his name. He groans, low and broken, his head falling forward onto my shoulder. We stay like that for a moment, just breathing, just holding each other, hearts aligned, the rhythm of something ancient and holy rising between us.
Then I move.
I ride him slow, steadily, the motion of our bodies unhurried and deep. His hands grip my hips, his lips find my throat, and every time I roll my hips, his breath catches like he’s surprised I still have this power over him. I kiss him between each thrust, my fingers tangled in his hair, my body tightening with the slow build of pleasure.
‘You feel so good,’ he murmurs.
‘So do you,’ I whisper, leaning forward to kiss him again, slower now, deeper.
I shift my hips, grinding down just enough to make him groan again, and then he flips us, lays me down on the sheets and braces himself above me. He drives into me with a force that makes my breath stutter. The bed shifts beneath us, the sound of skin against skin filling the room, the scent of sweat and salt and sex thick in the air.
He moves like he needs to remember this for the days that might come when we are not young and hungry and lost in each other. He moves like he is writing a vow into the curve of my hips, the line of my throat, the soft place behind my knees.
When we come, it is together, my body pulsing around him as he buries himself deep with a groan that sounds like everything he’s never said. He collapses onto me, breathless, shaking, and I wrap my arms around him, my mouth at his temple, my heart wide open.
Later, as the night deepens and the world narrows again to this room, to this bed, to this man, I trace the line of his spine with my fingertip and whisper what I never tire of saying. ‘I love you.’
His answer is a kiss to the inside of my wrist. And a quiet, ‘Always.’
He wraps me in his arms, holding me still till my eyelids shut. Just as the sleep is about to become deep, I hear his phone ring.
Not the usual one, the one Luca handed in case there would ever be an emergency.
Both of us sit up straight at the same time.
He pats my arm as he reaches for the phone, answering it. My heart begins hammering, and it is all I can do to convince myself that Luca Salvatore will not compel my husband to return to a life of bloodshed and war.
Enzo frowns and slips out of bed as Luca’s voice fills his ear. I watch him walk to the window, one hand on his hip as he looks out at the little garden just beyond.
When he finally ends the call and returns to me, the first thing he says is, ‘Don’t worry, my love. It isn’t what you think,’ and I sigh audibly.
‘What is it?’ I ask, my voice still tinged with anxiety.
‘I’ve just been invited to a wedding,’ Enzo replies quietly.
‘Whose?’ I ask, squinting up at him.
He meets my gaze, then. ‘Dante Salvatore.’
My frown deepens. ‘The youngest brother, the one who’s literally the worst playboy I’ve ever met? Why is he getting married?’
Enzo shrugs and drops his phone on the bed before getting in and wrapping me in his arms. ‘Turns out he got the wrong woman pregnant. Who knows, maybe he’ll take it in his stride.’
My fingers tighten slightly against Enzo’s back, my heartbeat picking up even as I try to quiet it. Something is moving. I can feel it beneath my skin, the old rhythm of tension threading through calm. The stillness before thunder.
Enzo senses it too. I can tell by the way his jaw has gone rigid, by the way his breath slows like he’s bracing for something he cannot yet name. But neither of us speak.
I press my face into the crook of his neck, inhaling the scent of soap and salt and the faintest trace of iron that never seems to leave him.
Dante Salvatore, as I remember, is the most beautiful of the three brothers, but his personality is shit.
If he’s getting married, it’s not for love.
Something is brewing in Nuova Speranza.
