Chapter 20 - THE FAMILY THAT CAME HOME
One year after the memorial, the DeLuca mansion looked different.
The old war room had become a library.
The basement passage was renovated and left unlocked.
Lorenzo refused to seal it.
Some doors, he had learned, were dangerous only when people pretended they did not exist.
Lucia was walking now.
Running, actually.
Mostly toward objects she wasn't supposed to touch.
Emma considered herself responsible for teaching Lucia everything important.
How to hide cookies.
How to draw rabbits.
How to make Lorenzo say yes after Isabella had already said no.
Sophia often found them together on the terrace.
The feared Il Silenzioso on his knees while two little girls put flowers in his hair.
No one in New York would have believed it.
Lorenzo preferred it that way.
The criminal empire bearing his father's name was nearly gone.
DeLuca Holdings survived as a legitimate shipping and real-estate company under outside oversight.
Lorenzo had lost money.
Influence.
Men who once called themselves loyal.
He had gained something he had never possessed before.
A life he did not have to hide from his daughter.
Isabella eventually returned to the cemetery with him.
They stood between the two empty graves.
Lorenzo reached into his coat.
He removed the thin gold ring engraved Sempre tua.
The ring Sophia had preserved for eight months.
Isabella looked at it.
“You kept it.”
“I kept everything.”
He took her hand.
“I buried you once.”
“I won't waste another day pretending time is guaranteed.”
Isabella's eyes filled.
“Lorenzo.”
He lowered himself onto one knee.
No guards.
No politicians.
No three hundred guests.
Only Isabella.
Sophia.
Emma.
Lucia sitting in the grass chewing the corner of a flower petal.
And the empty graves that had started everything.
“Isabella Conti.”
“Will you marry me?”
Emma gasped dramatically.
“You have to say yes.”
Everyone laughed.
Isabella cried.
Then she nodded.
“Yes.”
Lorenzo stood and kissed her.
Lucia clapped without understanding why.
Emma threw white carnations into the air.
Sophia covered her mouth.
For a moment, there were no Bellinis.
No DeLucas.
No ledgers.
No dead fathers demanding loyalty from their graves.
Only survivors choosing what came next.
Months later, Lorenzo and Isabella married in the mansion garden.
There were no senators.
No judges.
No underworld bosses.
Only people they trusted.
Emma carried the rings.
Lucia carried nothing because she immediately threw her basket into a fountain.
Sophia laughed until she cried.
Caterina sat beside Elena.
Two women who had lost decades to men's wars.
Antonio stood beside Lorenzo.
Father Gabriel performed the ceremony.
And when Isabella walked toward him, scar visible beneath the sunlight, Lorenzo did not see the woman he had buried.
He saw the woman who came back.
That night, after everyone had left, Lorenzo carried a sleeping Lucia upstairs.
Isabella followed.
At Lucia's bedroom door, Lorenzo stopped.
A small envelope rested on the floor.
No stamp.
No name.
He immediately became alert.
Isabella picked it up.
Inside was a photograph.
It showed the DeLuca cemetery plot.
Taken that morning.
Behind the two empty graves stood an unfamiliar man.
On the back, someone had written one sentence.
MATTEO CONTI DID NOT CREATE THE FIRST LEDGER.
Lorenzo looked at Isabella.
Her smile disappeared.
Below the sentence was an address.
New Orleans.
And a date.
Tomorrow.
Isabella looked toward their sleeping daughter.
“Do you think it's real?”
Lorenzo stared at the photograph.
For most of his life, he would have reached for a weapon.
This time, he reached for Isabella's hand.
“I think we've learned not to ignore messages from people who know where the bodies aren't buried.”
Downstairs, the grandfather clock struck midnight.
Somewhere beyond the mansion gates, a black car pulled away from the curb.
And inside it, an old man opened a leather book stamped with the DeLuca crest.
On the first page were two names Lorenzo had never seen connected before.
Vittorio DeLuca.
Matteo Conti.
Beneath them was a third.
May you like
And that name belonged to someone still living inside Lorenzo's house.
TOBE CONTINUED
